Players are the lifeblood of any casino. They ultimately define success or failure across almost every meaningful dimension or KPI available to the organization, and understanding their behavior and patterns is critical to any casino marketing activity. The first step towards understanding player behavior begins with understanding the typical casino customer lifecycle, which can be broken into three distinct phases: acquisition, maximization and retention. Read on to learn how to spot player behavior in each phase of the player lifecycle and how your marketing strategy fits into each phase.
Acquiring Casino Customers
In the acquisition phase the customer is coming to know your property and brand. They are not loyal to your brand yet, but their interest is piqued. This phase loosely spans from the first time they become aware of your brand until they’ve established themselves as regulars (generally after 3-5 trips), with the critical point being the moment when they sign up for the player’s/loyalty club. This is where brand awareness and marketing strategies that drive business into casinos come into play.
Maximizing Casino Customers
In the maximization phase the newly-minted player continues to engage with your brand, often along new and different dimensions, and explores all the value your business has to offer. The player may engage with additional operational verticals by spending a night in the hotel or buying gas at the gas station. The player may expand into new areas or zones of the casino, trying different types of games. Players in this phase are figuring out what they like and coming back for more of it. This is where the casino industry is currently putting the most marketing resources by offering promos to carded players.
Retaining Casino Customers
Finally after some period of time comes the retention phase, marked by the risk of churn. The player displays a behavioral pattern that ultimately leads to the decision to disengage with your brand. An example of this behavioral pattern is the player used to visit every Saturday but missed the last few Saturdays. Sometimes the player can’t be retained, like when a player moves across the country. Sometimes you can spot the pattern and interrupt it, like when the player has found a promotion they like from a competitor that you can replicate or even beat.
You may also like:
Why Your Casino Marketing Strategy Should Prioritize Customer Retention
3 Easy Steps to Retain More Players and Get More Visits to Your Casino
Building Your Marketing Strategy
Understanding player lifecycles is the starting point for every strategic casino marketing activity. Planning marketing campaigns based on the lifecycle phase of target players will guide you to make strategic choices in marketing spend, messaging, channel, duration, and more. That’s why the Gaming Analytics Players module is built around this framework, allowing you to easily structure your marketing strategy on a solid foundation of data-verified patterns of player behavior. With our casino gaming analytics product, Gaming Analytics makes it easy to gain a deep understanding of your players based on casino data. If you would like to learn more about the customer lifecycle for casino patrons, give us a call at (702) 355-5377 or email customersuccess@gaminganalytics.ai.
