Are holiday promotions an important part of your marketing strategy?

[MichaelCorfman]

There are holidays throughout the year, but December is one of the biggest months with both Christmas and Hanukkah. We all know that holidays are used as excuses for all sorts of promotions in the commercial world, and online gaming is no exception.

How about for you? Do you put a lot of effort, or no effort at all, into promotions for online gaming based on holidays? I'm talking all types of holidays here, not just national and religious holidays. How about Halloween (well, that might be considered a religious holiday), Valentine's Day, or maybe April Fool's Day?

And please feel free to make a post about whether or not you've found them to be effective.

Michael

[matted]

I will put up a banner or other promotion from a casino - but other than that, never seem to have my ducks in a row to dive in much deeper than that. No matter what I do, I never seem to get ahead of the calendar and always chasing to keep up... This was especially true when my focus was sports (much more time-oriented)

[Chips]

I make every attempt to use holiday promos when they come up. I try to beat the competition to the punch. The real questions I guess would be... Does it increase conversions? I really have not seen where it does, so maybe my views of these promos will change. It may be like the car dealers and furniture stores having "the biggest deal ever" every weekend.

Your thoughts?

[Topboss]

I generally don't feature holiday promotions unless a specific banner grabs my attention. I would like to be able to do this , but the problem is the time involved in putting them up - only to take them all down a few weeks later.
I inevitably land up forgetting a few and suddenly discover a Christmas banner in the middle of April . My excuse could always be that I am getting in early !!

[pgaming]

Would like to but it is hard to determine what banner is culturally appropriate globally. If I were to use them perhaps a Happy Holidays banner would work?

greek39

[TheGooner]

We do some work to intergrate event specific promotions into the site.

But the promotion must be relevant, simple to understand, easy to promote, and not likely to cause a whole lot of support issues for players.

An examle of promotions we love :
- sportsbook cashback promotions for specific events, gamnes or competitions.

An example of promotions we hate :
- extremely complicated promos that try to cross sell to encourage players to gamble larger amounts han normal.

A good tie-in can be very effective - as long as the message is simple to understand.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

One of the problems I have is that the programs send me promotions that expire in a matter of days, which prohibits me from placing them on the site...

Is that intentional? Does it assure that they are the source of the "valuable" intel?

[LadyHoldem]

I don't know about a particular strategy, but I've been having fun dabbling with them this year I have to admit, I'm Greek's opposition here though, if it doesn't say CHRISTmas, I'm likely to take a verbal stab at it if I put it up at all

[TheGooner]

One of the problems I have is that the programs send me promotions that expire in a matter of days, which prohibits me from placing them on the site...

Yes - things like Christmas, New Year, Easter and Thanksgiving could easily stand to be promoted earlier ... and in fact are often better timed to be promoted weeks in advance.

EG. in December when the carols first start people might be interested in Christmas themed games - but by December 20th, 21st, 22nd (etc) I reckon everyone is getting frazzled and just wishing the %^&*% holiday season was over !! Certainly not thinking about a Christmas casino game.


But for sports - timely is relevant. Being able to flip a banner to focus on this weeks "game of the round" is useful and most effective.

A banner on last weeks big game is stupid, and a banner on next weeks game is not important (yet) - so being able to switch them on and off easily on your site is something that affilaites have to manage to take advantage.