Add to this the fantastic March Madness $60,000 giveaway the Intertops have planned and there has never been a better time to play at the Intertops Casino!

Celebrate March Madness 2011 with Intertops Casino! Enjoy the rush and fast pace of the NCAA’s single elimination tournament. Will your team make the Final Four?

After the final promotion date, Intertops will hold a draw and reward 12 players with grand prizes of up to $500! Check out the scoreboard.

Plus, enjoy the added prizes each Monday and Thursday:

Every Monday 150 selected players will be awarded a free bonus. Players will be selected based on their Thursday through Sunday game-play performance at Intertops Casino.

Every Thursday 50 selected players will be awarded a free bonus. Players will be selected based on their Monday through Wednesday game-play performance at Intertops Casino.

Check your e-mail Monday and Thursday to find out if you’ve been awarded a free bonus.

Vegas Blackjack

Perfect Pairs

Perfect Pairs blackjack is exactly the same as standard blackjack but with the addition of a great side bet called the “Perfect Pair”.  This may only be played together with a bet on the blackjack game, and pays out when the first two cards are a pair according to the following pay table:

Perfect Pairs

European Blackjack
The main difference between European Blackjack and Vegas Blackjack is in the game play. In European Blackjack the dealer only deals one card for himself – face up.  The second card is dealt after all players have been offered a card.  This leads to some interesting situations in real casinos where players blame the last player on a table for not hitting their 15 when the dealer draws 6 and 5 on a 10 first card – these can get quite acrimonious! Luckily this problem doesn’t exist on US-Blackjack.com!

European Blackjack

Buzzluck.com is the first online casino providing on-site entertainment above and beyond the casino games themselves. The first online casino with an interactive video hostess, an interactive video 3D lobby and a live video Live Lounge, as well as all the casino games you’d expect, Buzzluck.com is the first online casino that warrants the title “online supercasino.”

First stop, the Doom-style, first-person shooter perspective lobby of the Buzzluck.com casino. Just like a busy casino or hotel lobby, you never know who you’re going to see or meet. The Buzzluck.com lobby constantly changes, as interactive video avatars come and go; some bearing gifts of bonuses and cash, others simply amusing. Or not.

Enter the casino itself, and you’ll see dozens of familiar flash-based, instant-play casino games, from blackjack tables to slots to video poker, all provided by the industry proven, and TST-tested and certified Real Time Gaming.

Take a break from the tables or your favourite machine and enjoy the Live Lounge. Fronted by Irish stand-up comedian and self-confessed net-geek, Ian O chats live with visitors while throwing up videos he and his team have uncovered in an interactive talk show/clip show unique to the web.

Just as Steve Wynn’s Mirage changes Vegas from a gambling capital to an entertainment capital, Buzzluck.com is the first online casino to bring something to the table other than simply new games. The games you know and love are there, it’s when you look up from the table or step away from the slots that you are engaged in another compelling experience. Buzzluck. Never Bored.

Tip 1- Define Your Goals

How much money do you want to make? How much do you want to make a year?A month? A week? A day? An hour? A minute? According to their shareholder reports betting businesses like Party Gaming make $1.279M a day*, how would you like to make that in your business?

http://www.partygaming.com/pg/uploads/press/InterimManagementStatement,Q3KPIsandTradingUpdate191108.pdf

The good news is that where you are now is exactly the right place to start from! Once you know where you are you can overcome any shortfalls with solutions. Ask yourself, what is my primary outcome? Make this outcome is so big and exciting that once you achieve it, it will be the most exciting thing you have ever done! Then figure out what resources you have right now to achieve it and how you will know when you have achieved it.

Tip 2 – Picture it

Use your Imagination to see and feel what your business will be like in 12 months. Visualisation is a very powerful tool and not just for NLP students. Here is a generic example, then create your own!

“It is now Christmas 2009 and you are up in the Top 10 of gambling sites. Annual yield is up, player accounts are up, daily actives are riding high, daily take is growing, actual player deposits are climbing, the player & affiliate forums are full of praises, lifecycles are getting longer and lifetime player value has rocketed up.‘Dead’ accounts have been re activated and your players feel like winners!”  

