Ways To Increase Casino Revenue

Casino profits surpassed their levels before the release of Thorp's book, and revenues continued to increase over time. Casinos owe their initial revenue spikes to Ed Thorp and his first book, because just knowing the casino could be beaten was enough to bring in the masses. And with the declining revenues seen across the spectrum of gaming in. State lawmakers welcome the lotteries and casinos for this very reason: The tax revenue gives them the flexibility to fund other programs or even cut other taxes. “If you’re a state legislator.

• How To Increase Casino Revenue
• Ways To Increase Casino Revenues

Drumroll drawings. Tricked-out trucks. Cash tornadoes. Pulling off a successful casino promotion is harder than it may seem. Here are 15 tips, tricks, and ideas to get you there, without breaking the bank. (Unless, of course, Break the Bank is your promotion of choice.)

1. Start with planning.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. It’s definitely more fun to think about what kind of game show briefcase you’ll use in that Deal-eo or No Deal-eo promo, or how the balloons will drop on the new car, but if your casino promotion idea is going to be successful, you need to set the fun aside and first ask yourself this: what, exactly, am I trying to do? Acquire new guests? Reward loyal guests? Increase guest spending? Increase visits? Once you settle on your goals, things get much easier.

A good marketing calendar has balance, a mixture of mass and targeted promotions. Sometimes the goal is to see a big bump in revenue; other times the goal is to boost a certain demographic or daypart. Targeted promotions can also elbow their way in front of the competition. (See #4.)

One other thing: Do not start with how much you should — or have to — spend. Expense should be planned in line with potential revenue, and you’re not going to know that until you define what you’re trying to achieve.

2. Determine how you’ll measure success.

You’ll need to know what “success” means in order to achieve it. This may sound like a “duh,” but it can get a bit tricky. Be sure to isolate your base business, as sometimes traffic isn’t driven by promotions. And in addition to traditional ROI calculations, you may want to check in on other less-obvious factors like customer satisfaction or conversion. Be sure to define how you’ll measure those in advance.

3. Know thy audience.

In order to know the right day, the right way to spread the word, the right briefcase for that game show promotion, get to know your audience as well as you possibly can. Because no matter how enticing you may think your promotion is, if your audience hasn’t heard, isn’t interested, or can’t come, you’re in for a flop.

If, for example, drive time is short and your identified target audience isn’t employed full-time, you may be able to bump that 50% slot floor occupancy on a Tuesday. Or, your audience demographics may tell you the smartest day to make the biggest bang for your buck is Friday, even though the slot floor occupancy is already at 60%.

4. Keep your guests close and your competition closer.

The more you know about your competition, the better you can react or — better yet — act proactively. Keep an eye on competitive websites, Facebook pages, newsletters, and mailers. Identify timing and details on promotional events big and small, as well as competitive strengths, weaknesses, and potential impact on your business. And then act.

Say, for example, your competitor has their big monthly giveaway on a Saturday. Knowing your audience has limited discretionary income, you encourage they spend that money on the Friday preceding the giveaway with an enticing offer.

Technology makes competitive tactics crazy easy. Let’s say one of your high-spend customers is entering your competitor’s parking lot, headed to their Big Bucks promotion. You can send a real-time text that says, “Get over to our place in the next half hour and get a GUARANTEED 50 big bucks in FREE play.” Presto, guest-o. (Small Red Circle plug — we can help you get here. See #15.)

5. Know when enough is enough.

A promotional calendar that’s filled to the brim with exciting giveaways, gifts, and games will produce more profits than a calendar that has sporadic promotions, right?

Wrong.

A constant merry-go-round of promotions, and those ponies lose their luster. Guests are no longer excited. And, if you’re always in promo mode, how can you calculate the bump a particular promotion creates? When you spend money you can no longer measure, you stop being able to adjust, react, and improve your bottom line. Plus, if you’re not careful, those happy, excited guests become angry, entitled guests who wonder where their free meal is already.

When it comes to promotions, choose quality over quantity. Go back to the drawing board and remind yourself of your objectives. Evaluate if and when promotions fill those objectives, and get ahead of the game. Or the tournament. Or the drawing. You get the point.

6. Brand it.

If your promo name looks and sounds just like your competitor’s promo name, you just might have spent your money giving them business. Brand colors, typeface, name, tone, personality — make sure that promotion speaks to guests in your voice. And the more unmistakably yours, the better.

7. Limit time.

We are predictable, we humans, and we assign greater value to limited-time offers. From an old-fashioned circus barker’s “hurry, hurry, hurry” to today’s social media flash sales, time — or lack thereof — creates buzz. And buzz creates action.

Choosing the right start and end dates can have a big impact. Don’t run the promotion long enough, and your guests won’t have enough time to enter. Run it too long, and it loses its punch. Two to four weeks is usually the sweet spot, but it’s important to experiment with your particular casino audience.

