32Red lines up bingo marketing push

32Red is putting together plans to promote its bingo product as part of a marketing push aimed at recruiting players at cheaper rates before cross-selling them into its flagship casino vertical.

The operator said it expects to double marketing spend in 2015 to around £13m and, buoyed by the results of a new data-driven marketing approach, bingo has been earmarked as a way of reaching a new audience with high cross-sell potential.

“We are definitely going to be increasing our marketing spend,” 32Red’s chief commercial officer Matthew Booth told eGaming Review after this morning’s interim results.

“You’ll also see us look to expand our reach into bingo advertising. We feel it is important to try to advertise to the daytime audience through bingo,” he added.

Bingo is currently making only a marginal contribution to 32Red’s revenues. Although the operator doesn’t break down its minor verticals, in 2014 poker, sports betting and bingo brought in a combined £1.7m of NGR versus the £30.4m generated by casino.

However, bingo has been identified as an acquisition channel which will enable the operator to cross-sell into casino, following a similar strategy implemented with its sports betting vertical.

Booth said around 30% of acquisitions were coming from sports betting users cross selling into casino. With 32Red’s sportsbook CPA of £50 standing at around a quarter that of casino, a bingo marketing assault is now seen as a potentially cheaper revenue driver.

The firm’s increased confidence in marketing has been brought on by the implementation of new behavioural and predictive marketing models which allows the firm to estimate and extract more value from new acquisitions.

The models have been in development for around 18 months but have been playing a greater role in broader marketing strategy since March, with Booth crediting them for maintaining payback despite the sharp increase in spend.