Tip 3- Go Guerrilla!

This methodology is what allowed Bowmans Poker http://www.kerb.co.uk/Viral-Games-Chart/?contentId=524 increase their Poker accounts by 127% and Sportsbook accounts by 72% with a fun sexy viral and under- the- net guerrilla campaign. Once you have your stand out creative, you need to let the people know. You can use social media and low cost direct marketing techniques to spread the word. Try these low cost techniques to compliment your media buying:

• Blogs & blog comments
• Social Networks (Facebook)
• Microblogging (Twitter)
• Your own network (Ning)
• Business networks (Linkedin)
• Article Marketing
• Free Press release marketing
• Videos (Use Camtasia, Mash it up then Youtube it)
• Landing Pages / Squeeze Pages
• Social Bookmarks (Digg)
• Forums
• Affiliates
• eZines
• Podcasts
• Forums
• Wikis, Knols
• Teleseminars
• Squidoo Lens
• Yahoo Answers

For example, lets take Twitter. Want to get your gaming brand in the papers PR folk? Get it infront of an influencer via microblogging, see here http://www.rainierpr.co.uk/blog/2008/11/top-50-uk-pr-people-by-twitter.html

Tip 4- Focus on Player Marketing

Got huge acquisition costs and players that fly out the door as quick as they come in? Get back to basics with some analysis of the behavioral and demographic characteristics the players share and differ in. CRM virgin?Study up here http://www.jimnovo.com/on:Recency Frequency , drop off rates, re activation patterns, bet triggers, player attitudes,lifecycles, hurdle rates and feedback loops. Once you’ve done that here are the types of marketing content you can offer your players in the ‘Player Marketing Funnel’

And here are the types of player segmentations you´ll be opening a dialogue with in the ‘Player Funnel’ . 

80% of revenue will come from 20% of players. Segmentation optimizes results and eliminates wastage.

Tip 5. Get Affiliates Quick!

If you are entering new markets, either geographic or product based, speed to acquire critical mass & liquidity is essential. Try working closely with an outsourced affiliate management company (e.g. Income Access) http://www.incomeaccess.com/. You can hit the ground running with hundreds of new affiliates in the first few weeks!

Inhouse, i bet your affiliates are already huge web 2.0 fans so why not assist their marketing further by investing in coaching for them on the types of low cost techniques we have already discussed such as the below features and benefits. Plus new measurement tools are entangling with social media marketing to allow complete affiliate tracking and cost per engagement analysis, see here  http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/12/12/has-skimlinks-solved-the-problem-publishers-have-with-affiliates/:

If you’d like to know more about offering these services to your affiliates, receiving coaching across your marketing dept. or getting a complete outsourced solution

just email us at sara@sarawaller.com

Tip 6. Put it all together

Then you put it all together. OK so not all SEO is free, neither is PPC and JVs are commission based…but these low cost methods are still additional resources you can invest in without much cost or risk to compliment your existing online media buying or affiliate programs across CPM, CPC, CPA, CPE, CPL, commissions, tiered and hybrids. 

So there we have it 6 easy recession proof tips you can start implementing today in your marketing mix.

Wishing you the rest of a wonderful 2008 in marketing and here’s to recession proof results with ROI in 2009.

PS. I am inviting you to submit all your comments as my last post on Online Gaming  http://sarawaller.com/?p=299 generated so many interesting discussions.

About the Author

Did you know that the best way to market your eGaming products these days is through social media? Let me explain…

This might be a useful blogpost for you in the industry. Please read on… 

Where do I start?

 Now that I have got your interest, let’s start with defining what social media is. Social media is defined as online-based tools that are used for sharing ideas among people from different walks of life.  

Old acquisition marketing strategies like unsolicited direct mail or email list rental are already a thing of the past. Everyone is sooo FREAKIN´ cautious about giving out their email addresses or personal information for fear of SPAM.

Social media is usually confused with advertising on social networking sites. It’s more than advertising it´s pure editorial word of mouth because it encourages active collaboration between folks.  