8. Create a sense of mystery.

We know gamers index high for risk-taking behaviors. So, while many of us love a good mystery, your audience really loves a good mystery. Unlike a typical promotion, use mystery, and you use a lever to create excitement separate from the actual prize. Through an intriguing, mysterious challenge or adventure, your guests are more engaged and more motivated, which leads to higher participation.

Another benefit to using mystery in your promotions? Cost containment. While a guest might not come in if he or she knows, statistically, she’s likely to win a small bit of free play, that same guest may decide to visit if she’s guaranteed a “mystery” prize (that turns out to be that same free play).

9. Use theater.

These days, guests, hosts, staff, they’re all busy. What’s more, they’re bombarded with lots and lots and lots of messages. So if you want to capture attention, generate enthusiasm, and otherwise engage, go a little wild and bring out the theatrics. A stage, an announcer, music, dancing, balloons, game show drama, whatever it takes. Out of the ordinary — and that can include downright wacky — is the name of the memorability game. In addition to kick-butt promotion results, memorable experiences have the added benefits of building a positive brand, getting great word of mouth, and, ultimately, creating a bigger audience for your next promotion.

10. So who’s promoting this promotion?

The stakes are higher than you may think. If your crew buys in, understands, and is genuinely enthusiastic about a promotion, you just got yourself a lot of free PR. If, on the other hand, staff perceives taking part in the promotion as a chore — or they’re in the dark about the specifics — no amount of promotional ad spend will make up for what happens when your guests walk in the door.

Moral: Promote your promotion. Sell your staff. In fact, treat your staff as your customer. If you do a good job, they, in turn, will pass on that enthusiasm, help create buzz, and be walking examples of your brand.

11. Spread the word wisely.

If you’re encouraging participation in a mass promotion, it makes sense, of course, to buy mass media. If it’s a targeted promotion, though, think outside the box for ways to get your message directly to your target.

Or another way to think outside the box: What about turning a big mass promo into an acquisition strategy by taking a winning car — or another prize so cool your target audience just has to check it out — and showing it off outside your casino? State Fair? Local mall? Where are the customers you want to acquire?

12. Check goals against data.

After the promo, it’s time to dig into the data. Did the promotion create incremental revenue? Did you see a lift year over year? What type of players participated? Were expenses in line with revenue, or were they too high? Did the promotion attract new member signup on the day of the promotion? How was slot occupancy? Quickly get to the bottom of what worked and what didn’t, so you can process the whole picture while it’s fresh. If your data analysts are pulling manual reports, and getting your hands on data just isn’t going to happen quickly, it might be time to get some help.

13. Debrief already.

The numbers are one thing, but there’s always more to the story. Within the week, while everything is still fresh, make sure to gather info from the people closest to the promotion. Ask what worked and what didn’t. How were the lines? The weather? The logistics? How was the wait for the valet? Get the customer experience story that rounds out the numbers.

14. Present findings in a way that engages your audience.

Think about it. You just thoughtfully intrigued a target audience enough that you created a desired response. You now need to turn around and approach your managers, board, or tribal leadership the same way.

We’re guessing you have a small window of time in a room full of busy, sometimes impatient people. So get to what they care about right away: high level findings, recommendations, and an action plan. Keep it short and on-point. Create summary slides. And be prepared for those questions you know are coming.

15. Get help if you need it.

If your data analyst is pulling manual reports, and you’re not getting information for weeks, you can’t possibly gather great insight and react to that promotion in a timely or effective way. And if you have to analyze mail, email, and mobile communications separately, you’re probably sinking fast. How can you check goals against data across platforms, factor in guest experience, and recalibrate when you’re already well on your way with another promotion?

You can say goodbye to the slow going and heavy lifting — without a big cha-ching out of your bottom line — with database marketing software that does the work for you. We happen to know just the one. It’s a database marketing software suite designed for casino marketers, by casino marketers, and it’s called RECON. This little genius projects your profit margin before your promotion even runs. RECON mines, schedules, and replicates across mail, email, and mobile. It’s easy so you save lots of time. And it’s affordable because you’ll be able to create and streamline more and more cost-effective programs. If you’d like more info about RECON, our proprietary database marketing software, click here or call Angel Suarez at 612-875-7131.

(Times photo - Leigh T. Jimmie)

President Ben Shelly answers questions from a Navajo Times reporter on Wednesday, one week into his administration.

'We need to downsize the system and make it easier to work with,' said Ben Shelly during a 45-minute interview in his office in Window Rock.

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During the interview, he touched on more than a dozen subjects, ranging from his feelings about gaming to his desire to get a better working relationship with the Navajo Nation Council than his predecessor had.

He said a major component of his time and energy during his first months in office will be looking at ways to increase the tribe's revenue in light of shortfalls that occurred during the past three years because of a national downturn in the economy.

To do this, he said, the government needs to start taking advantage of the tribe's natural resources - coal and oil - and enter into new agreements that will bring in more royalties and tax revenue.

Tribal mineral officials have been saying for decades that there is an untapped reservoir of energy worth hundreds of millions - if not billions of dollars - but since 1980, the tribe has only approved a couple of new leases.

