Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | November 2010 42 FutureLogic ‘Congratulations, you’ve got two nights free stay at our hotel’, giving the player an added incentive to stay and perhaps spend some of their winnings. PromoNet enables operators to be more creative with their rewards programmes, offering exciting prizes and incentives outside the gaming experience. Can PromoNet be linked to non- gaming operations in the resort? PromoNet can be tied to the retail shopping side of the operation, for example offering players a discount voucher for their favourite luxury retail outlet. Equally, if a casino visitor walks in to a high-end retail outlet and spends above a certain limit, this customer may be of significant value to the casino operation if they could be attracted to visit the casino floor. When they pay for their products— whether by credit card or cash—a PromoNet terminal can print a ticket that says ‘Congratulations, you have been awarded 1,000 points or player credits’. If the person then redeems those credits by playing in the casino, at that stage they may still be an uncarded player. But when they use that ticket in the casino, PromoNet recognises the transaction and orders the system to print out another ticket saying if you sign up for a players’ card in the next say 15 to 30 minutes, we will give you another 1,000 points or playing credits. At that point you get the customer’s information, and from there existing player marketing strategies take over. What are the benefits of marketing to players via PromoNet as opposed to say marketing to them via a second screen on a slot machine? The benefits of receiving marketing messages direct to a player’s hand rather than via a screen are significant. If you’re sitting in front of a machine playing the game, you are watching the symbols.Youmight, for example, have two scatters, and you are waiting for the third one. It’s quite possible that you are so engrossed in the game on the main screen that you’re unlikely to be looking at the second promotional screen. The advantage of PromoNet is that it fits organically with the player’s existing slot machine experience. At cash out, a light flashes, it prints a cash out ticket, and then it prints out a PromoNet coupon direct to the customer’s hands; it’s not just showing them something on screen, it’s providing the means to take that message away and use it, read it again, keep it as a reminder. It’s an award carefully targeted to a specified play behaviour. Can you give us some examples of triggers for promotions? Promotional triggers include length of play, the money line wager, i.e., how much the player risked to win a certain amount, amount spent or combinations of these and other triggers. PromoNet also has the capability to select when promotional coupons can be redeemed, creating incentives for players to come back to the casino on specific dates or times, increasing footfall during quieter periods. Does PromoNet interact with the maths or accounting of the game? No, PromoNet is a standalone technology for promotional couponing. It connects via an interface card to the [slot] machine and to a second port on the ticket printer; it does not, therefore, affect any accounting on the [slot] machine. Information on play behaviour is obtained from game play metrics that trigger the promotional coupon to print via real time information transfer. When the player realises they have been awarded s o m e t h i n g extra to any g a m e winnings, it creates a positive experience for them. Once players have the expectation of that extra value, they may spend more hours and more money on the machine in order to try to trigger further awards or offers. Extending average length of play or increasing the average bet by even a small amount provides significant gains for the operator. Tourists from mainland China can only visit Macau once a month at the moment. Does that mean PromoNet is better employed for targeting more frequent visitors such as Hong Kong residents and Macau residents who can easily take advantage of promotions? Casinos still need to reach players whether they come once a week, once a month or once every six months. PromoNet is a great tool for reaching out to all these unknown, uncarded and anonymous players. Using PromoNet, operators can create their own unique campaign applications to target these players using the PromoNet tool kit. The casino can tailor the value, type and frequency of promotions and the validity period and redemption date of each promotion to the precise needs of the customer, regardless of whether they are coming once a month from China or once a week from Hong Kong. Infrequent visitors to Macau from Singapore and Malaysia can also be targeted using promotions providing a medium for specific marketing messages. These messages can offer significantly more visual information than can be put, for example, on a text message. Particularly at peak times such as Chinese New Year, Macau operators calculate how many people come into their property and the percentage that sign up for a player’s card. Compared to other jurisdictions, it’s still quite low. PromoNet is the perfect marketing tool to increase this percentage and at the same time enhance the player experience. You can visit FutureLogic at Booth 2431b during G2E to see PromoNet in action on many well known manufacturers’ games. FutureLogic’s Alfred Hwee PromoNet links to FutureLogic’s GEN2 printers