Ok so that´s a really simple account of what social media is; let’s discuss the integration of marketing strategies within this media space.

How do I integrate my eGaming marketing with social media? 

This is a very good question. As you know, over a billion people are online. Everyone is sharing interesting site links, videos, photos, notes and events to one another through email, chat, bookmarking sites and social networking sites such as Facebook and micro blogging sites like my favourite, Twitter.

This trend is slowly growing in the eGaming industry. Online poker, blackjack and casino sites can benefit from taking advantage of the social media to market their products to new sign ups, reinforce their legitimacy to convert free play to real plays and reinforce their brand identity to reactivate lapsed or stop defection before it happens. In this article, I’m going to use Facebook and Twitter as our two marketing examples. 

How do we do this?

To all the eGaming affiliate marketers out there reading, here are some of the features of Facebook and Twitter that you can use to market your clients. The benefits are clear: 

Facebook:

1. Profile Page: This serves as your basic business or brand portfolio you can take control off immediately. This is the place where your passion for the company, product or brand can be expressed. Here, marketers have the opportunity to create real-world scenarios as to why their or their clients´ products are valuable and needed in the world.

To make the profile page more interesting, your Personal and Work Information should be completed. Photos and related videos can be uploaded as well.

Facebook doesn’t have the option to keep track of the number of Profile page views. This may be intentional on the part of Facebook. In order to promote your Profile page, connect to hundreds or thousands of members in Facebook. Before you know it, your Profile page will attract a lot of traffic. Profiles are NOT Google indexed 

2. Facebook Groups: A simple way to build a community that promotes your company or brand. You can create a Group for your brand and this will serve as a central location for gaming colleagues, peers, and industry friends, JV or whitelabel partners, current and future customers and others. You choose B2B or B2B, open or private VIP membership etc. There are many applications that can be used to make you Group page more interesting. There are discussion boards, videos, photos and “post a link” option. You can communicate with the Group members by giving an update every now and then. It’s easy and effective. Groups are also NOT Google indexed 

3. Facebook Pages: My personal fave! This option launched late last year as a method for all types of businesses to create brand presence in the Facebook network. It is similar to Facebook Groups but with some relevant differences such as the ability to add flash and HTML applications in Pages and many more. Pages are effective in viral marketing. When someone joins they become a fan and that goes in the Newsfeed (Newsfeed Optimisation – NFO- is the future!).

Facebook Pages are the only type of Facebook content that ARE Google indexed and are visible externally WITHOUT being logged in to Facebook 

4. Facebook Events: This is a free yet effective application that can be used to promote parties, marketing events, product launches and other significant happenings. The format of the Event is similar to Facebook Groups – there are wall feature where invited members can post, discussion boards, photos, links and videos.

Invited friends can be made admin officers in the event page which in turn gives them the opportunity to invite other people in their own networks. It’s one of the most effective ways to inform thousands of people about an incoming event without sweating much. It´s probably my second favourite marketing tool after Pages and before Notes.

5. Facebook Notes: Love it! This feature can be used to post information about your company. The information should be genuine or else it will be construed as a SPAM and most members will certainly ignore your future articles because of this negative reputation. Once this is posted, you have the option to let everyone in the network read the note or just choose the target people who are most likely to respond to the note.

6. Facebook Messages: This is similar to sending an email. You can send a message to friends within or outside the network.

It should be noted that Facebook is strict when it comes to preventing SPAM messages in the network. Facebook would most likely red-flag and account that keeps sending messages to those members that are not yet in the account-holder’s network.

Facebook does not specify as to how many messages sent can be construed as SPAM so it is best to be careful in sending advertisement using this option.

7. Facebook Marketplace: This option is the Facebook’s version of classified ads (Craigslist). These can be posted within your network, free of charge. However, if there’s an interest to post the ad in several networks, there’s an extra charge. Good locally for an offline poker tourney in a major city or a sports event and landbased casino etc.

8. Facebook Posted Items: You can post your gaming brand’s company link or info using this option. The posts usually show on the network updates of the account-holder and can be used to update the walls of other members within the network. So you could attract direct clicks from prospective customers. Make the content RELEVANT. GPWA do this well in Facebook posting from their GPWA group (go Michael & Steven C!). Blackjack.com are also excellent at this.