How To Increase Casino Revenue

'We never had to worry about this before because we had money coming in,' said Shelly.

But with revenues on the decrease, the time has come, he said, to seriously consider entering new agreements to exploit this source of revenue.

But outside energy companies may want to wait a while before sending proposals because Shelly doesn't have a good opinion of the tribe turning over these resources to outside companies.

Ways To Increase Casino Revenues

'They are like pirates,' he said. 'They come in, make money off of us and then disappear.'

What he would like to do is enter into agreements with Navajo-owned companies that have knowledge of Navajo traditions and would take that into consideration in developing the resources.

He wants to do the same with tribal enterprises.

'I want to privatize a lot of our businesses,' he said. 'I don't think the government should be running a business.'

He wants to sell these business to Navajo entrepreneurs but he agreed that there have been problems in the past when the tribe sold businesses to Navajos only to see them sold to non-Navajo interests a few years later.

He said he would also like to the see the Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority, which currently handles construction jobs only on the reservation, start expanding its operation to bid on projects off the reservation, thereby creating more jobs.

Alcohol and gaming

As for casinos, he said he is not expecting to see much revenue from the Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise because all of their profits are being used to develop more casinos.

'I look at the casino operation as a 50-50 proposition,' he said.

The first 50 percent benefits the tribe by creating jobs and a future revenue stream. The other 50 percent, however, is negative and this relates to the amount of money that is generated by the casino from gambling by tribal members.

Although the enterprise expects to see a lot of non-Navajos gamble at casinos that are being developed near Leupp and Flagstaff, almost all of the customers at the Fire Rock Navajo Casino in Church Rock, N.M., and Flowing Waters in Hogback, N.M., have been tribal members.

'I'm very unhappy about this,' he said.

So unhappy that he has asked Navajos when he saw them gambling why they did it. Most said they did it as a way to 'reinvest their money back to the Navajo government,' pointing out that if they didn't gamble at a Navajo casino, they would do it somewhere else.

He admitted that he's also reinvested some of his own money this way, saying that when he visited the Flowing Water Casino recently, he lost $50.

Gaming is here to stay, he added, and because of this, he is looking at the possibility of setting up an alcohol and gaming department within the tribe since some of the casinos will serve liquor and should be monitored by the tribe.

He said he was aware of talk by some members of the Council about the possibility of legalizing liquor on the reservation so that the tribe would have a new revenue steam.

He pointed out that when he was on the Council, he was part of a task force that studied the situation and the studies pointed out possible aspects of having liquor sold on the reservation.

But this is an issue, he said, that should be decided by the Navajo people and not the government and if the people want to see it happen, they could get the matter brought up to a vote of the Navajo people.

Another aspect of the casino operation he is not happy about is the decision by the enterprise to provide free soft drinks.

'This only causes more obesity and leads to more diabetes,' he said. 'I wish they would change it to Navajo tea.'

Sovereignty

Speaking further on the subject of more revenue for the tribe, Shelly said he is looking at reviving the proposal for the tribe to issue its own license plates.

Several other tribes are doing it and the Navajo Nation has been looking at the idea off and on for the past 20 years. But Shelly said he would like to move beyond that and further tribal sovereignty by having the tribe issue its own driver's licenses.

This is important, he said, because it is time that the tribe take more control over things that are important to the Navajo people.

This is why he plans to work toward the day when the tribe gets funding direct from the federal government for programs like Medicare and Medicaid, instead of having to go through the state governments.

Relations with the Council

When the subject came to the relationship with the Navajo Nation Council, Shelly was adamant that his administration would not see the bickering and confrontations that occurred during the previous administration.

'I have already gone to the Council and told them that we will work together,' he said, adding that he told the Council that he would only veto legislation that violated tribal law.

Members of the Council, he said, told him that they did not like the idea of the line-item veto and he promised that he would use the power only when he felt he needed to.

If there is a possible conflict between the Council and the president's office, he said he plans to walk across the street and sit down with the Council and 'work out a compromise.'

One way he wants to resolve the possible conflicts, he said, is to revise the current signature authority procedure to merge the operations in both branches so that any resolutions would go before all the appropriate parties before it gets to the Council floor. If there are any objections, they can be resolved before it gets to the Council.

Shelly said one of the things he wants to do as quickly as possible is work with the Council to get the discretionary fund program re-established. The Navajo Nation Supreme Court earlier this month ordered that the program be discontinued until the Council could put in place procedures to make sure that the money is spent properly.

'We have a lot of grandmothers coming in asking for money,' Shelly said, adding that there is a need for the fund to help pay for things like funerals.

Vice president's role

Traditionally the vice president has been assigned to work on matters affecting the Eastern Agency but the new vice president, Rex Lee Jim, is from Arizona and doesn't have a lot of knowledge about eastern issues.

So Shelly said he and Jim decided that his two main areas of focus, at least in the early portion of the administration, will be on education and health.

These efforts will include setting up standards for educating students on the reservation and promoting a healthier lifestyle among the people.

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