Today the Department of Justice announced that they had seized the domain names of the top three US-facing poker sites: Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker and UB.com/Absolute Poker. The top US-facing site, Poker Stars, has already blocked US players from sitting down at real money tables. Due to the uncertainty of the current situation, Poker Affiliate Solutions has removed Full Tilt Poker, UB.com and Absolute Poker from the network, pending additional developments.


It’s easy to panic in situations such as this, but history has proved that to be counter-productive. Many affiliates have lived through the game-changing events of UIGEA and the Neteller arrests. Many affiliates thrived and reaped massive benefits when the dust finally settled. We believe there to be a similar opportunity today. Perhaps the events of today are what we needed before our industry can garner the benefits of full legitimacy and regulation. For affiliates with strong US-facing membership, while others are panicking, take this time to think about the best action that you can take to maximize revenues in 2011 and beyond. That is what we are doing here at PAS.

Stay tuned to PAS for the latest news and analysis of this developing situation.

The long awaited click tracking feature is coming soon to the PAS network. Soon you will be able to track all of the clicks on your rakeback, CPA, and rev-share campaigns. Want to find out more?

Checkout this thread in the PAS forum for more information.

Happy marketing

In my last blog post I discussed what I believe is the disparity between standard web marketing and social media marketing: user engagement. My previous post focused on Facebook, but my advice is applicable anywhere in the social space.

Two Way Communication is Important

A big mistake that many social media marketers make is by using tools like Twitter and Facebook strictly for one way communication: using social media as a tool to send information out but never as an outlet to absorb information. As a Twitter or Facebook marketer, you can expect that your users will be posting on your fan page wall and using the hashtag and mention functions of Twitter. It’s important that your users see this public engagement.

Now bear in mind that not all of your interactions will be positive. Unhappy customers will often take to the airwaves with their issues. Your first instinct may be to delete these users' posts from your Facebook wall (as many large companies do), but that’s generally seen by your followers and fans as poor customer service and may further damage your brand. Some marketers turn this into an opportunity by using social media as another tool to provide customer service for their users. If the situations are being handled professionally and adequately, this will reflect very positively on your organization.

The United States Air Force has a methodology of dealing with social media commenters both positive and negative. Take a moment to review their policies and think about how you could integrate their strategies into your own campaigns.

A Case Study of Social Media Marketing

Written by Jonathon of Your Poker Cash


Our Early Experiences with Social Marketing

In 2010, the YPC fan page on Facebook had a lot of ups and downs. Thankfully, it’s been mostly positive, as we went from 27 fans on Jan 1, 2010 to 3963+ fans by the end of December 31st 2010! That is a staggering 14677% increase in our fan base in 12 months. Along the way we had lots of people unlike our page, but the vast majority stuck with us, despite several public PR nightmares that have tested our brand and have given me more than a few gray hairs.

Early on we had little to no interaction with our fans. Our communication consisted of one or two generic posts each month, and in our limited efforts we gained one or two fans a day. Things didn’t get interesting until we launched a new bankroll offer via our Facebook Fan page. All players that clicked on our mystery bankroll offer -- highlighted by a big question mark on the homepage of YPC -- were taken to our Facebook page where they could see and request the offer. In less than a week we saw a 3 fold increase in fans.

Creative Solutions Bring Success and Drawbacks

As we sought to further increase our fan base we decided to offer an exclusive freeroll for Facebook fans. We even let players vote on where the tournament would be held. This was the start of real interaction with our fans. When the day of the freeroll arrived we posted a password on a page that only fans could access. Due to the tournament being held on a Saturday, I was three or four minutes late posting the password; more than a few fans were there to let me know that I was not as prompt as they would have liked. However, we more than doubled our fan base with this event.

Things were still easy sailing until we crossed the 1000-fans barrier. By then, fans were starting to post on our page with CS questions which we were unable to answer on FB because of our privacy policy. We were continually directing fans to log into their accounts for personal questions which just adds another step to the CS process.

It is these minor annoyances that can make or break your page. It is a huge boost to your credibility if you can answer these questions in a timely fashion as there is a public record of your actions. However, if you ignore your page and these minor questions, it will be a disaster.

Even if you stay on top of your page you can experience some serious outrage from your fan base. They will be there to call you out on the slightest mistake, they will be very vocal, and they will post when you are least likely to be able to respond. Do not ban these people! As easy as it is to ban them and not deal with them going forward, that sends the wrong message. If you don’t know what your shortcomings are, how will you be able to fix them? It is the latter of these two things that will serve you best in the long run.

