How Casinos Can Lower Postage Costs and Boost Engagement with Experiture

There is a crisis in direct mail marketing today. Postage rates continue to surge – and so the cost using direct mail as the primary channel for acquisition and retention is rising too. What’s worse, is that it shows no sign of letting up. For this reason that casino marketers – who generally rely heavily on direct mail– now feel ever more pressure to deliver better, more measurable results, while at the same time, realizing efficiencies in their postage spend.

Of course, many casino marketers are afraid to send less direct mail. Without physical mail pieces, these marketers believe that their properties will no longer be top-of-mind with their most loyal players.

But, there is a way. Casino marketers can both save on postage – and at the same time, not fear that they are losing out on opportunities to engage their players.

Five Ways to Lower Postage Costs and Boost Engagement

Here are five steps that casino marketers can take to lower their direct mail costs – without sacrificing marketing results. Using these steps, casino marketers can still reach their most loyal active players – and lower direct mail costs while actually boosting overall engagement:

1) Accumulate Your Players’ Digital Footprint

The first step in reducing reliance on direct mail and lowering postage costs is to capture your players’ digital footprint by obtaining their email addresses, mobile telephone number or social media contacts. Your casino can obtain that player data by:

• Asking players for contact information such as email and mobile when they set up their loyalty program account, or using a “Contact Settings” area on their personalized player portal
• Providing players with incentives for giving up their email addresses and mobile phone numbers.
• Sending direct mail offers that provide online redemptions for visitors that provide mobile SMS and email addresses.

For example, using Experiture, you can send a direct mail offer that points players to a personalized landing page that captures their email address and mobile number. With this information, you can now engage players with precisely targeted emails and SMS messaging –and drive visits and offer redemptions without having to drop direct mail.

2) Get players accustomed to multichannel messaging by sending timely, relevant offers and triggered messaging

Once you have your players’ digital footprints, you have to prime them to receive multichannel messaging by first engaging them with highly relevant content that conditions them to pay attention your digital messaging.

For example, many casino marketers send triggered multistep, multichannel messaging to new players in their loyalty programs. Sending such messaging via email and SMS gets these new players accustomed to receiving emails — and results in lower unsubscribe rates, higher open rates, and increased overall engagement with your messaging.

3) Use PURLs (Personalized URLs) and Other Cross-media Technologies with Direct Mail

Another way to lower postage costs is to link your direct mail program by adding cross-media capabilities such as online response channels.

For example, using Experiture, you can generate personalized URLs (PURLs) for each player in your direct mail list – as well as inbound SMS keywords, QR codes, and more – in order to drive visits from that direct mail piece, to an online responses page. You can use these personalized online response pages to collect email addresses and mobile phone opt-ins – as well as mirror the offers shown, provide printable coupons, and more.

Using this technique, the casino marketer takes a player from an offline mail piece, to the online world – and by capturing contact points for future email and mobile messaging, enables future cost-savings.

4) Employ Techniques to Track Player Engagement Across Channels

Where are your players interacting with their offers? Are they getting them from your direct mail? From social media? Or are they calling a casino host directly?

Using a centralized marketing management system like Experiture, it is possible to capture individual player engagement across channels such as direct mail, email, mobile and social media – and store these interactions within each customer’s individual record. Experiture does this by building a centralized player engagement profile over time for each of your players, which tracks the channels to which they are responding.

By knowing which players respond on different channels, it is possible to optimize your audiences for your various outreach programs – and restrict your players messaging to the channels that generate response.

5) Use Automated Marketing Techniques for Player Engagement to Avoid Redundant Messaging

Another way to enhance direct marketing effectiveness and realize postage savings is to use Experiture to set up marketing programs that automatically suppress direct mail recipients when another channel drives a response.
For example, using Experiture, you can create an extract of your players and distribute a promotional offer or other message via email, SMS, and even via mobile app. Experiture will distribute this messaging, collect analytics, and store each individual engagement against a player’s individual record. In this way, Experiture can enhance response to your direct mailed offer by echoing the same offer across multiple channels.

Also, because Experiture knows who has responded to this offer – and because it can also integrate with your player loyalty system to store redemption events – it can then send an updated list to your mail house or print plant that has removed players who have responded to your email or SMS or your mobile app messaging. This could represent significant postal savings over time.

Conclusion: Use Experiture to Enhance the Effectiveness of your Direct Marketing

With postage costs rising over the last years, many casino marketers clearly feel pressure to deliver better results from direct mail. For many casinos and other direct mailers, however, there is an answer: they can easily lower postage costs while simultaneously boosting direct marketing measurability and response using Experiture.

Experiture’s player engagement marketing solutions tie together channels such as email, direct mail, landing pages, and more within a single program – and can help maximize the opportunity for engagement with players – while reducing your reliance on direct mail as the primary channel for engagement.

Don’t allow rising direct mail costs impact the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Request of demo of Experiture today to see how our player engagement solutions can give you multichannel capabilities that allow you to lower your postage costs while enhancing the effectiveness of your direct marketing programs.

Learn More about Experiture

Want to learn more about the Experiture Marketing Platform and our solutions for direct mailers? Request a demo of Experiture today.