EveryMatrix highlights the importance of bonuses

Online gaming expert EveryMatrix has addressed bonuses as a key tool to increase player retention and detailed how to give the right one to the right player.

Alongside finding successful ways to attract players continuously, another question that keeps casino and sportsbook operators alike on their toes is how to increase retention rates. According to EveryMatrix, an operator’s retention toolkit should include a variety of options: an ongoing stream of fresh casino content, various notifications to keep players updated with new games or promotions, and, last but not least, crafting a great bonus program to bring player’s loyalty several notches higher.

The developer details how important gamification is to achieve an operator’s goal. It’s not a new thing, but it is ever-evolving, driven by innovation and technological advances. To the thrill of winning bets, we can add the excitement of a challenge or tournament, or the satisfaction of unlocking a reward or a level. All these have the potential to build player loyalty.

Gamification can start from your players’ onboarding on your website and with meaningful interactions. Give them a mission from day one, being that a tournament to win or an achievement to unlock. The idea is to bring the challenge to them, as well as the possibility of a double win.

The onboarding process itself can be a gamified journey where the player receives gratification, whether a badge or a website currency, only by ticking the first few boxes: complete registration, subscribe to newsletters, accept notifications, make the first deposit, play a game, and so on. A practice very commonly found in mobile game apps: gamify and reward desired actions.

The starting point for crafting a personalized player experience is segmentation, and to understand its importance, we should consider how our routines shape who we are in a certain setting. In this case, your players’ persona is the sum of their actions.

To shape the future journeys of your players, it is essential that you first track their past actions, then group them according to the criteria that make sense for you. That’s segmentation in a nutshell.

Then comes the fun part. Here is where you can tailor and test the most engaging customer journeys and create reward paths for your established player segments, employing gamification tools:

– Create a set of milestones for players to reach, with rewards and unlocks

– Introduce a brand currency (such as frequent player points) and allow players to spend them on perks, like free spins or a tournament ticket.

– Create choice-driven paths. For instance, once players perform challenge A, they get to choose between challenge B and C.

Considering what happens behind the scenes, a central bonus system that supports dependencies between bonus programs can be a very useful tool for such a strategy. Creating pathways and crossroads with mutually exclusive options can make for very rich and fully automated player journeys.

Bonuses

Bonuses play a key role in fulfilling the player retention objective, and EveryMatrix presents operators with a mantra to achieve it: attract, retain, reactivate.

One pivotal bonus focus you should adopt is centred on your customer’s life cycle. Synchronizing your rewards with the different life-cycle stages at which your players find themselves is also essential for your online casino or sports business, and it should never be overlooked or set aside.

There are many criteria used to categorize casino or sports bonus types, and each may serve a certain purpose, but one learning is standing above all: different player segments call for different rewards.

It is crucial to divide customers into segments according to their behaviour and target each with a specific mix of rewards. Devising such a strategy is not necessarily a one-time action, but rather a recurring effort – you should constantly analyse the performance of your mix-and-match of casino or sportsbook bonuses, and act as needed. You can adjust your approach, fine-tune it, and permanently test new ways to optimize its results.

To get started, you may want to adopt a basic categorization and you can work around three basic actions that are synchronized to the player’s life cycle:

Attract: Build awareness to reach your potential customers, and boost player acquisition with a competitive bonus strategy.

Retain: Use multi-level rewards and gamification to engage your newly acquired players to stay with your online casino.

Reactivate: Get back those players that are bound to lapse and show them how good you are, using time-tested and well-tailored re-engagement tools.

There is a wide range of different ways to reward your players, each with its own appeal and strengths. Rewards can be granted based on eligibility filters in combination with triggers on specific actions, such as betting a certain amount on certain games or sports, or simply logging in, or making a deposit. In a nutshell, if a player with certain characteristics or from a certain segment does some specific actions, grant to that player a matching reward.

In order to remove the technological challenges operators are facing, EveryMatrix created its bonus system BonusEngine, which is now available as a cross-product integration. It is set  to be the single point for managing player acquisition, retention, and engagement, across all your brands and verticals, while it provides:

Bonus stacking for an unlimited number of active bonuses

Seamless cross-wallet betting experience for uninterrupted gameplay

Bonusing across brands and products

Superb gamification with Wagering Levels and Tournaments

Attractive cross-bonus Cash-Back levels

In addition, our bonusing product includes a series of features that reduce your operational load (e.g. Bonus Recurrence), decrease the risks for your online casino (e.g. Bet Conditioning, Player Eligibility), and create a seamless and localized experience for your players (e.g Multi-currency, Multi-language).