Flavors Of Cashless Part 3: How do I deliver cashless gaming solutions to patrons: mobile, carded, online?
So far in the Flavors of Cashless series, we’ve discussed:
This now brings us to your final flavor of cashless gaming – delivering cashless to your customers.
At this stage, you’ve analyzed the best technology for your gaming floor and found the right payments partners. Now it all comes down to your patrons using the cashless system.
With the investment required in deploying a cashless gaming system, ensuring your marketing team is informed about the system and its potential is critical in encouraging customer adoption.
Ease and efficiency should be at the top of your list when designing your delivery system. You want to ensure that your delivery mechanism maximizes guest engagement. There are typically three main delivery mechanisms: carded, online, or mobile.
When you select the carded option, you incorporate player cards with PIN entry. Carded delivery is mostly limited to use with slot machines and is only effective for putting money in and then taking it back out via the card. This solution doesn’t provide guests with the flexibility to use those funds across your resort or outside your property, should they win or have money left in their account after a visit.
Another route could be a mobile-compatible website – an online delivery mechanism – which is likely to be more efficient for guests than carded delivery is. However, challenges arise as patrons must remember their username, password, and even the web address to access their funds.
Given the limitations of these options, a mobile app solution is the most powerful way to deliver cashless gaming to your patrons. Leveraging a mobile app for delivery of your cashless system will meet customers where they are since over 85% of Americans have smart phones.
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Part of our cashless thesis at Sightline is mobile-first, mobile always, and this is why we acquired JOINGO, a leading mobile engagement platform that allows properties to leverage their unique brand through custom mobile app design and cross-property integration. JOINGO mobile loyalty solutions are live at more than 100 casino properties nationally and help casinos engage patrons more regularly and offer those patrons more customization on their experiences.
With mobile-first, cashless solutions like the ones we’re deploying at Sightline you can add real-time access to loyalty credits, free play, and promotional offers, and entertainment reservation systems to your app, which can help optimize new personalization and loyalty tools that continually increase overall engagement. Tying all of this functionality together through a clean, mobile experience provides guests with unmatched utility and a definitive reason to set up and utilize the app.
Yet, none of it matters if you cannot effectively deliver the solution to guests. Finding an effective way to explain this new technology to guests must be your primary focus for your mobile app-enabled cashless system to be successful. Another reason to ensure your marketing team is invested in the process of launching this solution and prepared to add it to their overall marketing plan.
Consumers enjoy the ease and convenience of mobile-first, digital payments options in their everyday lives – whether buying groceries at the grocery store, paying for coffee at Starbucks, or checking luggage at the airport – but the casino gaming industry is one of the last ecosystems on earth that depends on cash for nearly all purchasing. It is important that you educate your guests on why your mobile app and cashless infrastructure will make their experience at your property safer, more secure, and all-around easier.
?We’ve seen different properties adopt different tactics for engaging patrons with this education. Some choose a target within their database, others start with high rollers, and some still roll out full marketing campaigns to convert new users.
Sightline’s recent Resorts World Las Vegas launch strategy outlined how to download the Resorts World Las Vegas app, activate a loyalty account, set up a Play+ account, and then transfer funds to a wagering account for use at games across the casino floor.
Understanding how best to engage your unique customer base – both through your chosen delivery method for cashless gaming and for educating your customers about how and why they should use that method – will be different for each property. Think through all the options at the outset of your cashless journey so rolling out your solution can be as effective as possible.