Customer retention

[DanHorvat]

Players are often switching bookmakers (or poker rooms, or casinos, or whatever) so it's important to keep them close to your brand so you earn money when they make a switch.

My question is not how to gain their attention and trust, but how to communicate with them for best results. Where should the content be published?

Website (cool graphics, time-consuming to do)
Forum (ugly, requires registration, useless if not rich in topics and threads)
Facebook (ugly, simple, viral, not accessible to people without FB account)
Twitter (same as above)
E-mail newsletter (usually ugly, tends to end in junk, tends to be regarded as spam, not very engaging)

Which one should be the basis? Should all be used or just one? Are there any other options?

[Nicole Sims]

The methods that you mentioned are good. But a Skype account can be handy or Facebook chat. Chatting is much more personal and helps build trust for the relationship to flourish.

[Christiaan]

I agree with Nicole that chatting is much more personal and the best option. That is for a Affiliate Program. But I don't think it is a good communication for a portal website.

As a portal you can best use Facebook and/or Twitter. Most people have facebook and/or twitter.
If you communicate news thru your own website people have to visit your website. But if you post a part of your news on facebook or twitter and link it to the full article on your website, people will see it if they check there facebook/twitter. Checking facebook or twitter is something a lot of people do one or more times a day. So they will see the "teaser" and then go and visit your website.

So best option I think is a combination of you own website with social networks.

[lowrisk]

I use Twitter a lot, mainly for my bingo site, We get a lot of traffic from it. However, I am not sure how many accounts we get as a result, also I have just launched a comp to build up my mailing list too, and I am enthusiastic that this will yield big results as well!

[baerrus]

The communications do not have to be ugly. But that requires effort. Usually a dedicated PR person possibly with a help of graphic designer. There are many agencies who claim to be doing exactly that. I am not sure how affordable they are.