INSIGHT
you . Whilst affiliates love the idea of big bonus giveaways , the reality for them is lower revenue .
To counter those issues , as I mentioned before , we ’ re steadily driving down the amount of money we give away in bonuses and improving the site and the conversion pathways for customers .
It turns out making the site genuinely profitable is really about putting lots of little things together in the right way , which leads me nicely into brand .
Building the brand To me , brand is deeper than the colour of the site . It is a set of associations consumers make between you and their feelings about you . Brands generally fall somewhere within the grid shown in Figure 1 .
Figure 1 : Brand attributes
Competence High
Low
Brand B Capable , Disliked
Brand C Incompetent , Disliked
Can you think of a brand which delivers utility , but has no warmth ? In iGaming I ’ m sure you can think of a few brands . Outside of iGaming , think of Ryanair versus EasyJet . They ’ re both very competent but it ’ s arguable that Ryanair is disliked more than EasyJet , with the latter viewed with more warmth amongst fliers . EasyJet wins .
With Oshi , we have really worked on being capable and loved . The catch with any iGaming brand relationship is that customers are in a heightened state of anxiety where they are intent on winning from you . It ’ s very easy for an iGaming brand to end up being very ‘ cold ’ with customers and this is something I ’ m really sensitive about .
One of the most important things we ’ ve done around brand is to create a reputation backdrop to Oshi . To me , this is a complete ‘ no-brainer ’. Customers are not stupid .
Winner !
Warmth
They know how to use search engines to check brands out .
Trust Edelman , the huge PR agency , produce an annual Trust Barometer report . Last year it revealed that search engines are now more trusted than mainstream media as a source of news and general information . We all use search engines to check brands out . That ’ s why for individuals , the European Commission has issued a regulation protecting their “ right to be forgotten ” where they can effectively erase their public history on Google .
Reputation management Via my agency 90 Digital , we ’ ve done lots of reputation management . For Oshi , it
Brand A
Capable , Loved
Brand D Loved , Incapable
High
began with me being the public face of the business and being accessible . We then did some delicately managed PR to position the brand and then built up a body of ( genuinely ) positive reviews via forums and trustworthy affiliates . We then did some SEO activity to help certain pages sustainably rank . With affiliates , they rank anyway so building a reputation footprint with them was relatively easy .
Now when you check out Oshi online using phrases like ‘ oshi casino reviews ’, we check out well . In turn , it means people have more confidence in us and we convert better . It also has a collateral benefit with affiliates because they see we ’ re an upstanding brand .
Brand fail Until recently , I never really appreciated the power of conditioning and expectation .
As mentioned before , it ’ s my belief that all casinos are fundamentally the same . You have a homepage with an offer , some game provider graphics and a grid of games below with some basic search functionality . Our homepage looked very different . It was too busy , had too many features and took customers to long to work out what was going on .
In usability they talk about the eightsecond rule . If a customer hasn ’ t basically worked out what ’ s going on within eight seconds you ’ ve lost them . Our mistake was to assume people would ‘ wade ’ through site in order to get to our game search pages . It meant the homepage looked confusing and we therefore looked different to all the other casinos out there . It meant poorer conversion rates . Essentially , we lost track of the eight-second rule .
The brand ‘ fix ’ Today we just want to be like everybody else , but better . We want to fulfil everyone ’ s positive expectations of what a casino should be , but be better on every single touch point we can .
Look and feel We now use game provider graphics , because it ’ s what people expect . We ’ ve made it far easier to access our game search pages where people can find new games easily using our personalisation and search technology .
Tone and language We also really worked on making all of the language on our website straightforward , friendly and competent . It ’ s pretty easy to do . We look at potential situations , i . e . mis-typing an email into a form , and ask ourselves how we would like to be addressed in that situation , and adapt accordingly .
Customer relationship management Generally this means emails out to customers . Broadly , there are triggered emails and promotional emails . Triggered emails happen when you create an account , cash out some money , lose your password and so on . I ’ ve noticed how so many brands ignore this opportunity to communicate positively with their customers . Simply , you ’ re having a conversation with somebody and they want your help , so be nice . It seems to work for us .
With promotional emails , we do our best to keep these down to about one a
28 iGB Affiliate Issue 58 AUG / SEPT 2016