Ideas For Affiliate Program Promotions

[Jeremy]

I know many of us enjoy when affiliate programs host competitions or unique promotions for us, the affiliates.

I wanted to start a thread to see what types of promotions work best to incentivise affiliates to promote a new brand, or push a program harder. For example, do you guys like cash promo's, unique prize's like laptops, ipods, etc, increased CPA's or MGR. I understand the most important thing from programs is trust, communications, and on time payments. However for the programs that to provide us with this. What type of promos peak your interest?

Please share your thoughts here. It should be a great thread to give some insight to our affiliate managers who are always looking for the best promotions and ideas to attract us to their programs. Thanks

[Graham]

I think promotions with cool prizes are better than cash. Ie. trips, invitations to exclusive events, etc. Also, one of the problems with most affiliate promotions is they are always favoured to their biggest affiliates. They should make it realistically possible for everyone to win. Ie. The affiliates that bring the player that generates the most rake win the promotion.

[GFPC]

Graham i agree 100 percent....

A+ idea mate!!!

I second Grahams idea!

Steve

[Stephen]

I think promotions with cool prizes are better than cash. Ie. trips, invitations to exclusive events, etc. Also, one of the problems with most affiliate promotions is they are always favoured to their biggest affiliates. They should make it realistically possible for everyone to win. Ie. The affiliates that bring the player that generates the most rake win the promotion.

The problem I have in offering these promotions is exactly that - it is really hard to offer a promotion that seriously gives everyone a chance to win. Even the "player with the most rake" doesn't work, as it is skewed towards the rakeback affliates that have smaller numbers and players that generally rake more.

That's the reason I offered the player promotion instead which can be used to assist in your conversions.

Stephen

[gooderpoker]

I would like a good instant deposit bonus of 15-25% up to $200 maybe with no bonus deductions, and CPA

OR

I would like to see places that have multiple brands to give a free cash bonus upon deposit to one of their casino or sportbook Instantly.

OR

Free gift upon deposit like a poker book or video that incorporates a few basic lessons and you can unlock more advanced lesson videos or books by playing.

Just a few that came to top of my head I think i could push hard.

[stillshadow]

Ryan, well Stephen's brands actually offer just about what you're looking for in your first request. Sportsbook Poker has above average conversions (even if they've declined from their previously excellent levels in the past 6 months) and 10% instantly on top of the play-through bonus. They have excellent CPAs as well. Bodog, of course, still offers the 10% instant deposit bonus as well.

In regards to Jeremy's post, I agree with Graham and Stephen that the problem with most of these promotions is the favoritism towards the very largest affiliates who could use the prizes the least.

I also view affiliate prizes as a nice bonus if they come but rarely something that I'll specifically try to win. If, say, PDC is offering a $1,000 affiliate bonus to the top earners it's certainly a generous prize but I wouldn't take away traffic from my top programs that already earn more simply for the small reward.

Tiered promotions can sort of work well, like when Doyle's Room has one they usually offer prizes to the top 10 affiliates in the month. This actually gives me a chance to win something, if not the top prize.

As others have said, I think that a tangible gift works a bit better than extra cash. While money is always great, in an industry where it is tossed around so much that $200 iPod is something that will always make you think of the program that sent it to you fondly.

[Jeremy]

I'm going to get old school here, but the leader board promos that pokerroom used to do back in the day were pretty sweet. It usually payed out or awarded the top 10 affiliates for the month and had a system for affiliates to follow the standings each day.

I do agree that mid level or especially new affiliates get discouraged when new affiliates have absolutely no chance to win. When there is a single winner competition based on new players, where the affiliate doesn't have to make a single change in their strategy, that sucks. Hell, the same people will win month after month.

I think maybe a competition just for new, or inactive affiliates might be the best way to incentivise new business on the operator side. Plus it's a win/win all around. Trust me, an affiliate that sends 100+ players this month could care less about a competition for a few thousand next month at an individual room. They have already proverbially won every month by being a super affiliate in this industry.

[stillshadow]

I'm going to get old school here, but the leader board promos that pokerroom used to do back in the day were pretty sweet.

LOL, wasn't Party Riches always near the top on those PokerRoom competitions? Some jerk would always seem to swoop in to beat you at the last minute, thuogh. Who could forget ParadiseIpods, either?

[Planet Mark]

I recall spitting coffee on my keyboard a while back when logging on to Chipleader and seeing an announcement that PokerListings had won some prize for sending the most players during a promo... talk about a great way to totally demotivate your affiliates!

From a personal perspective the only promos which really get me to focus on a room measurably affect my bottom line... if an AM says 'send me X players and I'll add a cash bonus of Y' (couple of tiers ideally) then I can compare sending them to his room vs sending them elsewhere. Might work nicely for new rooms and small / mid affiliates - after all, those articles / adverts are not going in the bin the minute the promo is over...

Affiliate freerolls... meh... don't mind a fun game now and again but these are rarely the enjoyable / fun things they are billed to be...

Mark

[thefarang]

Affiliate promotions and player promotions share many of the same challenges when trying to design something that will fit everyone.

Personally, I quit trying to come up with an all-pleasing promotion and instead came up with promotions that offered different incentives to different classes.

Here's the problem . . . obviously, many people have articulated the problems that arise when everything is heavily biased towards the largest affiliates. Many have to do nothing to get the bonus. Well, the same goes for players too. There are players who don't have to play a single extra hand and they know they'll be at the top of the leaderboard or any other similar promotion.

The other side of that is you don't want to penalize your best performers (affiliates or players) just because they happen to be giving you a ton of business already. Doing a promotion that rewards a percentage increase in business is then biased towards smaller affiliates who can easily make big percentage increases while the larger affiliates may already be near their maximum.

So what I said about giving up on the all-pleasing promotion is that you just have to recognize that you have different groups and their performance should be measured differently. Don't have your big affiliates competing in the same promotion as your small affiliates. Come up with distinct promotions for each group.

This way you can come up with promotions that move the specific KPI's that you want to move for that group. For smaller affiliates you might want to incentivize them to send a little more traffic each month so you can design promotions around sustained player growth. For larger affiliates you want want to create promotions that focus on the quality of the players being sent (maybe a year-long leaderboard measuring attrition rates).

I'm not saying it's impossible to come up with all-pleasing solutions. It's just much more difficult and can quickly become a complicated mess. If I can't understand a player or affiliate promotion in one passover reading it, it's too complicated.

I think one of the best ones we did at Party (for players) was where we set an individual goal for each and every player. If they hit that goal in Month 1 they got a prize. The goal was then reset (higher) and they had to hit the Month 2 goal to receive a bigger prize. If they hit that goal then it was reset (higher) and they had to hit the Month 3 goal where the prizes were pretty juicy.

I had a lot of players contact me personally to tell me although they thought I was devious in the way I was forcing them to play harder and harder every month that the rewards were well worth the effort and the loved it.

Unfortunately, most poker rooms - and especially the affiliate side - don't have the resources or perhaps even the expertise to do something like individual goals for everyone. But a good first step would be to at least segment the affiliates into logical groupings and then offer promotions based on grouping levels.