Arthur Buyukyan, Head of B2B at Trueplay: “We have created a marketing tool for online casinos that boosts user engagement”

Arthur Buyukyan, the Head of B2B at Trueplay, granted an exclusive interview to Focus Gaming News to talk about a solution for user retention in post-Covid-19 times.

Exclusive interview.- Online gaming is one of the few verticals that benefited from the world’s pandemic. While many sectors suffered, online gambling largely thrived. Now, after the world slowly gets back to normal, the gaming industry is seeing challenges, especially amid a scenario of high inflation. This makes user retention more important than ever.

Today we will talk about this with Arthur Buyukyan, the Head of B2B at Trueplay. Arthur, is it true that user retention has become the biggest pain for online casinos in post-COVID times?

Absolutely. It wasn’t difficult to attract new players back in 2020, but it is pretty challenging to make those users stay in 2022 and beyond. 

Does it mean that ‘pandemic players’ are more likely to leave compared to ‘pre-pandemic’?

Not necessarily. It’s just that the number of players who joined since 2020 was insanely high. If the majority of those players had stayed, casino owners would have seen sky-rocketed profits. But because players’ turnover is soaring, those insane profits do not happen. 

What is the solution to this problem? How can casinos make players stay longer? 

That is an interesting question. Let’s be honest, when a hypothetical player decides to discover a new entertainment platform, they rarely think “Alright, let’s choose a place where I’ll spend my money for the next five years”. Users’ decisions are instant, without much thought, and are generally based on emotional state, how they feel, etc. 

That’s why casinos focus on a pleasant design, perfect usability, etc?

Yes, but sometimes even visuals are not helping with retention. Boredom may become a reason why users leave. Does it mean that casinos should invent more engaging functionality that players would love? On one hand, yes, but on another hand, expanding the usual player flow too much may not help either, as players feel frustrated when looking at unknown buttons and some would rather leave immediately, without trying to understand what’s happening here. 

“A balance is key. Making players engaged but not too much – that is the golden middle casinos are looking for.”

Arthur Buyukyan, Trueplay’s Head of B2B.

What about traditional retention tools like email marketing and come-back bonuses? 

We all know that these instruments do not really bring many results and, in the best-case scenario, they’ll increase the retention by 1-2 per cent. Players rarely come back to the place they decided to abandon by themselves. If nothing was engaging in the beginning, another e-mail won’t make players change their minds, even if it’s written in a great way and promises a lot of rewards. 

What will work then?

In my opinion, a perfect instrument for user retention would be something inside the platform that will engage the players (but not too much) and make them come back without spam-like emails. 

At Trueplay, we have created a marketing tool for online casinos that boosts user engagement, directly affecting retention rate. 

The solution is an iFrame widget that is installed in the existing casinos in a matter of hours. Inside the widget, there are two loyalty programs based on a unique crypto token that casino owners create for themselves specifically for these loyalty programs. 

What kind of loyalty programs?

Currently, there are two. Play To Earn – players automatically receive a reward when making bets, regardless of the game’s outcome. In this way, players always have some tokens on their balance. The other one is called Hold To Earn – players can hold their crypto tokens with a chance to receive more. Holding times can be different and adjustable. With the three different length time slots, you can make players come back to the game more often. 

The whole widget is very simple and despite having lots of information on it, it has two buttons for players – how many tokens to stake and start staking. Play To Earn happens automatically and players even don’t need to do anything extra. Just every time they check the token tab they see more and more tokens on their balances if they bet actively. 

How exactly does it affect retention?

With the Trueplay widget, users are in the ‘loop’ of token rewards. Firstly, they receive free tokens for doing bets as usual. After that, they can stake them for some time and they need to come back to get the reward. It won’t automatically be received or re-staked, users have to log in to the game, withdraw and stake again. 

In this way, casino owners make users come back to the game more often without annoyingly asking them to do so. Players want to come back to earn more, and this is exactly what we all are fighting for. 

What can we expect from Trueplay in the future?

We are working on simplification of the Trueplay widget so that casinos can implement the solution super quickly and without changing the current business model. Generally, we are very proud of our iFrame widget, as it aims to target the most important KPI for online casinos.