On the way blog - Where you learn new things in two minutes!

Before I start this post. I would like to thank TED talks for helping me enrich my world of marketing and more. One of the best talks I ever heard was made by  Simon Sinek  and was about how great leaders inspire action. In this post I would like to emphasis the change in my approach towards contacting customers and in which way to do it. Simon presented the following diagram: We need to talk to our customers from the inside to the outside. Conveying why we do things, how we do it and at last the what we do. As Simon said, people follow the why you do it and not the what you do.  Then he spoke about the innovators and the late adapters using the following diagram: Where he brakes down your customers into groups, where the innovators pass your story along with the early adopters.  The 80/20 rule also can be adjusted according to this diagram: 1. The Innovators - 2.5% - your top VIPs 2. Early Adopters - 13.5% - 2nd level VIPs 3. Early Majority - 4

When it comes to writing content you need to explain to your writers what you want from them. During these years I've developed a template that helped me convey my message to my writers in the best way. You can download the template here . Let's go over the sections in this template. 1. Intro section The general information about the promotion. Who you are targeting, when do you need it and so on 2. Promotion flow In this section I like to show my writers the big picture. It's important in my opinion to show them what is going on in all aspects of the promotion. When are things going out, why, where and more. The more specific you are the better content you will receive from them. 3. Promotion explanation This is where you specify the what. What is going on in the promotion. How does it work, the structure of it. Who can claim it and what happens when he claims it.  4. Terms and conditions Specify the terms and condition for the promotion. It&

When writing an email to promote a discount, update terms and conditions, or announce an important message you should follow some key points. I have two: 1. Tech side (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) 2. The HTML/Text part or content part . The tech side: In the world today when the war on spam is becoming more and more sophisticated  its important to understand some configuration you need to do in order to authenticate your sender and make sure your clients receive your emails.  1. SPF Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a simple email-validation system designed to detect email spoofing by providing a mechanism to allow receiving mail exchangers to check that incoming mail from a domain comes from a host authorized by that domain's administrators. You can read more on Wikipedia here .  2. DKIM Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication method designed to detect email spoofing . It allows the receiver to check that an email claimed to have come from a sp

Every flow, campaign you do should have KPIs , but most of all it should have a purpose. When we work on the signup flow we need to understand that the purpose is 100% clients that start the signup flow will complete it. This means your signup flow should be KISS (keep it stupid/super simple). In the signup flow we usually need the basic information of a customer, like: 1. Full name 2. Email 3. Phone number 4. Birthday 5. Country 6. City 7. Zip Code 8. Gender An example of a signup flow: The above diagram describes a nice signup flow: 1. On the first step you fill in your email and password (could be separated into two steps) 2. Step 2 you will need to fill in your full details, in the meantime you will receive a confirmation email. 3. Step 3 you will need to verify your phone number The email confirmation step is not part of the signup process. This email should have only one purpose, confirming the customer's email. Don't make it long or explain abo

In this post I will try to layout the most important terms you need to know before starting an online gaming business. GGR, NGR, KPI, ARPU, CPA, CR and CLV. Of course the most important thing is understanding your goal. What do you want from your clients? What should they do? During my years in many online companies our goal was to buy DEPOSITS (i.e get 10% for xxx deposit, and so on). These days the goal is for players to play on their money as much as they can. In order to understand your goal in nowadays online casinos. You will need to understand a few key terms: Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) is the amount wagered minus the winnings returned to players, a true measure of the economic value of gambling. GGR is the figure used to determine what a casino or other gaming operation earns before expenses like salaries and taxes are paid. GGR is the equivalent of “sales” not “profit” . Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) is defined as gross bets le

When it comes to conveying  your story to your clients you need to remember you are not the only one. When I started working in an online E-Gaming company our approach was not to engage clients more than twice a week. In the coming months we saw that the more we send the more clients come to our sites. This was 15 years ago and is true till today. The more you communicate with new content the more clients will visit your site.  In the world today your average customer receives five emails per hour. The competition is absolutely ridiculous. So if you want your customers to hear and notice you, you need to engage them often (i.e every day/two days). I know some of your clients won't like it so much. This is why most client communication platforms have a frequency option. Meaning the client can select how many emails/sms/automatic calls to receive on a weekly/monthly basis. Constant communication is really important to survive in the world today if your clients don't

