Bonuses have long been part of iGaming operations across markets and are a fundamental tool to attract, engage and retain players. In recent years, successful user retention become more and more crucial for operators as cost per acquisition becomes higher.
In a competitive environment where bonuses can be the differentiator, operators need to take another look at their approach to understand how to increase bonus effectiveness and distinguish themselves from the competition. In this article, we’ll be looking at the areas that operators can explore to take their retention capabilities to the next level.
These fields you need to consider if aiming at better bonusing:
Flexibility
Ecosystems
Big data
Automation
Gamification
Innovation
Flexibility
As iGaming software providers, our role is to provide operators with best-in-class software solutions that enable them to offer their players the best rewards in creative and flexible ways. This means that modern bonus platforms need to go one step further to offer the agility and feature sets to accommodate the needs of today, and to be ready for any new integrations, technologies, regulation requirements changes, and more.
A flexible, bonus engine should allow creating bonus bundles, versatile rule definitions with games, events, player segmentation, and actionable triggers like deposits, wagering, losses, logins, and other interactions.
Ecosystems
By thinking of bonus solutions in terms of an ecosystem rather than standing alone, operators will quickly realize how powerful they can be. This line of thinking around bonus engine means that operators can retain their players across verticals such as casino, live casino, and sports.
This more open approach also means that other solutions can be integrated into the wider offering, with specialist software providers being able to implement powerful retention features.
Leverage big data
Knowledge is power and understanding players’ needs has never been more important. To excel in player retention the platform should continuously learn about the user’s activities using machine learning modules and AI applications. By analyzing their sessions, operators will be managed to reveal deep insights into player behavior and offer personalized betting opportunities.
Big data is already being used by some of the largest companies on the planet to help them target new customers and deliver better experiences for existing ones. With personalized recommendations and tailored offers, data can help operators get the right products in front of the right customers, at the right time.
In terms of the iGaming industry, we are already seeing such implementations through game recommendation engines and reward campaigns. Through more effective personalization, operators can deliver more targeted experiences to players based on their behavior, preferences, and profile.
As technology continues to evolve, so does its ability to collect and organize data. The challenge lies in knowing how best to interpret that data to inform future campaigns and initiatives. For instance, segmenting player bases in more granular ways can open up reward schemes that go deeper than just ‘new and existing player’ and can instead create more detailed groups up to a single-player level on qualitative information such as demographics (determining different ages including Millennials and Gen Z) and psychological profiles (depending on the user behavior).
Automation
Automation is the other side of the big data coin. After all, what use is having all this information if it cannot be processed and understood properly? Analyzing and acting upon all of the insights gained by the collection of big data can be an impossible task for human interpreters, or at least will come with huge operational costs. By employing automation and artificial intelligence, operators will be able to tailor highly targeted offers and promotions for more granular customer segments, ultimately leading to higher ROIs and lower costs across the board.
Automation isn’t only useful for promotions and retention. By being able to interpret all the data, platforms will have more flexibility than ever before, with more features and configurations to fine-tune experiences at a player level and react in real-time.
More than bonuses
In recent years we have seen new tools added to allow operators to successfully retain their players such as leaderboard-based tournaments, missions, levels, badges, points, and more. Through gamification and a highly configured and specific bonus system, the rewarding process can be fully automated for an all-around experience that gives end-users the best performance possible.
Missions boost players’ engagement, making gameplay fun and challenging by creating real-time tasks for users to complete. For instance:
– Badges allow keeping people feel more engaged by giving free spins or bonuses with each badge.
– Points allow users to unlock new games and encourage more gameplay.
– Leaderboards and tournaments allow operators to create competitions and reward players with daily, weekly, and monthly prizes.
Never stop innovating
Operators are operating in a highly competitive environment. iGaming platforms should supply a flexible bonus engine and advance retention tools by utilizing the most advanced technology. While bonuses have long been a staple of any operator, simply offering them without any of the above considerations means your gambling business cannot reach its full potential.
Contact us to learn more about how to increase bonus effectiveness and take players retention to the next level to offer a superior iGaming experience through real-time engagement.
