TRAFFIC
ENGAGING BINGO PLAYERS
Tanya Szwarcbard of retention platform Optimove digs into the data on behavioural patterns of bingo
players, using persona segmentation to see what opportunities exist for improving retention marketing.
NOT SINCE BINGO was invented in
1929 has the game been more popular than
it is today, due to the explosion of online
bingo websites and mobile apps that allow
play all over the world, anywhere, anytime.
It is estimated there are now about 100
million online bingo players worldwide,
70-80% of whom are women, aged mostly
between 30 and 50.
More than 80% of online bingo players
have registered to more than one site, and
consequent ly receive generous offers from
marketers on a daily basis, creating a space
in which achieving player loyalty is a big
challenge for operators. This increases
the importance of their investing in their
existing players, in order to encourage them
to stay play on their site time and again.
Bingo players’ behavioural patterns are
different from those of other real-money
gaming (RMG) players. This requires
adjustments when creating strategic
customer marketing campaigns aimed at
effectively engaging and retaining those
players. For this bingo player analysis,
we delved into the various “personas”
discovered by our Optimove software in
scraping the data of a number of online
bingo operators to see what opportunities
exist for improving retention marketing.
Persona segmentation is based on the
clustering of numerous customer attributes,
behavioural history, predictive analytics and
other factors. In this post, I will present a
number of common bingo player personas,
along with some suggestions of how to best
interact with them.
The fun player
The fun player is one who has created an
account (registered to a site), but has not
yet made a first deposit. On many bingo
sites, fun players can experience the game
with virtual currency.
●●Insights
The data shows a direct correlation
between the activity levels of fun players
and the likelihood of them converting
Figure 1: Fun player conversion by days since registration
% of Converted
Players
60%
Day 2
to become paying players, and thus
generating revenues for the site: Fun
players with higher levels of activity
levels become worth more to the
operator, on average.
The data also shows that around 60%
of play-for-fun players who convert (i.e.
make a first deposit) do so within the
first two days following registration.
After two days, there is a sharp drop-off
in the number of fun players who deposit
(see Figure 1).
●●Actions
The fun lifecycle stage represents an
important, yet narrow, window of
opportunity for bingo operators. It is
critical to quickly engage fun players
and to incentivize them to make a
deposit during the super-important
first two days.
For those who don’t convert in the first
few days, continue incentivizing them
with even more enticing offers as the
days go by, as this is likely your last
chance of converting them. Once two
weeks have passed from a fun player’s
date of registration, it is usually only
worthwhile targeting fun players who
remain active (playing with virtual
currency).
The new player
The new player is one who is within a
specific initial period (typically, 14 days)
from making a first deposit.
●●Insights
The data shows clearly that new players
who have a better playing “experience”
will remain active players longer (instead
of churning) on the site. To measure
“experience,” we segmented new players
into three experience personas, based
on the ratio of how much money they
wagered to how much money they
deposited (i.e., total wagers divided by
total deposits):
o Great (ratio > 5X)
o Good (2-5X)
o Bad (< 2X)
This measure is a good proxy of player
experience, because players with a higher
ratio are those who are playing more
and for longer durations. New players
in the better experience personas are
more likely to become active players (see
next section) while those in the worse
experience personas tend to move into
the churn lifecycle stage much faster.
Additionally, the data shows that players
who make more than one deposit tend
to remain engaged for longer than one-
iGB Affiliate Issue 55 FEB/MAR 2016
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