If you want to encourage your occasional players to return to your casino, or keep VIP players interested and coming back for more, you’ll need to deliver a relevant, personalized customer experience that delights and meets their expectations and needs.
That means waving goodbye to boring bulk emails and embracing a more segmented approach that speaks to each player’s interests and place in the customer journey.
In this blog post, you’ll discover 3 types of emails to include in your casino email marketing plan that will engage your players and help you stand out in their inboxes.
1) Booking abandonment
Booking abandonment emails are a staple of any good email program. Why? Because they generate results. For example, online travel agency redtag.ca has seen a 10% increase in booking revenue QoQ, and Awaze has seen a 14% conversion rate across their cottages.com and Hoseasons brands from booking abandonment emails.
Booking abandonment is when a customer adds an item to their cart but leaves your site before completing their booking. These shoppers are sent a personalized reminder email – including details of what they carted – encouraging them to visit the website again to complete their purchase.
A couple of best practices for your booking abandonment emails include sending more than one email and adding product recommendations:
Multi-step booking abandonment emails
When it comes to abandoned booking emails, one is never enough. In our experience, multi-step cart abandonment emails are the best way to bring shoppers back to the checkout. By sending two or three abandoned cart messages at strategically chosen moments, you’ll give shoppers more options to reconsider making that purchase. Your audience is unique, so you’ll need to test and optimize to build the perfect frequency strategy for you. Start by sending your second email after 24 hours and your third after a week, for example.
Product recommendations
Perhaps your player didn’t complete their booking because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. Combat cart abandonment by helping them make their purchase decision easier and recommending a range of alternative resorts or games, for example, similar to the one they’ve browsed or carted, allowing them to find the one that best suits their needs.
You can also take the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell by inspiring players with items that complement the one they have browsed or carted within your email marketing. That extra spark of inspiration might be what it takes for them to complete their purchase, helping you to increase their cart value in the process.
2) Welcome home
Effective casino email marketing doesn’t end after a customer visits your resort. The ideal time to foster loyalty with your existing players and encourage them to return is immediately after they’ve had a stay with you, while your brand is still fresh in their minds.
It’s then that you can encourage them to book their next visit as soon as possible with a ‘welcome home’ email.
You can recommend similar venues based on what they’ve browsed and booked in the past, and show them availability for the times of year they typically visit. Plus, go for upsell opportunities by highlighting shows and entertainment features that are on at that time.
You can also make use of social proof tactic popularity messaging to show how many other people are browsing or booking, which can help foster urgency and FOMO.
3) Preferred games
Chances are your players have their favorite casino games. They might head straight for the poker table or maybe they prefer the slot machines. You can use this data to drive customer segments and personalize your email marketing based on preferred games.
By segmenting your audience and tailoring your marketing to each group, you’re more likely to resonate with the wants and needs of those players and boost conversions by showing them games they’re interested in. This means increased click-through rates and higher conversions. In fact, a survey from Mailchimp found that open rates for segmented email campaigns are 14% higher than non-segmented campaigns. What’s more, click rates are 101% higher for segmented email campaigns compared to non-segmented campaigns.
Final thoughts
With busy lives and over-crowded inboxes, your players don’t want you to waste their time. Through segmentation and personalization, you can create a casino email marketing experience that’s relevant to each individual, which will help keep them engaged and excited to come back to your casino time and time again.
Here’s a recap of the emails we’ve discussed:
- Set up a multi-stage triggered cart abandonment email program to bring players back to your site after they’ve abandoned their cart.
- Your players should be at their most engaged with your casino after their visit, so capitalize on that excitement with a welcome home email that encourages them to book their next stay.
- Segment your emails based on each player’s preferred game to make sure you capture their interest and increase click-through rate.
For more email inspiration, download our checklist types of triggered emails you should be using.
