Better than the Bonus?

[Surasanji]

I, personally, don't like match bonuses and such.

Between wagering requirements, max-cashouts (on some), stickiness and sometimes ridiculous terms and conditions. I feel they cause more issues than they solve.

I understand the reason behind them, you have to get people into the casino.. And you can't use the B&M tricks of free drinks, comped rooms or other such things to keep your players happy and feeling genuinely appreciated.

But what's better? What would work better? I'm seeing a lot of reward programs all over the internet and I want to know what the members here think would be best.

I want to hear it all. The ideal, the just a little better, and even things you'd think would be the wrong direction to go.

I feel that the players are the lifeblood of the casino, and the current state of 'Bonus Culture' can easily be turned into something much better for everyone. Happy players. Happy Casinos. More fun for all.

[Slotster!]

I've had all sorts of cool stuff sent to me over the years.

Tickets, hampers, sports stuff blah blah blah..

Intercasino sent me an iPod once.

The good online outfits know their customers and know what they like.

Between wagering requirements, max-cashouts (on some), stickiness and sometimes ridiculous terms and conditions. I feel they cause more issues than they solve.

This is where 32RED win hands down. Lost count of the amount of times I've got an email or a message or something just saying "Hey, there's some completely free money in your account - enjoy!".

That's it, no nonsense - no messing about. Just how it should be.

To answer your question therefore, lets do away with the 'loyalty' type programmes; Tier 1, Tier 2, Bronze, Silver, Gold blah blah blah to infinity... That's what comp points are for.

Know your customer base and reward the good ones appropriately (and regularly )

[SlotMonster]

I have few ideas and would like to share it with you, but a bit later

[Surasanji]

This is where 32RED win hands down. Lost count of the amount of times I've got an email or a message or something just saying "Hey, there's some completely free money in your account - enjoy!".

That's it, no nonsense - no messing about. Just how it should be.

To answer your question therefore, lets do away with the 'loyalty' type programmes; Tier 1, Tier 2, Bronze, Silver, Gold blah blah blah to infinity... That's what comp points are for.

Know your customer base and reward the good ones appropriately (and regularly )

Who doesn't love cold hard cash?!
I agree. Whatever 'loyalty reward' you receive should not be subject to any further terms.

Its supposed to be a gift, right?!

I have few ideas and would like to share it with you, but a bit later

Awesome. I look forward to it. I'm not really sure why, but the more I read and learn about this industry, the more I'm interested in learning more about it!

Keep 'em coming, guys!

[PaaskeDKnowUK]

I had a very nice surprise at Club Gold Casino. Yesterday I received email from the Manager, because I was not so happy with their 100% insurance promotion. They had been running this all January.
Also I knew it was given as a bonus.

I found out wagering was 55x. Which I felt was quite high.

But instead the manager contacted me. And said I have now manually deposited the 100% insurance bonus as cash. And no wagering requirements all free for you to use however you want.

£155 was sitting in my account. Very pleased with service here. That is top customer service from them.
They deserve to get lots of more kudos in here.

Furthermore the promotion terms clearly stated it was only for deposits of £25 and above. But all my deposits in January was credited even the £15 and £20 I had made earlier on in month.

That I decided to play with them and lost it all in end, is a different story My own mistake. They were free for me to withdraw.
But I think you want to show some loyalty towards casino when they are very generous and do something like this.

[vinylweatherman]

Most problems are caused by aggressive SUBs, and result in casinos having to apply complicated terms, and then go as far as they can to hide the "smallprint" so that it does not put off new players from playing with the advertised offer. After this, loyalty is often poorly rewarded. The impression is that operators have accepted that players are unlikely to stay loyal with all the other competing SUBs on offer, so don't allocate much of their marketing budget to retention. The result is a self fulfilling prophesy, with the lack of loyalty being seen as proof that players like to move on, when in fact the moving on is a result of the feeling among players that loyalty is not something that operators are particularly interested in.

Any new incentive would need to be designed such that complicated terms are not needed. There are many ways to achieve this, but operators need to allocate a big enough budget to the retentions team, otherwise the offerings are derisory, and do not compete well with the SUB model.

The rewards points scheme is something, but the rewards are tiny compared with the deposit bonuses being offered, and often progress to higher levels is not rewarded as much as the advertising would suggest. I have wagered my way to the top of many such tiered schemes, and in most cases have found there to have been little or no point in terms of any extras that I had expected based on the advertising.

The tournament systems found in many softwares offer another way to share a fixed amount among players, and this could be done by having different tournaments for different loyalty tiers, with them being true freeroll events like 32Red offer. The prizes could be cash, and the pool could be based on how much players from that tier have wagered at the casino between runnings of the tournament.

For high rollers, wager challenge events can be run, but the prizes have been very poor recently for such events, and I hardly ever bother.

For all players, an insurance based bonus could be used, which is a percentage back on losses over a given period. It should come with NO restrictions on how it can be played, just a basic WR. The percentage would be such that "abusive play" on this insurance free chip does NOT present an overall +EV opportunity for clever players.

The loyalty points scheme could also be better, currently 0.1% of wagers, and in many cases even less.

Any new scheme should be put through the "advantage player test" before being released, and this may involve getting someone from the player side onto their marketing team. Their job will be to "crack" the promo as best they can, and if they succeed, the promo does not go live, but instead gets redesigned and retested. A second major cause of bonus problems is players being better at math than the marketing team, and then taking the promotion for all it's worth. Failure to properly evaluate the risk sometimes leads to embarrassment and bad publicity for operators (Betfair ), and can have long lasting negative consequences.

[Seventh777]

I have few ideas and would like to share it with you, but a bit later

Behave, you are married now .

[baldidiot]

I think the post-wager bonuses such as the ones at Virgin, Sky and many other wagerworks sites are the way of the future. No weird game exclusions, no max cashouts etc.. - you just play with your own cash and when you've wagered enough (on permitted games) you get the bonus as cash.

[PaaskeDKnowUK]

Don't even dare to mention Sky !!! i expect you to remove that in your post

[baldidiot]

Don't even dare to mention Sky !!! i expect you to remove that in your post

What's wrong with sky?