Online communities are all about interaction and building relationships. In order to engage members of communities, it’s important to first become a trusted member of that community. There are essentially two ways that you can go about participating in existing communities: direct engagement and indirect engagement.

Direct engagement may sound straightforward, but where it can get tricky is in the practical application. This is a kind of longtail strategy, because it is so imperative to build trust within that community. The best practice is to have someone acting as a brand ambassador who is a trusted member of the community, and to ensure that your products or services have some relevance to the community’s interests.

With indirect engagement, you’ll be working with third-parties who can help to increase your brand’s awareness in the community without arising suspicion. If you can get together with members of specific communities who wield a certain amount of influence, then you may be able to offer them opportunities to announce “sneak peeks” into products or promotions.

It is essential to maintain good relationships with these third-parties. With this in mind, never ask them to exploit their status or deceive them into doing so. A bad relationship with a third party can serve to hamper your efforts, instead of help.

The rewards are palpable for those who make the effort to create interest in their brands in specific communities. Let’s take a look at some stats (source):

• Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users
(AT&T, 2002)
• Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006)
• Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users
(McKinsey, 2000)

As with every aspect of every successful business enterprise, trust is a key aspect, and relationships are what help to build that trust. Consumers don’t purchase products until a trust has been established, and social media can be a great way to establish relationships as a means of establishing that trust.

Using social media to accomplish this might take some time, but is worthwhile for anyone attempting to build brand awareness in these exciting new markets.

With more operators entering the market space and the reopening of Google adwords, there are plenty of reasons to get excited about online gambling in 2009 and beyond.

The annual report by Ernst & Young that analyzed the gaming industry said the economic downturn was bringing challenges to the sector, but that innovation in online gambling was still bringing in money.

Our own findings at Income Access have been overwhelmingly positive as well. This year alone (January-October), we have secured 28 new clients, compared to 19 new clients last year. That translates to a 47% increase and we still have more to sign up!

US consulting firm, Christiansen Capital Advisors, published an analysis of online gambling’s global scope earlier this year, which also supports Ernst & Young’s findings. Their figures indicated that our industry accounts for about $22 billion a year in global revenue, with $25 billion a year expected by 2010.

That is bright!

And it’s not as if the iGaming industry has not been thrown its share of curve balls over the last couple of years. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, combined with the recession has brought many challenges to our industry. To bounce back unscathed, indeed prospering, is something we can all be proud of. It’s something we should be proud of.

And certainly, companies have had to make changes, and now more than ever, play their marketing cards right. They are more budget conscious and carefully measure their ROI on campaigns to focus more strongly on what works, and stay away from what doesn’t.

And maybe it was time for that anyway. To be smarter marketers, that is. Perhaps, if nothing else, these curve balls, this economic struggle have taught us an important lesson: be savvy, demand more; drive your success to ensure that the future for online gaming remains, indeed, bright.

Q: What is the most important consideration for affiliate marketing and the software that powers those programs?

A: The important thing to consider with affiliate marketing is that it’s really performance-based marketing. If it’s performance-based marketing, what a retailer/merchant or affiliate needs in terms of software is the ability to see accurate information. Accurate information can be measured in terms of which affiliates are promoting, or how a banner is converting. This can also be keeping track of what affiliates are doing.

Q: How can merchants keep track of affiliates?

A: Usually in a program, there is a percentage of affiliates that are consistently producing very good traffic, and there can be other affiliates that are producing a volume of traffic, that may not be as high quality. Looking at the metrics of a program is very important, and that includes being able to track a campaign from the clicks, to the conversions to the retention of the customers.

Q: Why is the ability to look at historical trends so important?

A: When a merchant has access to historical trends, they can analyze trends over a period of time, from season to season, or trends that occur from year to year—and this is crucial information. Also, merchants can see what affiliates have done in the past, and what they’re doing currently, which is also a powerful activation tool. This is not necessarily on a granular level, but definitely on a trend level.
At the end of the day the most important features of software that merchants should look for are transparency, accuracy and reliability.

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