The mobile betting gold rush has arrived with the massive growth in smartphone and tablet adoption. However this has left many marketers and affiliates in the i-gaming ecosystem encountering many challenges not only with the mobile channel, technical platform and user experience, but also the Holy Grail – the quest for conversions.
Marketing directly to consumers via their smartphones and tablet computers affords operators and affiliates the ability to develop unique, personalised opportunities to send people relevant messages with perfect timing to drive the all-important purchase behaviour. However, it also runs the risk of annoying and alienating them if marketing messages are badly crafted, poorly timed or have no relevance to the end betting customer.
Even though we are an online industry, operators and affiliates still turn to traditional offline methods such as direct mail - which can outperform many other marketing channels - to acquire, retain and reactivate players as part of their marketing plan.
Online gaming marketers can therefore elect to communicate with potential customers through push notifications via mobile apps, emails, SMS - or use augmented reality to offer interactive and engaging content linked to physical direct mail with QR codes. As a result we are now seeing an emerging mix of traditional and digital marketing methods being used to attract consumers.
So why are QR codes within physical direct mail so important in the quest for mobile customer conversions? The smartphone is, without doubt, the go-to device for our out-of-home mobile society. This means the QR code offers i-gaming companies an engaging quick response mechanism to embellish their digital marketing campaigns.
Potential customers on the move can simply point their smartphone camera at the QR code for a “scan, click, and browse” because the codes can be embedded with a link to a particular product, game, scratchcard or promotional mobile webpage. Results show that QR codes in physical direct mail pieces lead to a quicker response from the consumer, instant engagement and incremental sales for the operator
Gaming customers are no different to any other consumers; they are bombarded with marketing messages every day and a QR code incorporated into a physical direct mail piece, when constructed carefully, offers a means to appeal to the curiosity of the customer and enables them to retain more information on the particular marketing offer presented.
Furthermore utilising physical direct mail campaigns for acquisition marketing - combined with mobile communication via QR codes - allows marketers to analyse the content and functionality being used by customers throughout the mobile experience, therefore offering much-needed insight in order to test what works best as a conversion process.