9. Mini and News Feeds: Facebook adds a feed item to the Mini Feed option when there’s recent activity on the account such as the addition of photos and videos. The feed can also be added when someone joins a group or becomes a fan of a Page. This development can be seen by others within the network via the News Feed option.

This means you must be careful when it comes to adding appropriate information in the profile because it would create an impression to the others. NFO rocks! Look out for NFM too (News Feed Marketing -buy PPC off Facebook UK, its legal eGaming guys!)

10. Other applications: There are other applications created by developers that are not affiliated with Facebook. These applications can be embedded in your Profile, Group or Page. Example of popular applications are LinkedIN, Flickr, Stumble Upon, Google Reader and many more.

Facebook is constantly upgrading its service by coming up with new applications almost everyday. I suggest that you take an extra mile in exploring these features.

Twitter

Allow me to rave on here like a fan, I LOVE Twitter! (almost as much as Facebook).

Twitter is considered one of THE most popular AND useful social media tool and it would be a crying shame if you didn’t sign up for this free service. It´s actually a micro blogging site, what can you say under 140 characters or less! Do you know that it only takes a few words to inform your fellow affiliates, gamers and visitors about what’s new about your games, bets and bonuses?

Twitter gives you the opportunity to gather target demographics by having “followers” who share similar interests, likes and niches with you! And unlike FB it’s passive.

All you have to do is to create your own account at www.Twitter.com, fill up all the necessary information, upload your profile photo and a 140-character long bio. Once you are signed up, you can start searching and following your new friends! You can use keywords like “eGaming,” “online gaming,” “online casino/ poker,” among others.

Remember, it is better that you follow people that are within your target demographic. They will likely respond to your updates.

I have a great tip for you. Search for prominent individuals that are connected with the eGaming industry. I’m pretty sure that these people have a lot of “followers” from the same industry.

Once you become a “follower,” a notification email will be sent to the person you are following bearing your link. The person has the option to follow you back but considering that both of you have the same interests, then I’m pretty sure they’ll do a positive action.

Now that you are officially signed up at Twitter.com, don’t forget to maintain a good reputation and be careful in sending advertisements.

Then try adding apps like Tweetdeck, Twhirl or Tweetburner to help you optimize the effectiveness of Twitter. When you post remember the two golden rules of social media:

THOU SHALT NOT SPAM and IT´S BETTER TO GIVE THAN TO RECEIVE

Effectiveness of social media 

You are probably wondering how you can MEASURE the effectiveness of social media. The answer is through constant analysis and monitoring. There are several measurement tools that are available online. Here are some of the sites that I am in the process of trialing and checking out as recommended by new media God, Chris Brogan:

http://www.radian6.com

http://www.buzzlogic.com

http://www.crimsonhexagon

http://www.vibemetrix.com

http://www.hubspot.com

http://www.tweetburner.com  

In PR rather than advertising? I have good news!

The PR world is now taking advantage of these tools to measure, manage and analyze the impact of social media on their clients’ site traffic. Through these tools, PR professionals can come up with marketing strategies to increase sales. 

However, measurement of social media is still a matter of debate among marketers because there’s an absence of accepted metrics. This doesn’t mean that we can’t come up with a qualitative or quantitative approach in determining the impact of social media in businesses such as the eGaming industry.

Advertisers are now starting to adopt this new type of online advertising pricing structure called Cost Per Engagement (CPE). Interaction is the key. Online users are invited to participate in online polls, watch a video, play a game and other interactive action orientated stuff. In online gaming sites, target demographics can be encouraged to sign up by downloading gaming software that doesn’t require real money. Fun play. 

As affiliates in the eGaming industry, we are faced with another shift in marketing strategies. We can still implement ad pricing structures such as Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Action (CPA) and Cost Per Impression (CPM) but these may soon be a thing of the past if CPE goes full blast.

By applying the marketing strategies for Facebook and Twitter that I mentioned earlier, you can encourage the users to visit your respective sites. You can keep track of site visitors by using Google Analytics. I suggest that you sign up for this free service because Google Analytics provides detailed statistics. 

