Social media marketing has been around for long enough now (e.g. Twitter 2006)  to be an integral and strategic necessity for all online marketers.

In fact, a website isn’t really a website until its social graph is in place and its social sharing widgets are dominantly displayed at the top and bottom of every page.

For years digital marketers have utilized one or often several of the many business softwares on the market.  It helped them deploy, manage, and monitor a social media campaign easier. Equipped with tools and fancy dashboards, digital marketers (including me not long ago) watched the volume of social traffic without really knowing the exact impact of a Tweet or Social share on our businesses.

And yet, most digital marketers are missing or just overlooking one tiny insignificant detail of the equation: One can never predict how far its Tweet or social share will go.

But when dealing with the gambling industry this may not necessarily be a good thing.  The heavy regulation to which the gaming industry must comply has a direct financial and fiscal cost. It will inevitably lead you to waste valuable traffic and a failed campaign.

Indeed, a Tweeted promotion targeting the UK via a funny image may also be viewed in the jurisdictions of the US, South Africa or even Australia.

The further the better you may say….

But the downside of your viral success is the simple fact that some brands will simply not accept visitors or bets from certain jurisdictions. While the Tweet has been entertaining for the visitor, that entertaining moment will fade away with the annoying message popping up on his screen saying – “Sorry, we don’t accept players from your country”.

It’s frustrating to say the least, both for the user and for you the marketer, despite the total viral reach of your campaign. So no matter how talented and creative a media buyer you are, you’re forced to suck it up as wasted traffic.

 

Knowing how much general and particularly social traffic is simply wasted isn’t that hard to find out. You just have to turn on your Google Analytics and open your acquisition reports. Breaking it down by country will open a world of untapped opportunities.

The opportunity is a simple equation: If click is from US and “Brand X” doesn’t accept US bets, then redirect traffic to “Brand Y” or “Brand B” or “Brand C”. Operators can’t do this – but as independent marketers or affiliates, you are not operators subject to their strict regulations – so why not?

It’s true that the player might think: “Strange, I clicked on a “Brand X” banner and reached “Brand Y”…. Yet, isn’t the user experience far more rich when they don’t experience rejection and get what they want??

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The Solution- Data Driven Marketing

Data driven marketing doesn’t necessarily have to be a scary concept involving geeks, big data and huge data centers. In fact, the most basic data driven marketing tactics are at your finger tips and can be implemented quickly and efficiently, via free or inexpensive cloud based applications (SaaS). Just take a step back, understand the granularities of your traffic, and funnel it to the most suitable landing pages to optimize user engagement, conversions and revenues.

While it sounds like a huge mission, you should know that beyond Google Analytics, other business apps allow you to collect, store and analyze data. Some even allow you to program certain messages to be triggered if and when visitors perform a certain action or are identified by a certain attribute.

 

 

 

 

Imagine the case where one of your UK players is traveling to the US. Since you do not accept US traffic, it is very likely that your website will deny the player’s access and probably that the wallet won’t allow deposits.  Since you’re not violating any laws, you should be able to facilitate access to this player and not lose revenues.

First of all, cookies are still very useful to identify and personalize your web application based on user behavior. So if a UK user is identified as trying to connect from the same computer / browser / session but from the US, you can and should automatically trigger your system to allow its connection, bets and deposits.

While cookies are good, you can also identify from which locations this particular user is opening the promotion email you just sent. Meanwhile, why not triggering a personalized message saying: “Hope you’re enjoying your trip to NY and don’t forget you can play on our mobile app on the go!”

Conclusion

As you realize, there are many different ways, data can be used to improve your bottom line. It’s just a matter of collecting the right data and integrating it with the applications that will allow you to better serve your customers.

Without going that far, and while the first steps are the hardest to take, it would be “criminal” not to implement advanced or even basic, rule-based traffic management processes.

After all, you owe it to yourself, your company, your employees, and your family – to prevent wasted clicks, allow maximum conversions and grow revenues. Nuff said.

This article was originally published in iGaming Affiliate Magazine