If you are not protecting your brand you are probably killing it, this is what my boss always told me. Before doing anything, writing a word, promoting a new discount, sending an email, sms or auto call think if it will hurt your brand's reputation or will it improve it. Its a yes or no answer, not more and not less.   A few points that make your brand look transparent and trustful: 1. Clear T&C - When you change them notify your customers 2. Clear signup flow 3. Stability of your site, minimum bugs on front end. 4. If your operation is paying out customers make it clear when they will get their money and PAY THEM 5. Welcome package - should be meaningful and simple 6. Clear T&C on every offer/deal/discount you promote 7. CAN-SPAM  - I will write a post about this in the future. 8. Give your address and company name on emails and promotional material 9. Way to contact your brand (phone and email) 10. Online 24/7 support (or if you don't have 24/7 support t

When it comes to meetings the most important thing in my opinion is how we implement what was decided. In order to do this right, we need to be organize and assign people with tasks but most important is to assign head of implementation - the person that makes sure everything is going according to plan (i.e Execution Manager or just EM). Every meeting that requires a follow up needs an EM. So what do we need in this Meeting Summary Template: 1. Project Name/Meeting Title 2. Date 3. Time 4. Attendees 5. Non-Attending Invites 6. Agenda Items (what we spoke about in the meeting) 7. Decisions Made 8. Issues Identified 9. Follow-up Action Items 10. Most important: EM You can download the template here

The most important rule when you want to acquire new traffic is to match your capabilities/strengths with the affiliate's traffic. Meaning if you know how to treat customers from Australia go acquire clients from Australia. If you have only support in English don't buy traffic that doesn't understand English. Don't mislead your customers on the very beginning (actually I would say never mislead them, but most important things is always start on the right foot). I've seen companies promoting games that customers couldn't play. So why are you promoting these games? What are you trying to achieve? only good click to signup rate? What about where the money really counts, good conversion rate! Most of your budget every month goes to acquiring new traffic so why not buy what you know you can CONVERT? The key to preventing over spending on this traffic is to be quick determining if the clients signing up with you are quality or not. This is why I developed the

When it comes to purchasing a product customers will buy what they think is the best deal for them, because psychology is everything. This is why it's really important to know how your customers think. A while ago I decided to test this philosophy and offered two amazing deals for our clients to choose from: - One offer was deposit xxx and play with xxx. (for example: deposit 25 and play with 100 - 300% bonus) - Second offer was a flat percent bonus (for example 400% bonus). Even when the bonus offer was higher, more clients took the first offer, the fixed amount one. It led me to the conclusion that  YOUR CUSTOMERS UNDERSTAND SIMPLICITY. If its not simple your customers won't purchase. Percentage isn't simple as a stand alone number! If you want to use percentage use it as a comparison (i.e. 30% off). Few more points we found out: 1. Clients took more offers like deposit $29 than deposit $24 offers (9 vs 4). 2. Clients spent more when the dollar sign was removed

Before building something we need to understand what is the meaning of the term loyalty . Simple definition: Where an individual becomes accustomed to buying from you. Loyal customers will: - make regular /repeat purchases - purchase not one but many of your products/services - refer others (spread your story) Some people say that "in every old customer you will find a new customer waiting to be break out and spend more money with you!..." Value Pyramid Example: 1. Basic Value - Accurate billing, Prompt service 2. Expected Value - Delivery by 10 a.m on next business day (things to stay even with competition) 3. Unanticipated Value - first to provide online tracking, first to provide handled devices When it comes to loyalty and retaining customers I would say the following: "The more unanticipated value you provide a customer the deeper his loyalty to you" Don't forget the 80-20 rule: 80 percent of your revenue is being generated by 2

The big picture is all about what you do for every customer in his way to becoming active and loyal VIP (Loyal customer funnel/flow). The following diagram show you the movement a customers needs to go in order to reach that goal. In my previous post I spoke about stages in customer's life cycle, now I want to show you the big picture. This diagram was built for an online gaming company 1. Every customer will come from an external campaign that will bring him to your site. 2. Then he will go through the signup process (could be 4 stages - will talk about it in a different post) 3. After that he goes into the conversion funnel - where the goal is to make him do his first purchase 4.  FTD funnel is where our goal is to make the customer trust your software and make his next few deposits 5. Reactivate funnel - is where we try to activate customers that didn't purchase for a long time 6. Loyal customers flow - where you want most of your customers to be. In th

