We wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year. The PAS office will be closed through Monday but we'll be right back at it on Tuesday. Here's hoping you and yours have a happy and prosperous 2012. PAS looks forward to 2012 by continuing to work with your affiliate businesses and provide you the best service possible. Weekly Industry Update Due to the New Years Holiday, today's Weekly Industry Update will again be an abbreviated version. The regular Weekly Industry Update will return next week. For now, we wanted to share a couple of notable articles during the last week: Status Quo to Continue in Spain through First Half of 2012 Desperate for Revenue, States Could Trigger Online Poker Gold Rush PokerStars Among Licensed Operators in Belgium; Others Plan to Continue Offering Games
Party Poker is starting 2012 with a bang by offering a series of promotions that are sure to be attractive to every type of player. Most significantly, Party Poker is bringing back Rake-Free tournaments for a limited time through January. Online poker's third largest room will also be offering a reload bonus, a $50k depositors freeroll and satellites/freerolls to the $1 million guaranteed in early February. These promotions are without even mentioning the $22,000 in special freerolls available exclusively through PAS. Rake Free Tournaments: Last offered in July, the Rake-Free Tournament promotion proved to be a big hit with Party Poker's tournament players. If July is any indication, the tournament buy-in will still be the same but the fee will be applied to the prize pool. Reload Bonus: Everyone loves a Party Poker reload bonus. During the entire month of January, players can deposit on the site and receive a 100% match when using bonus code RAKEFREE. Clearing the bonus will require 8 Party Points per $1 of bonus money within 30 days. The RAKEFREE bonus will release in 10 equal parts, or $10 if you received the maximum bonus. $50,000 Depositors Freeroll: Players that use the RAKEFREE bonus code in January will not only receive a 100% up to $100 reload bonus but also an entry into the $50,000 Depositors Freeroll to be held on February 5th at 11:00 AM ET. Summary of Additional Promotions at Party Poker Of course, this isn't the extent of the promotions players can receive when playing at Party Poker. Players can also take part in the following lucrative promotions: $22,000 Exclusive Freerolls -- 4 $3,000 freerolls for new players and 2 $5,000 freerolls for non-new players (PAS Exclusive)Free Poker Coaching through Drag the Bar or DeucesCracked (PAS Exclusive)Qualifiers to the Winter Million held on February 5th100% up to $500 sign-up bonus (New Players)VIP Program yields up to 50% VIP Rakeback
Many affiliates and PAS publishers are aware of PAS's robust core package offered to all affiliates for free who sign-up to PAS. What you may not realize is that through our page10 web services brand, PAS also offers a line of additional premium services to further take your affiliate business to the next level. As a special holiday promotion, we are offering a 10% discount on all PAS premium services requested before January 15th. Need some assistance with your SEO efforts? Want a review or article written for your site? Fancy a cutting-edge design for your website? Big or small, PAS is able to provide you scalable solutions for your project in a variety of disciplines that will help you achieve desired results while saving you time and money. PAS/page 10 Web Services: A full list of premium services that we can offer for your gaming and on-gaming projects include: • SEO/SEM • Web Design and Development • Content Management (CMS) • Affiliate Program/Account Integration (Account Tracking) • Translations • Unique IP Address • Social Media • Affiliate Marketing • E-commerce • Mobile • Web Applications More information: Soon we will be launching a PAS services page where you can easily request premium services as well as receive additional information on how exactly PAS can grow your business using our scale and resources. If you would like to take advantage of special 10% off Holiday deal, please contact Jordan for more information.
Many of us at PAS have been involved in this industry for almost a decade and it’s amazing to sit back and reflect on how far the industry has come, the challenges we have had to face and the changing market dynamics. Back in the “old days” there were no smart phones or social media -- at least in the form they are today -- and SEO had yet to be widely adopted by online poker affiliates. In the early 2000s email campaigns and exchanging links were top strategies that were at the forefront of online poker affiliate campaigns. Times were good in this exploding market as there were more than enough players available to affiliates that put in the effort. In looking at the past we recognize that marketing will continue to evolve as the internet evolves. With a maturing market, it is more important than ever that online poker affiliates are creative and at the top of their game when marketing to players. As the industry slows down for the Holidays I thought it would be a good time to take a look at some general areas affiliates should be focusing on in 2012: Social Media: I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag with this one. Today, Facebook enjoys over 1 billion users while Twitter is used by half a billion. With that amount of reach, every motivated online marketer needs to be on Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets by directly engaging and informing their members. Nurturing these relationships is the key to success. VIP Treatment: It's difficult to overestimate the value of good customer service, especially in this industry. Many poker players are used to receiving poor service so putting some extra effort can really make you stand out. Put yourself in the place of your customers: How do you feel about receiving a response in a few hours versus a few days? Taking that concept an extra step, personal one-on-one contact can go a long ways towards instilling trust with your members. Strongly consider approaching your top members with VIP support and treatment. Mobile: Seven percent of all web traffic is from mobile devices and the trend should be on an upward trajectory for some time. Make sure that you are considering users who are accessing your websites with their smartphones or tablets. SEO: Search engine optimization for online poker affiliates has matured and is much more competitive than a few years ago. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing it, though. A SEO strategy supplemented with high quality content and link building campaigns -- especially through organic methods such as social media -- can drastically improve your site rankings in the search engines. Value in Truth: Because of how connected and informed we all are it is more important than ever to have a product or service that provides legitimate value to your users and potential customers. To this do, especially in the age of social media, it’s vitally important to believe in your product and service. What are you providing your members that is different from what other affiliates are offering? Rakeback has benefits for obvious reasons but some affiliates choose not to promote rakeback these days. Certain affiliates are finding success in areas such as poker coaching, VIP support or useful/ informative content. With the value you are providing your users they are more likely to tell their friends -- possibly through valuable social media channels. Keep it Simple: In another trend that is becoming ubiquitous over the last few years, marketers are simplifying their designs as well as making navigation and functionality of their sites more intuitive. Not only do you have a lot of competition as an online poker affiliate but you have to compete for the internet time of every one of your potential users. Clutter and a poor design can determine whether you see a conversion from your visitor or not. Keep your website and marketing campaigns as simple as possible to avoid scaring off the user whose time you are competing with. If your visitor wishes to receive more information they can simply navigate to an appropriate placed call-to-action. For online marketers it’s not only important to take advantage of the current trend but also utilized what has worked in the past. The internet is moving fast and we can be sure that some of the trends of today won’t be applicable in the future. At PAS we’re looking forward to taking advantage of the new opportunity and we hope you do as well. Good luck in 2012!
