The 6th Annual Online Bingo Summit & Awards has just finished at the Victoria Park Plaza in London, the center of the iGaming Universe. Seeing as a good number of delegates were just coming off a crazy week in Dublin for the iGaming SUPER Show, the general vibe of the summit was pretty relaxed and tame but then again, the summit is known for its quality sessions rather than its crazy parties.
The event spanned over the course of two days with a variety of presentations, workshops and round tables and included the annual Bingo Awards on the eve of day one.
The absolute strength of this year’s Bingo Summit was the all new “customer feedback workshop” during which operators and affiliates received valuable and candid feedback from eight actual bingo players. Foviance facilitated the workshops and while the general message was that “no one site fits all”, there are some things the players felt quite strongly about. Some key points of discussion included:
+Busy homepages are not attractive- keep it simple and straight forward
+Bonuses, bonuses and more bonuses!!
+The opportunity to test out an online bingo site for free is attractive to offline bingo players and non-bingo players
+A variety of games to choose from is very attractive
+Carefully crafted emails are a great way to entice current players to play more, put the important message in the subject line and do not spam!
+Live chat is key- if a player has a bad experience in the chat room, they may never come back.
+Players absolutely use google to find out where to play, “Best Bingo Site” is a popular phrase (no surprise there)
+TV ads, player testimonials and branded games are enticing, celebrity endorsements are not as important or even irrelevant.
The interactive retention workshop led by Mike Braga of Motive Marketing Services (formerly of Jackpot Joy) dove into the topic of, “why do players stop playing?” Throughout the workshop, Braga stressed that analyzing data is so incredibly important when it comes to preventing player attrition and that operators can absolutely put plans into place that will significantly reduce player leakage. For example, JackPot Joy uses the propensity model for VIPs, other operators use the frequency model and react when players change their behavioral patterns and others focus on quality chat hosts and cross promotion to other channels.
An interesting side benefit from Braga’s retention workshop was gained by the affiliates in attendance- now they have a better understanding of all the player retention work that bingo operators put in behind the scenes, work that allows for healthy revenue share payouts and higher CPAs.
Lior Shiff, founder of Product Madness, led a presentation on bingo facebook applications and explained why such applications have a lot of potential for the bingo industry. Shiff walked through four of the biggest reasons why a facebook application is a good idea for bingo operators:
+increased brand awareness
+revenues generated from buying “virtual chips” and other “unfair advantages”
+building of database so operators can market their real money site by email
+building of database for players located in markets that are currently closed but will open up in the future, such as the United States.
Looking back on the past few days, some delegates were disappointed with the turnout at this year’s Bingo Summit, although most seemed pleased with event and Bullet Business did a great job with the customer feedback workshops, the definite highlight of the summit.
The online bingo industry continues to push forward as a lucrative and competitive market and as technology improves and markets open, the industry will only continue to grow. We look forward to seeing you again at the Online Bingo Summit 2012, the must attend event for the online bingo industry.