What the fuck is churn rate and why is it so important for your company? Wikipedia  tells us: "Churn rate (sometimes called attrition rate), in its broadest sense, is a measure of the number of individuals or items moving out of a collective group over a specific period. It is one of two primary factors that determine the steady-state level of customers a business will support. The term is used in many contexts, but is most widely applied in business with respect to a contractual customer base. For instance, it is an important factor for any business with a subscriber-based service model, including mobile telephone networks and pay TV operators. The term is also used to refer to participant turnover in peer-to-peer networks. Churn rate is an important input into customer lifetime value modeling, and can be part of a simulator used to measure ROI using marketing mix modeling ." When you look at your churn rate you know how is your retention performing. How

Simple and easy way to understand your customer's road map (also known as customer's life cycle) As you can see I separated the customer's life cycle to 4 stages.  1. when he gets to your site 2. when he signs up 3. when he makes his first purchases (retention only starts after four* purchases) 4. retention stages  * you can define different quantities and also change it to days/months of activity. I just think you need to understand that most customers will purchase only once - twice with you. So you need to treat them differently and show them the way to become loyal high value customers!

When buying traffic most of the companies like to talk about quantities and not about quality. The ones that do talk about quality usually refer to player value. “We did 2781 FTDs this month with average player value of $250”. New traffic is the new blood for every business and it’s the most important thing in my opinion. Without it, it’s difficult to grow your company and reach your goals (i.e KPIs). But what is the right traffic?  Few questions need to be answered to solve this complex and disturbing issue. -          How do you know that these 2781 will purchase again? -          What is the churn rate on these customers? -          How much did you pay for these new customers? -          What is the life expectancy of these customers? Understand the purpose of buying traffic and your goals: 1.       Cover cost (usually takes three to six months but might take longer according to your industry) 2.       Make a profit (You should be able to make between five to ten time

After learning what is the RFM algorithm in my previous post . I would like to write today about my adjustments and improvements that helped me during these years as an online marketer. I call it the Priority Potential   RFM or just PPRFM . P - Priority (who to contact first) P - Potential (predicting lifetime value of a customer) R – Recency (most recent deposit) F – Frequency (how many times he deposited) M – Monetary (Lifetime Deposits) Please see attached diagram I did for an online gaming company: Remember we are not changing the RFM algorithm we are just adding two new add-ons. Priority - everything should work according to who do you want to contact first and why. Potential - In this section you put everything you think might influence a customer to buy your product or not. It can be various things so try to think what are the characteristics that differentiate your purchasing customers from your customers that still didn't buy from you and segment them

Let's jump right into the stuff we only have two minutes :-). In this post I would like to write about the RFM algorithm. RFM analysis assigns value-scores to each customer on the basis of her past behavior. Using the quintile system explained above, at the most, 125 different scores (5x5x5) can be assigned. These cells differ in size from one another. A customer’s score can range from 555 being the highest, to 111 being the lowest. The best customers are in quintile 5 for each factor (555) that have purchased most recently, most frequently and have spent the most money. RFM provides a simple framework for quantifying customer behavior. For example, it is possible to infer that customer which has RFM score 155, has made a high number of purchases with high monetary values but not for a long time.  Something might have gone wrong with this customer, for example, he/she has most likely defected to a competitor's products and services or has found an alternate source and th

Hi, this is my first post. I would like to introduce myself to you all. In the past 20 years I've worked in the online marketing. I was there when everything started. This blog's purpose is to share with you all my understanding of how to do successful online marketing campaigns and how to retain your new and existing customers. In the world that everything is becoming more and more automatic, where AI is taking most of the focus we as marketers miss the why we do things. I will try to guide and show you how I did things and how I managed to turn companies from $10K cash flow per month to $1 billion, My moto in life is: "think before you act" Hope you have an amazing experience. Good luck, Bob Tea