Here’s a question asked by many. What’s more challenging in online gambling – attracting new users to your platform or retaining the existing ones?
There is though, no single answer to customer retention. This article will shed light on various strategies for dealing with this dilemma and help you earn your players’ loyalty and keep them engaged. The piece aims to reflect on the theme of iGaming player retention and the best possible ways to achieve it.
First, let’s try to understand what customer retention is and why it is important for the iGaming business.
What is Customer Retention for the iGaming Business?
You have definitely heard: “The customer is always right”. Yet, the actual quote has a strong continuation: “...in matters of taste”. This means that they are the ones who choose the platform they intend to stick to. In other words, customers are the engine of any business, so in order to start it up and run it efficiently, you need to listen to them carefully and try to answer the following questions:
- Who are your customers?
- What are their preferences?
- What do they expect from you?
Only after answering these questions can one plan to consider ways of keeping them in their business and constantly catering for them.
In the iGaming industry, customer retention refers to the measurement of customer loyalty along with the ability of a company to keep them over a specific period of time. It is definitely correlated with their engagement, satisfaction and emotional attachment.
And still, why is online gambling customer retention important? The key reasons are as follows:
- Retaining existing customers is much cheaper than acquiring new ones;
- Loyal customers tend to be repeat and valuable customers;
- The business-customer relationship is built on trust;
- Satisfied customers can lead to further acquisitions through referrals.
What Is Customer Retention Rate and How to Calculate it?
Now it’s time to look at how you can measure customer retention before discussing different ways to improve it.
Customer retention is the percentage of existing customers who remain customers after a certain period. It includes the customers you have at the start (S), at the end (E) and the new ones acquired over time (N). What’s essential for you is that there is a specific formula to calculate your customer retention rate (CRR).
The formula is applied as shown:
(E-N)/S x 100 = retention rate
Let’s take an example and study it step by step. Suppose you have 250 customers at the start of the month. You lose 24 and gain 87 more during that period, and it ends at 313. With all this data at hand, it is possible to make a calculation right away.
S=250
E= 313
N=87
(313-87)/250 x 100 = 90,4%
As a result, the customer retention rate would be 90,4%.
How do Casinos Retain Customers?
Mathematical part aside, have you ever wondered how casinos retain customers? There is no doubt that establishing a strong customer base is extremely essential, so here’s everything you need to know about how to do it.
Maintain transparency
Needless to say that there is heavy competition in the iGaming industry. And when it comes to the casino business, it’s necessary to build trustful relationships with customers. If you want to be conceived as a reliable business, you should keep in mind that it mostly rests on customers’ credence in the fairness and transparency you can ensure about the quality of your website, the products and solutions you offer, the licensing and the whole operational process.
Provide quality products & services
Not only is it crucial to deliver high-quality products and services to customers but also to update them constantly. In order to keep interest and, as a result, players, it is important to inform users about new games, features, additional betting options, services, and the like. Although, all these changes and the portfolio's diversity should in no way affect the quality of the offered range.
Offer bonuses & promotions
What could be better than prizes? And what can ensure player retention and loyalty if not rewards? Everyone lօves and, to some extent, expect encouragement, which in this sphere can be expressed in a variety of ways: in the form of special programs, bonuses, loyalty points, promotions, etc. These may seem banal and somehow unimportant, but they can be the right direction at the right time and help you avoid losing your customers.
Ensure easy-to-use website & mobile app
Just make it easy for your customers to access your site and take full advantage of your offers. Make your website and mobile app highly responsive. This is one of those features that is often overlooked, but it can make a big difference in keeping customers happy and coming back for more. Satisfaction is a key factor in business and it directly leads to customer retention.
Deliver excellent customer support
Questions and problems are inevitable in any industry, and casinos are certainly no exception. The main thing is to know that the answers to these questions and the solution of various issues are carried out immediately, at a high level and with greatest love by the support team. So, make sure to deliver excellent customer support for players’ internal confidence in your business and hence to strengthen their retention base.
Use client feedback
To increase player retention, it is absolutely essential to use client feedback. Their attitude can tell whether they will stay with you or not. Mutual connection with them can be realised through satisfaction surveys, a feedback bar or any other way you can think of. Furthermore, client feedback can be incredibly helpful if you try to apply their words, complaints or suggestions to your advantage. This way, you can find your weaknesses, fix them, and thus constantly improve.
How to Boost Your Retention Rates?
Now that you know how to retain players, let's figure out how to boost your retention rates. The crux of the matter is to give people reasons to stay constantly.
The 3 main steps for holding into your valuable players are to
- Engage & collect data
- Segment and Personalise
- Nurture
Listed below are the 9 best online gambling player retention strategies that every gambling business can use to improve their retention rate.
1. Pay Attention to Your Audience With Personalisation and Localisation
As mentioned above, customers play a key role in business growth. Acknowledging them and working with them in the alliance is critical to success. So, suppose you want to boost your business revenue and increase your customer retention rates. In that case, you need to, in the first place, pay attention to your target audience in terms of personalisation and localisation. That is, you should understand what segment your players belong to, their preferences, desires and other relevant metrics, and, above all, why they appreciate you.