An Example

On September 1st we changed some promotions on YPC which did not go over well with a small fraction of our Fans. Even though we were increasing total prize pools from a few thousand dollars to over $100k each month, people were furious that we were sharing the prize pool with PAS. Fans were coming out of the woodwork to say bad things and swear off using YPC forever. Without the Facebook page, this outrage would have been contained to email and PMs on our site. However, we took these lemons and made lemonade. We reverted back to some of our older promos that were cheaper, widely pleasing our fans. Even our most vocal critic acknowledged this and thanked us.

I know going forward that one small misstep will bring out our critics, but this keeps me on my toes and forces me to do my best each day.

The Future

For 2011, I would love to see our Fan page grow to over 10,000 fans, even though that will mean more hypercritical eyes on us, so when things are not 100% perfect there will be more fingers on keyboards ready to swiftly and emphatically tell us how horrible we are. It also means more people to click the “Likes This” button, which is more than enough reason to check the Fan page 15 times a day.

Thanks for reading,

JonathonYPC

Some Final Thoughts

As Jonathan has eloquently illustrated, there can be positives and negatives to a social marketing campaign, if done right. Yes, the experience can leave one going grey or pulling out the hairs that remain. Nevertheless, YourPokerCash is a great case study in how social marketing can work, demonstrating how to overcome the drawbacks of a marketing scheme into an overwhelming positive.

Of course, with anything on the internet these days, there are tools/freeware and add-ons available to make our marketing lives easier:

Social Media Tools

Are you managing multiple websites? If so, it can be a hassle to manage multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts for each of your web properties. Thankfully, there are some great tools at your disposal which we highly recommend:

Hoot Suite

Tweet Deck

Ping.FM

PAS is in the process of resolving several issues with Victory Poker. In the meantime, Victory Poker has been temporarily removed from the PAS network. This action is not uncommon at PAS and we fully expect the issues to be resolved soon. While this is not a mandatory action, we do feel that it is a prudent one, based on the best interests of our players and affiliates. As our communications with Victory Poker continue, we will provide updates and more details as they become available.

We recommend that you update your website content accordingly. If you have any questions in this regard, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Regards,
PAS Team

Earlier this year, I picked up a copy of Marketing in the age of Google by Vanessa Fox, a renowned internet marketer and former Google employee. In the book Vanessa attempts to show how businesses develop a successful search engine marketing strategy, and how best to use the data provided by the search engines. Google certainly ushered in a new era of internet marketing, but I can’t help but feel like yet another era is upon us: Marketing in the age of Facebook.

What methods have you used to market on Facebook? What have you felt that has or hasn’t worked? I have some of my own thoughts that I would like to share:

Individual Profiles

Some hyper-active Facebook users use their own profiles to market to their friends. This works really well for anyone with a high level of name recognition. The downside is that you must first accept or receive a friend request from an individual in order to market to them.

There are many upsides to marketing through your individual profile page. By granting your users access to your profile page, you are giving them a glimpse into the life of you the individual. Putting a real face on a company has the potential to increase brand loyalty and trust. You are also giving your users another method of contacting you if they need customer service. To the user, this feels like a true one-on-one personal experience.

There are also a number of downsides to this. By granting customers access to your Facebook profile page you may be giving them more access to your personal life than you feel comfortable with. In many instances your users may contact you with customer support issues when they should be emailing your website or opening a support ticket. Many of these privacy issues can be controlled in the Facebook settings. For example, you can close off a user’s access to your wall or shut down the ability of a reader to send you messages. Of course, by doing so are cutting down some of the personal contact with your user, and thus are defeating much of the purpose of marketing to them on Facebook.

I believe there’s a better way for individuals to market on Facebook while maintaining a separation from their personal and professional lives: Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook Fan Pages

These pages are similar in function to the profile pages; however, they are much easier to market themselves. Unlike profiles, there is no need to become a friend of a fan page before you can see its pictures or content. All you have to do is click on the “like” button. Users can browse the profiles or easily become a fan of such personalities as Tom "durrrr" Dwan, US President Barack Obama and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Anyone can follow them on Facebook with a single click.

Do you have a Facebook fan page for your brand? Check out the Facebook fan page of Your Poker Cash for what we believe is a good example of well-executed social media marketing.

Paid Advertising

Facebook also offers the classic paid advertising model but with a twist. Companies are given the option to simply advertise their brands on Facebook or advertise their Facebook Fan page. Which is better? Well, that depends entirely on your goals. Are you looking to drive traffic to your company’s website or are you looking to build up your Facebook fan base? That’s the decision you have to ask yourself when creating an ad campaign with Facebook.

What is the biggest upside in marketing on Facebook versus Google? User engagement. Facebook fan pages give you an opportunity to interact with your fans in a public forum alongside your advertisements. You can easily put a face and name to your brand. In my next post I will discuss some of the best practices associated with user engagement and Facebook fan pages.

Cheers!