Deliver Winning Experience on a dime
by Samson Tse
I was at one of the local casinos in my area the other day. There was a group of people surrounding the stage as the MC announces the winner for a promotion. What strikes me as odd is the lack of enthusiasm from the crowd. Perhaps our economy went straight from a recession to a depression. Or maybe $20,000 isn’t a lot of money to that particular group of people. But wait, $20,000 is a good chunk of money by any standard. So what went wrong? Well for starters, there’s only one winner. Which means the rest of the crowd are not winning!
The psyche of an average gamer is simple. They want to come into your property and hopefully obtain a fun experience. And most people will agree that winning something is a great experience. So the first step in creating that winning experience is to split that $20,000 winning into smaller pieces for mass distribution. I’m not suggesting that you have to split the amount evenly. You can spread it out a bit and still maintain a fair amount for the top winner. For instance, $3,000 can go towards the number 1 spot and the rest can be random prizes of $10 and $20.
Initial winning: $20,000
Top Winner: $3,000
Remaining for bulk distribution: $20,000 - $3,000 = $17,000
Distribute 50% to $20 Winners: $8,500 / $20 = 425 winners
Distribute 50% to $10 Winners: $8,500 / $10 = 850 winners
TOTAL NUMBER OF WINNERS: 425 + 850 + 1 = 1,276 winners!
As you can see from the above calculation, you’ve just delivered a winning experience to 1,276 of your players. Now that’s a whole lot more exciting than watching the one person win all of the $20,000. The above is a simplified example; a lot of effort should be put into the allocation and balancing of the pot. Distributing the pot is a fine line to walk especially when you have to provide the minimum amount to the players without insulting them. You are not correctly allocating your resources if you give out too much but you most definitely won’t be providing a good winning experience if you give away too little and subsequently insults the guests.
The easiest way around the problem is to split your active members into different tiers then create promotions according to the member’s play pattern and threshold. There are many techniques and business logic that goes into the segmentation process. However, there is one group that almost never gets targeted and that is the frequent loser group. This is the group of people that visits the casino often and returns home empty handed. Sure, you might be thinking, we target that group of people all the time. But there is more, this is also the group that has not won any small or large jackpot in recent months. From a customer perspective, this is the group that has not received any winning experience in ages! This group of players should definitely be enrolled into a promotion that will refresh their memories of a winning experience. This is the perfect example of rescuing a group of customer before a retention program is needed.
So, now you have figured out the pot distribution and the targeted group for the promotion. How do you deliver that experience to the gamers? You can always do it the traditional way with a drawing drum full of tickets. However, that can take hours to announce with over 1,000 winners. Also, if the players are standing around waiting for the announcer then they are not playing. That can directly impact your property’s bottom line. The next option is to use an electronic drawing kiosk that will randomly draw a number and announce the winning right away. But that is still not good enough since that only last a fraction of a second and the player interaction is minimal. This leads us to the final option, Marketing Promotional Kiosk, which is a hybrid between the traditional drawing and the electronic drawing with a twist.
There is a wide range of kiosks available in the market. Informational, Valet Ticketing, Photo Processing just to name a few. But most of these kiosk solutions are not marketing oriented. They do not provide the tools necessary to execute a successful marketing campaign or promotion. This is where Marketing Promotional Kiosks can play a major role for your property. The kiosk solution allows you to enroll players into a specific promotion. Once enrolled, the players simply swipe their card to participate in the promotion. Each promotion includes a virtual game element that is engaging to the player participating. The types of games are limitless. You can create custom games that match your promotion concept or you can use some of the generic games that are currently available. The virtual games could be something as simple as Rock Paper Scissor, Tic-Tac-Toe or Black Jack. At the end of the game the winning prize will be announced. To make the game even more exciting, you can include the voice of a celebrity for the prize announcement. This can further entice the guest and increase the probability of participation. The Marketing Promotional Kiosk is a great approach for delivering winning experience since each kiosk can handle over 200 players per hour and the player will be able to sense the winning experience just as if they were playing the bonus game in a video slot machine.
In summary, it is relatively simple for any property to convert their current promotion budget into a more normalized distribution. Some casinos prefer to create an impact by advertising a large sum for the top winning but that might not be the best bang for their bucks. A wiser choice would be to invest capital into a long term marketing solution that can mass-produce the winning experience at a minimal cost. This is crucial because the key to your customer’s heart is to infatuate them with winning experience. Give them something to reminisce about so that they will not hesitate to come back to your property time and time again.
Date Posted: 04-May-2008
Samson Tse
President TSE Enterprise Technology Inc.
stse@tse-enterprise.com
