iGB Affiliate 55 Feb/Mar | Page 19

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 15