Working in the online gaming world has really put me on the front line of online marketing as gaming is so much more advanced than in other industries. I have been thinking a lot recently about not only the future of online poker marketing but online marketing as a whole and what changes and advancements the next few years will bring.
With this in mind i think back five or so years ago when things were only really kicking off in a big way online. Affiliates were progressing out of there bedrooms and online media was being taken a lot more seriously not only by online companies but bricks and mortar businesses too. It seems strange to think back now knowing that how far online marketing was going to come in a relatively short period of time.
All of this got me thinking of what things are going to be like in another five years time. One of the biggest things that is going to change is the way media campaigns are affiliate performance is viewed. Currently online media buys in gaming are nearly always evaluated by the amount of new customers and revenue they bring in and perhaps rightly so. I think its far to say these two measurements were the two most important attributes to measure performance certainly in what was a new booming industry when there was plenty of new players for everyone.
I believe now the winds are changing and as the industry consolidates and market share becomes more competitive we have lot more to think about when reviewing performance of a campaign. Take for example the twoplustwo forums, one of the biggest and most reputable poker forums around. Nearly all of the major rooms have advertised on twoplustwo at sometime and will have and may still perform very well for them. But now as we move into a new era of online poker i think is a fair assumption to make that a large proportion of twoplustwo users will already have accounts with all of the major poker rooms as these forumites are generally very savvy, experienced players. So why keep advertising here? Well undoubtedly twoplustwo bring in new members everyday and these new members are potentially very valuable users to the operators and if campaigns can bring enough of these new users to there room then that will undoubtedly make the campaign a success. But lets think about the thousands of visitors that twoplustwo receive everyday that already hold and account with you, are really taking full advantage of the reach this banner placement gives us into the life of our current customers? Absolutely not. Think of all the information we already have on these customers. We know if there are a winning or losing player, what limits the play, when they were last active, their name, where they live, hell we even know their first pets name. So lets start using it to our advatage.
Imagine a level of behavioral marketing where simply by using their IP or MAC address to identify the user, a banner can refer to you by your own name in your own language and gives you and offer tailored to you. It could be a re-load bonus for the exact amount you have lost, it could could be a entry into a freeroll for players only from you city. This it truly the tip of the iceberg and I have not doubt that online campaigns will not only be reviewed but their acquisition performance but also by how well they up-sale existing customers. To my knowledge there is not a single gaming company using behavioral marketing to this level but I’m sure that won’t be the case for long and the first company to do so will undoubtedly make a huge splash.