Many online poker affiliates have offered live support to their players. Whether an affiliate is large or small there are pros and cons to offering live support. There are few online poker affiliates that offer live support even though many more have tried it. There is a reason for this. Positives to Offering Live Support There are many positive reasons to offer live support to your players. The biggest reason is from a sales lead point of view. If you have a link on your site to live support, and a qualified person is there to talk with the player, the chances of closing a lead increases substantially. The best qualified person is going to be the site owner but a partner or employee with the website that is very familiar with the offers and the online poker industry will be just as good. If a player can get their questions answered thoroughly and quickly they will be much more likely to trust the site and sign up for an offer. The player will have the security of knowing that if there is a problem you are there solve them. Players will also have questions after they sign up. These questions will include whether a player is tracked, suggestions about a new poker room to try, payment questions or general poker questions. The more a player knows that their affiliate is there for them, the more loyal they will be. This type of player will tell their friends how great the support is and refer other players. Support is important to many players, especially newer players that can grow to become high volume players. There is a big advantage to being on a first name basis with your players and potential sign ups. Live Support Options If an affiliate decides to offer live support they have several solutions. They may choose to use a chat program such as MSN or Skype. An affiliate could use a chat program to also accept calls from potential clients. While this is a free solution, there are some downsides. The first issue is that it is difficult to manage any kind of volume on these chat programs. It is difficult to manage multiple conversations without forgetting about a client waiting or making an embarrassing error. Another problem is that spammers will attempt to contact the affiliate on the chat programs and it will be impossible to filter them out since the support person will have to accept all chat requests in case it is a player. Another option is to rent a live chat software package. These are very efficient for higher volume affiliates. The software keeps good logs and keeps player in a queue to avoid any problems such as confusing multiple conversations. If live support is not available the software will take a message that is forwarded to the affiliate's email address. The downside of this is that the live chat software packages cost about $100 a year. They can be two or three times more for bigger affiliates that need more advanced software solutions. Spammers can also be a nuisance on line chat support as well. Some live chat companies also offer support services to take the place of having to do support yourself. This is a terrible option. These support people are often outsourced. You will be paying for a service that will be subpar. That is because these support people will not be knowledgeable about your website. The support staff could handle hundreds of different websites. It would be easy for them to make a mistake and confuse one website with another. Negative With All Live Chat Solutions The negative for all of these options is that it will eventually become abused. Not only will the spammers become extremely annoying, but the clients may become a problem as well. Many poker affiliates that have attempted live support run into problems where players will ask very basic questions that can be found in the FAQ because they become accustomed to going directly to live support with every easy question. Some players will also vent their bad beat stories to an affiliate if they are available and there is nobody else to online for them to vent. This can become a major time drain and burden when every time a player gets drawn out on they complain on chat programs. After a few "Online poker is rigged" chats with players an affiliate may start to get second thoughts about their choice to offer live support. Live Chat Policy Suggestions If you decide to offer live support I have a few suggestions. One is not to use your personal chat accounts. Set up a Skype or MSN account specific to your website. That way you do not ruin a personal chat account with spammers and bad beat stories when you are not working. You should only offer live support during set hours instead of having the chat program open every time you are online. This way a player knows when they can find live chat online and the affiliate is not tied down to live support at all hours of the day. Players can always leave a message, create a support ticket, or send an email if live support is not available. While many poker affiliates, especially big ones, have abandoned live support there are still many affiliates that choose to use it. If you decide to try live support you should be prepared for some of the issues and the time it will take out of your day. You may greatly increase your player sign ups and retention. You will just need to decide if the loss of productivity is worth it.
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