After collecting all the information, you will be able to create buyer personas and deliver the right marketing strategy that works for them. The more comprehensive and custom-tailored marketing you have, the more involved customers get. The data received will enable you to generate the right personalised triggers that will be activated later at the right time. This, in turn, will help customers engage with your business, increase retention rates and lead to higher LTV, i.e. “lifetime value" that each customer adds to the business in the course.
2. Offer a Wide Selection of Games
Players love games! It may seem too simple for the iGaming industry, considering that each and every visitor surely likes to play. Yet, to create a wonderful journey for players by providing them with an involving gaming experience, it is necessary to maintain and develop this interest all the time.
To run a long way, you should assess the business situation correctly and not limit yourself to having a good portfolio: it’s better to continually update it with new and diverse games, solutions and add fresh gameful elements and features to your products. And quality, indeed, should not be compromised by a wide and varied selection of games.
3. Choose Best Game Providers
The next important strategy you’d like to learn about is choosing the best game providers to leverage on your platform. Once you are able to gather around you the best of the industry, it will be possible to excel in different areas and to provide the best to your customers: the best product, the best service, the best software…
Becoming popular in the market will lead to the fact that more and more people are becoming your loyal customers, giving better feedback and contributing to your business's growth. Everything is strong and promising in mutual cooperation and exchange of the best.
4 . Customer Relationship Management
Surely you have come across the abbreviation CRM which stands for "customer relationship management"; it is application software for monitoring, controlling and managing all your business' interactions with your target audience, namely relationships with your customers.
The implementation of CRM service in iGaming creates opportunities for offering tailored sports betting and gaming experiences. This means that the system can help you monitor your customers' behaviour and implement the aforementioned mechanisms to improve your retention rates. For instance, you can see the games your customers love, offer them special bonuses and promotions based on their preferences and make improvements in your relationship accordingly.
With CRM software, you gain an opportunity to get clear on your goals and priorities and shape your business. Thereby, you will be able to offer products and services different from those existing already and outlast and outperform the competition.
5. Promotions, Offers & Bonuses
Here comes the most favourite part for customers. To create events specifically tailored to your players' desires and needs, you need to pay close attention to their behaviour and actions on your website. Once you use the data you get with CRM systems, create player segments and ultimately find your target audience, it’s nice to give it something encouraging. It can be anything, from one-time special offers to permanent promotions.
For example, it is worth providing new customers with an inspiring welcome package of offers so that they are sure of their right choice. Permanent clients, though, can be given exclusive prizes and bonuses in the form of instant cash rewards, free spins or jackpots. All these promos, offers and bonuses will surely stimulate players to come back or stay longer.
6. Special Events
How about making the year-round full of special events? During the whole year, there can be special things arranged for them. You can, for instance, take into consideration holidays and build your marketing around them. Say you're doing special offers before Christmas or Halloween with Christmas-themed or Halloween-themed games with extra favours in the spirit of the certain holiday.
Or another suggestion: you can organise tournaments with a huge prize pool which will undoubtedly generate a lot of interest among players and will significantly increase the competition. Obviously, all this can be reported in a similar particular way, say, in the form of personalised push notifications and emails (so-called marketing triggers) that your customers are sure to engage with.
7. Let Users Feel Like They’re Part of a Community (Gamification)
Alright! As we talked about CRM, player segmentation, the organisation of special events and the provision of bonuses intended to boost online gambling customer retention, let's figure out how to make players feel like they are part of a gaming community.
To do so, you may need to apply gamification as a community-builder. Gamification is the use of game psychology and various gameplay elements as a marketing technique. It is meant to make the experience more exciting, thus driving engagement and high traffic to operators’ websites.
All the above-listed mechanisms can be considered gamification tools, yet you need to take into account the community, as what works for one may not work for another. You just should be mindful of your community members and their needs so that you are able to cater for them in the best way possible. Only this way your users will feel involved and valued.
8. Responsible Gambling
Apart from all the cheering methods, you should not forget about one of the key concepts: responsible gambling. Your audience should treat gambling as a fun pastime, and you, in turn, should comply with various principles of responsible gaming.
Let’s assume you want to start your own sportsbook. Here are some measures of responsible gambling suggested for you to take:
- Protect vulnerable players
- Prevent underage gambling
- Take safety measures against criminal activities
- Keep information privacy
- Protect online payment
- Create a secure online environment
- Build ethical and responsible marketing
By applying all these points, your customers will feel more secure on the platform you offer and the likelihood of staying with you will totally increase.
9. Work With the Right Partners
And do you know what the best guarantee for success in business is? Connections, that’s right! Having the right partners is critical to making sustainable profits. Statistics can determine the right: say, BetConstruct, a leading betting and gaming software provider, can serve as a perfect example.
When looking for an excellent online casino software, you stumble upon the remarkable statistics that the company has achieved over the fifteen years of its activity, such as:
- 50+ products
- 15+ licences
- 500+ payment methods
Every single customer begins to have more confidence in you when they see that you work with partners who have a particular place in the industry. And thereby this is also an important point to pay attention to for player retention.
How do gambling companies attract customers?: Conclusion
All in all, in an industry as competitive as iGaming has become over the past few decades, it would be effective to refer to the player retention strategies we introduce in this article. We have shared with you the best marketing tactics that gambling companies use to attract and keep their customers.
We truly hope this blog will be useful and help you take your business to the next level. So, move forward with these business strategies we’ve talked about and benefit for many years to come!