Join the free bet club

In my last article for EGR Marketing I discussed the deviation from enhanced odds to user-generated bonuses, with the focus very much being on the likes of Sky Bet’s #RequestABet, William Hill’s #YourOdds and Paddy Power’s #WhatOddsPaddy.

What was also touched on was the move towards free bet clubs and that is, I believe, the most important change that is coming in the world of online sports betting.

The advent of smartphones has had a profound effect on the online gaming sector but I’m not going to attempt to patronise any readers by whipping out smartphone usage statistics. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Google Analytics knows the volumes of those accessing sites via mobile devices and thus the change in user behaviour.

The one thing that is, however, missed when discussing online gaming is the increase in brand loyalty that comes from smartphone usage. The ease with which bets can be placed means that there is less thought than ever before and gambling is very much a pastime, as opposed to a career for the majority of punters.

Bets are being placed on the bus, on the Tube, during lunch or coffee breaks as those with disposable income look to add excitement to their day with a small punt, which they can check on when bored in the office.

Changing landscape
The key factor here though is that these are not price sensitive selections and it is very much a case of loading up your betting app and making a wager on the hoof. Punters will usually have two or three apps on their device to choose from, but the odds are there will be no more than that. Which app is used will be determined more by what is the flavour of the month or, more pertinently, which account has funds available.

So how does a brand ensure that they are the chosen app for this month? That question is what marketers have sought to answer for many years but it does seem more recently that the big firms have come back to the very basic premise of the loyalty scheme. Sky Bet, a brand which is continually at the forefront of marketing innovation, was the first to do this on a grand scale with its Free Bet Club, and lately there have been a number of others following suit.

William Hill has introduced its Offer Club and Coral has also launched Bet & Get. Bet365 has always been a little coy on its own loyalty scheme but it has been offering free bets every week to regular punters for years. It may be discretionary but the world’s biggest bookmaker is well aware of the need to keep customers on board and its early adoption of this model is perhaps one of the reasons for its success.

What these free bet offers do ensure is that customers continue to use these operators to place small stake wagers in order to qualify for free bets the following week. One thing that stood out during a week spent covering the 2017 Cheltenham Festival on social media was just how many people benefit from Sky Bet’s Free Bet Club. A lot of racing fans saw it as a way to build an ante-post portfolio with weekly free bets going towards the festival. A free fiver every week and you have £260 per year, which can be quite a substantial betting balance. This, however, also involves having wagered £1,300 in 12 months, which is not insignificant for Sky Bet either.

There are even some firms using this model as a welcome bonus, with new online bookmakers Toals and 21Bet.co.uk’s main marketing push being the fact that new customers are signed up to loyalty programmes and the free bets available are calculated per annum.

Tools of the trade
As an acquisition tool the use of a free bet club is debatable but there is no doubt that it is fantastic for the retention of customers. Sky Bet has managed to move itself into the UK top five for turnover using this method and it is now in a position to challenge the behemoth that is bet365 and the new super operators of Ladbrokes Coral and Paddy Power Betfair.

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Sky Bet’s retention ideas are winners as anyone who has ever dealt with Sky TV, Phone or Broadband will know the importance that the company puts on its retention team. These workers are perhaps the most important in the whole company, offering incredible deals to disgruntled customers to ensure that they remain loyal to Sky in a market that is every bit as competitive as online gaming.

Our industry does not exist in a vacuum and the tactics that work well for the major players in other spheres will have success in gaming as well. The key is finding out how best to utilise these strategies in an ever-changing environment and this is particularly challenging for us affiliates.

Sky Bet, for example, did not simply decide upon its retention tactics by chance. It continues to run a No Deposit Free Bet offer for new customers which ensures that it gets numbers through the door, at which point it uses the Free Bet Club to retain them. It’s a two-pronged attack and it’s one which we’re now seeing other firms use too.

Blueprint for success
Coral’s Bet & Get scheme is the logical follow on from its outlandish odds offers such as the 33/1 on any team to win a corner, which is now becoming the brand’s specialty. The bookmaker is likely to be followed by Betfair and Paddy Power, which are surely only still in the process of player-base building until it finalises part two of its marketing ploy.

For affiliates, retention may seem like a dirty word but there is perhaps something to be said for taking heed from these firms and perhaps even copying their tactics. Each affiliate knows his or her best-performing brands and, one would hope, their customer behaviour – so is now not the time to perhaps help the retention teams of operators?

App downloads, for example, may not have any direct CPA for an affiliate but they can have a massive long-term benefit if players become loyal to a strong performing brand with a reliable affiliate programme. Emails and instructions on how to install apps, how to use them and why they can be beneficial for punters on the go are few and far between in the affiliate space, but they could be really useful. Admittedly they may have the indirect effect of helping a competitor, by reactivating a player tagged to their affiliate code, but it’s a small price to pay for a much larger pay off.

Maybe if all affiliates swallowed their pride, stopped trying to beat each other in the battle for enhanced odds AdWords and took their lead from bookmakers and their focus on reactivation and retention then we could all have an even more successful 2017 than we are already having.

Neil Roarty is the editor of Bettingpro.com, a multi-award winning sports betting affiliate. He has almost a decade of experience in the gaming industry and in addition to writing for Bettingpro.com has also featured in several other industry publications.