The rise of user-generated acquisition offers

The UEFA Champions League returned to our screens this month and with that comes a new wave of bookmaker marketing campaigns.

This year there has been a notably different tack from the big firms, with the traditional money back specials being eschewed for some more innovative marketing strategies, aimed at both bringing in new customers and retaining or reactivating old ones.

Last season virtually every firm was offering money back on selected markets, usually First Goalscorer and Correct Scores, if a particular player scored or if a match ended in a specific score-line. We still see this offer from bet365 as they continue to run their Bore Draw Money Back special, but it’s in the background rather than being a direct marketing push for the Champions League.

Instead, the world’s biggest bookmaker brought back their Risk Free £50 in-play bet offer for Bayern Munich versus Arsenal and it was hugely popular. Bet365 tends not to release exact figures for how much this cost but the estimate is that around £1m comes out of the marketing budget every time the offer runs. However, the fact that it continues to be wheeled out so regularly (expect to see it for one of the next round of fixtures) indicates how successful a sign-up and retention tool it is for the firm.

This offer has been copied by some other firms but never to the same extent. Most of the other big boys prefer to go down different routes when trying to attract customers for a tournament whose final alone pulled in £50m worth of bets last season.

Time for change
Instead it is enhanced odds which are becoming the focus, but even there we have seen a sea change this season. Last year the market was swamped with price boosts, with every bookmaker offering an enhancement of some kind on a key live match. If this was last season then savvy punters could have probably got enhanced odds on either side winning in the Allianz Arena, every one of the Bayern Munich forwards scoring against Arsenal, both teams finding the net and multiple other markets. As it turned out most of these would have landed due to Arsenal’s ineptitude but discussing the Gunners predictably poor performances isn’t the point here.

What we saw, off the pitch, for that fixture was a few firms offering massive prices on Bayern Munich winning and a couple offering similarly big odds on the Real Madrid match on the same night (Coral was 28/1 on Cristiano Ronaldo scoring). These sign-up boosts for small stakes will attract new customers but it’s clear that the majority of firms are starting to move away from this method and are looking for different techniques to lure in punters.

The most notable this season has been Sky Bet’s #RequestABet, which runs on every live televised match and is a prominent advertising push on UEFA Champions League nights. This feature sees Sky Bet interact directly with customers via social media and asks them to request odds on particular eventualities occurring during the upcoming match. The traders quickly price up the requests and add them to the site. On a Champions League night there will be literally hundreds of new prices added, ranging from odds-on shots to triple figures.

Sky Bet actually had their worst night ever on #RequestABet for Bayern Munich versus Arsenal after a 400/1 long shot on Robert Lewandowski scoring a header and Arsenal missing a penalty landed. The payout on that bet alone was a whopping £350,000. The size of that payout may have stung the Sky Bet traders but it is indicative of how much is being wagered on these supposedly minor markets and shows just how successful the #RequestABet innovation has been.

It’s no surprise to see other firms copying this technique and you now have #YourOdds at William Hill, #WhatOddsPaddy at Paddy Power and there will be more to come in the coming weeks. After the launch of William Hill’s #WhatOdds, the firm’s PR representative Rupert Adams spoke to Bettingpro.com and said: “Matches have been selected each day. Oſten just one match per day, so we’re only dipping our toe in the water right now, but we’ve been very encouraged by the response.”

Here to stay
This suggests that the new, user generated markets, are here to stay and will become a fixed feature for Champions League matches for years to come and the logical conclusion is that they will replace enhanced odds. What’s the point in a firm putting time and money into marketing a particular price boost when the public (and affiliates) can do their job for them? Already we’re seeing a number of social media affiliates requesting prices from the bookmakers and marketing them as their own enhanced odds. Followers love this as the bet straddles both enhancement and tip, which makes it a powerful sales tool.

Sky Bet already features some prominent affiliates like Footballtips.com’s #RequestABets on the site and often these bets have to be pulled due to high demand. When speaking to Bettingpro.com about #YourOdds Adams added: “We don’t make any attempt to balance books. Some bets will win, and others will lose.”

However, once the feature grows in popularity we will most certainly see the Hills trading team change their tune, or at least limit stakes on particular bets. This shouldn’t affect the popularity of the markets though and it definitely won’t stop affiliates being able to push more and more of these offers. Enhanced odds have always been subject to limits and every affiliate is aware that they need to be able to change their marketing pushes quickly on the evening of a big Champions League fixture.

The other switch that has come from the phasing out of the enhanced odds offers this season is the move towards customer retention. Sky Bet was again an innovator here with its Free Bet Club and that has now been copied by the likes of William Hill, Coral and Winner to name but a few.

This strategy has come about due to the huge numbers of sign-ups which firms have seen via their enhanced odds (or in Sky Bet’s case their No Deposit Free Bet Offer) from the previous few years with the focus now on reactivating and retaining players. It’s a sensible strategy as it offers added value to the player with some perfectly achievable targets in order to win a £5 or £10 free bet each week.

Back to basics
Don’t be surprised to see this wheeled out by more and more firms throughout 2017 with Betfair and Paddy Power (two firms who are continuing down the enhancement path at the moment) likely to want to convert their expanded database into more regular punters. Retention offers generally pose something of a problem for affiliates as they are not headline grabbers. You can attempt to dress up a free £5 bet per week up as £260 in free bets per year but customers will see through that quickly enough. There’s no obvious one-line sales pitch and, instead, it needs a different approach.

At Bettingpro.com we believe that we’ll see a return to the old school marketing of features and benefits of brands and in-depth explanation of key differentiating variables. It may take more effort, industry knowledge and expertise, and can’t necessarily be achieved with a well positioned banner, Twitter ad or Google ad, but the pay-off will be greater.

This back to basics approach may not work for everyone but it will also ensure that bonus abusers are marginalised. The bookmakers will be getting real punters in and we are seeing from their marketing strategies that they are looking to reward these customers. That’s good news for the punters themselves and the industry in general as it spells a successful future for legitimate marketers.

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.