Casino Database Marketing: Do the easy things first!

We often pitch projects to clients related to advanced marketing:  model
development, behavior-driven segmentation, pricing optimization, data
mining, and other fun things.  However, I always ask my clients if
they're doing the easy things before calling us in to refine their core
targeting methodologies.  Without further delay, here's a quick list:

New Player's Card Signups:
Treat your new Club signups like Gold.  Get them a welcome letter as
quickly as possible, preferably within a week.  Personalize it,
acknowledge their earned level, and if they triggered a good rating,
include a bounce-back.  Bonus points if you integrate this first contact
with your VIP introduction.  Most properties do this, few do this weekly.

W2G Winners:
Here's one of the most valuable lists that often goes ignored.  Although
small, here's a great chance to recover your payout.  Send a
congratulations communication quickly, and several weeks before the
first anniversary of their win, arrange a "winner's package" where
you'll book their same room, comp dinner at the same restaurant, and
remind them of their great luck!  On a side-note, if your behavior
models don't account for post-high-win sessions, the models will
overestimate this player's baseline play amount.

Hotel-only first-time visitors:
Just send a simple postcard to acknowledge their visit, and include your
favorite retail-grade offer.  Its a nice reminder of their trip.  If you
make the front of it postcard-like, it might find a place on their
refridgerator!  After this first contact, include this populuation in
your modeled hotel population.

Keno Players:
The data is sitting right in front of you.  Find all those Keno
players!  They're different from the video poker players, ya know. 
Very, very different.

Younger players:
Have you looked around your casino floor lately?  Gaming has
traditionally been a leisure sport for a slightly older population. 
However, there are many players in their 20s and 30s.  Dig a little
deeper, push a little harder.  Some of these players will become your
foundation over the next several years.

Spa or other amenities:
Just an easy initiative to bring people back to the service they
hopefully enjoyed.  If your marketing database is sophisticated enough,
cross-reference this list with your player's club to find out if any of
your spa visitors are the spouses of your VIPs.  Hint, hint...  "Wow,
honey, they offered me a FREE spa session, can't you just play blackjack
for an hour or two without me?"

Simple Zip-code untargeted mailings:
Just kidding.  I was just wondering if you were reading this far.  I
have never seen a program like this generate a positive return.  Stop. 
Your time & budget is better spent on other projects.  Continuing to do
this is broadcasting to your competitors, "Hey, we don't have any
end-to-end analytics!"


Ed Gianos is the founder of North Leaf Solutions LLC, a consulting
agency helping clients in gaming and other industries maximize the value
of their data through data quality, modeling, segmentation, testing,
reporting, and various methodologies to please both players and
marketing budgets.