Affiliates shoudn't pay for marketing mediocrity
If affiliates are paid on conversions then they shoud compare notes on which operators' adverts convert best, says James McBriar, head of portals at Gaming Portals, forcing the others to shape up or ship out.
CONVERSION RATES ARE A CRUCIAL factor affecting an affiliate’s profitability.
They can send traffic to one operator that converts into players and revenue, whereas the same amount of traffic can go to another operator but with no conversions; thus no revenue. The quality of the traffic can differ in both cases, but generally it’s a good measure of how casinos convert.
The parameters affecting conversion rates include affiliate website views-to-banner click rate, click-to-registration rate, registration-to-new-paying-customer rate, new-paying-customer-to-continued-paying customer and so on.
Does a casino that spends millions on branding and advertising convert better than a smaller brand with smaller budgets? I think not. Once the user clicks the banner on the affiliate site it’s all about the funnel “ how the casino takes the user from registration to deposit, then they can retain them.
But what are the most important factors to conversion?
They include banner/creative design, website design and usability, ease of depositing, quality of customer service/CRM and promotions offered.
Affiliates are in competition for traffic, but why not be more transparent on conversion? Once they know which operators convert the best, they will promote those most. However, this will force the others to shape up or ship out, thus improving the market for affiliates and better monetising their valuable traffic.
Affiliates could organize forums on this and maybe survey what they consider to be the most important factors between an outgoing click and a new paying customer. Areas covered could include website design, size of software download, ease of installation, ease of registration, ease of deposit, bonus offered, quality of customer service and brand strength.
Online advertising/marketing has come on leaps and bounds in the past five years within the realm of conversion. Egaming advertising and marketing needs to catch up. Marketing was too easy for us for a long time and now it’s much, much more difficult, we need to get better.
Disagree? EGR welcomes pitches for blog posts of between 250 and 350 words on topical egaming issues. Email EGRmagazine.com editor Jon Parker your suggestion/s.
EGR Live, eGaming Review‘s free to attend two-day conference and exhibition this month, includes a special Power Affiliates stream designed for the serious affiliate, with presentations on topics including successful exits and acquisitions, legal issues, revenue models and the disappearing distinction between affiliates and operators. Speakers include RakeTheRake’s Karim Wilkins, Online Bingo Friends’ Jamie Rosen, Bingo Base’s Raj Ramanandi and Poker Listings’ Bjorn Evers.