Proper planning and implementation of marketing campaigns is essential for the sustainable success of a sports betting company. Each betting operation has different phases, each of which requires its own marketing approach, e.g. winning new customers, reactivating the old customer base, managing high rollers, gaining market shares in strategic regions or countries, etc.
The marketing measures of a sports betting company must reflect this strategy and support its implementation. It is essential to always keep an eye on the current growth phase and the size of your own company – copycat strategies that are implemented by other companies, on the other hand, can pose challenges for your company (e.g. high bonus costs) if the sports betting provider used as reference is in a different phase of maturity.
The feasibility of the selected marketing measures also depends on the betting platform used. Without appropriate support on the part of the platform, marketing measures can involve an enormous amount of personnel, whereas a platform with appropriate integrations enables you to create your campaigns quickly and easily and run them automatically. The function of customer segmentation also plays an important role here – can your sports betting platform generate meaningful customer segments or does external software have to be used for this?
Arland’s software Bookmaker NEXT vis integrated with an extensive CRM system, which has been developed to support a multitude of marketing-requirements. This makes it possible to manage various types of bonuses and campaigns and to design your own marketing strategy for a wide variety of dynamic customer segments, thereby ensuring that every euro of your marketing budget leads to results.
Definition of the campaign
The approach described below is suitable for planning your new marketing campaign. Why it matters: These initial definitions describe the important aspects of your campaign and make campaign creation with your bookmaker software much easier.
- Outline the main objective of the campaign – read more on this topic here: Successful Marketing in the Sports Betting Business
- Define the available budget
- Choose whether to distribute free bets or real money bonuses
- Define the time frame for the campaign:
- One-time campaign
- Recurring
- Ongoing
- Define the communication channels and customer notifications for the campaign
- Track all active campaigns to avoid overlap or the distribution of multiple bonuses to the same customers or customer segments
- Define the KPIs (“Key Performance Indicators”) to be tracked
- Define at least one or two milestones for which you will evaluate the success of your campaign (good marketing campaigns take time, which is why it makes sense to run campaigns for at least several weeks)
- Testing, testing, testing. A / B tests (also known as split tests) can be used to compare different variants of the same campaign with regard to their success. Two versions of a website, an email notification or another marketing asset are assigned to different customer groups and the respective performance is used to measure how each variation behaves.
TIP: After defining the budget available for the campaign, it is recommended to create a simple KPI:Base currency budget divided by the number of days to run the campaign. This simple equation can be used to determine whether the selected bonus amount and expected performance (e.g. registrations) can be achieved and are consistent with the resources available. This means that within a few days it can be checked whether the budget and the campaign duration are compatible.
Type of the campaign
From the previous consideration of the time frame of the campaign, i.e. whether the campaign is a one-time, recurring or an ongoing campaign, the type of campaign emerges. In addition, campaigns can often be linked to specific sports, leagues, events, or results. In this case, for example, an ongoing campaign (e.g. 10% stake bonus for all combination bets with odds above 5.0 in the Premier League) or a one-time campaign (e.g. immediately before the Champions League Final planned) could be scheduled.
The following types of campaigns are available in Bookmaker NEXT: ad hoc, ongoing, promotional and voucher campaigns.
One-time Campaigns (Ad-hoc Campaigns)
Ad-hoc campaigns are fast and reactive campaigns that can be run once, periodically (daily / weekly / monthly) or as required – e.g. to celebrate or promote a specific event. Usually this type of campaign involves an activation effort and can be used to establish a personal contact point with customers (e.g. birthday campaigns or loyalty campaigns for customers who have already played on the platform for X years). Ad hoc campaigns generate a real-time response in most cases and can therefore be combined with communication channels that support this type of quick interaction.
TIP: A marketing calendar based on traditional holidays, international events, seasonal sales, and other important events is one of the best ways to connect with players and gain their loyalty. With Bookmaker NEXT, ad-hoc campaigns can be used to support this strategy, e.g. by creating a campaign to run on every Christmas Eve or Mother’s Day. One of the main advantages of this approach is to constantly increase customer loyalty and to create as many opportunities for interaction as possible during a calendar year.
Ongoing Campaigns
Ongoing campaigns are long-term marketing efforts. These campaigns represent a strategic approach that needs to be carefully researched, elaborated and implemented. A continuous performance evaluation is recommended in order to optimize a meaningful offer and to improve the way in which this offer is rolled out (e.g. registration bonus, free bet for new customers, real money bonus, access to certain content or even the customer’s migration to a VIP group, etc.).
TIP: Offering free bets or real money bonuses is not always the path to meaningful interactions with bettors. It is also possible to create marketing campaigns without a bonus, in which the notification effect of the campaign is used to pursue a different marketing approach (e.g. the distribution of a business partner’s discount voucher). Registration and new customer campaigns have become indispensable for the growth of a sports betting company, but they often attract so-called “bonus hunters” who register on platforms and try to meet the campaign’s payout conditions with the safest possible bets. To ensure that your campaigns deliver good results and are not misused, an ongoing evaluation of the payout conditions and the effectiveness of your campaigns is necessary.
Promotion Campaigns
Promotional campaigns are usually tied to cooperations with marketing partners (co-branding initiatives, affiliates, etc.), special events (e.g. flyers distributed in a stadium with a promo code), or customer segmentation efforts (the registration in a specific node of the betting platform). In this case, an advertising campaign contains a promo code that is used to trigger the campaign during registration. The customer enters this code when creating his betting account and is assigned / receives a reward accordingly.
TIP: In Bookmaker NEXT, promo codes can be used to define the visibility of widgets in the Bookmaker NEXT CMS. With this simple feature it is possible to customize the entire user experience, e.g. displaying image banners linked to an advertised event (opportunity ads); or creating a co-branded experience for customers using a specific promo code.
Voucher campaigns
Voucher campaigns are mainly used in marketing strategies associated with distributing coupon codes via email or in print. These vouchers can usually be redeemed by customers themselves or by a customer service representative.
Conclusion
When it comes to the success of their business, proper planning and execution of their marketing campaigns is essential for sports betting providers. Depending on the individual goals, various aspects must be taken into account in the marketing campaigns – in addition, it is always necessary to set clear goals and continuously review the performance.
With a high-performance CRM system, it is possible to implement the individual strategy efficiently and in a targeted manner and thus to achieve success more quickly. If you would like to find out more about how the Bookmaker NEXT CRM can support your marketing campaigns, just write to us at [email protected] !