Customer Relationship Management

The challenge has been imposed to you in terms of maintaining a relationship with the users. Social media marketing has made it possible to retain the interest of the online players because they are receiving legitimate and great offers and not SPAM messages. This is imperative in the eGaming industry because clients have several gaming sites to choose from (fickle and promiscuous as they are), 90 day lifecycles and bonuses to chase. It would be easy for them to make the switch if they find that they are not getting their money’s worth. This is how churn has got out of hand as folks have focused on huge CPAs rather than using decent Recency, Frequency, Monetary, Latency etc metrics, running quintiles, using simple excel (Concatenate!). Come on, read Jim Novo!!! 

One you have applied the marketing strategies for Facebook and Twitter, it would be easier for you to communicate with existing and future clients by posting motivating message or interesting articles and links in your personal or company’s accounts. If it piques their interest, there’s a big chance that they will share it to their network of friends and so on.

Who will be first with Twitter Bingo Moms ? I will watch the space   

Final Thoughts

Social media marketing at this point is still a work in progress. There’s still a matter of creating an actual structure that it acceptable to everyone. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do anything about it. All you have to do is make use of these social media tools and CONNECT with your target demographics. Interact with your customers and retain their trust. Cheaper than any rakeback program I know of! 

If you want to get updates, don’t hesitate to access my official site at www.sarawaller.com.

Happy playing!

Progressive slots are one of the best ways to improve your chances of winning that is of course if you play betting the maximum coins. If you bet the smallest amount of coins on a progressive slot machine you are only helping the next person to win that will bet the maximum amount. This is the main reason for there being lurkers standing around people as they play just waiting very impatiently I might add for them to get up so they can swoop in and win the jackpot.

Slots are one of the quickest ways to empty your pockets and this is exactly why all of the casino’s have thousands filling the casino rooms. People don’t realize there is some sort of strategic approach that will at the least improve their chances of winning.

I used to bet the minimum amount because I believed that it would increase my chances of winning, but all it did was take me longer to get rid of my money. When I started to bet the maximum amount of money I was surprised at how much more I began winning. The reason is because you are playing more turns in a single turn getting closer to the winning jackpot. While there is no set time frame if you stick with a machine long enough or if you watch just how long another has been sitting at a single machine than your chances are that much better that you will win.

The best thing that you can do is to learn about the various types of slot machines by researching on the internet and begin putting what you have learned into action. Don’t forget to have fun, the moment you begin feel overwhelmed with the desire to win and will stop at nothing to do so all of what you have learned begins to fade away quickly.

There is one thing I would like to say about counting cards in blackjack, and that would be to avoid wasting your time trying to learn how to count cards. This is not the best method of increasing your chances of winning at blackjack, and besides it will take a lot of time just to learn how to do it. It will take even longer to master it.

Do you really want to spend hours a day learning how to count cards when there are so many other easier methods that work? I didn’t think so.

Blackjack is one casino game that offers you the best odds over any other game, and the rules of blackjack are simple enough for just about anyone to learn, and just as easy to master. All you need to do is spend a small amount of time learning the rules of the game, and a small amount of time learning and adapting to one of the various strategies that are available to you for free online.

One of the most important things that you must remember when you are gambling is that there is no sure fire way to win. There is a large risk when you are playing any of them. Although there are things that you can do that will increase your winnings but not your chances of winning. If you believe that you will win big than you will make the wrong decisions when betting.

Some of the most common mistakes that many players make when they are playing blackjack. One of them is not thinking before you make your next move. If you just react before you take that next card, or stand when you should have hit you will make many mistakes. This is why playing blackjack online is awesome. There is no rush to making your move, and no distractions when you are playing. Learn more about blackjack strategies and find the one that suits you the best. Use one of the major search engines to make your searching for strategies quick and simple unlike learning how to count cards.

So how do some of these people actually win at roulette?

Well it’s actually pretty simple. There are ways that you can increase your chances of winning and become one of those lucky people. Paying close attention to the colors that keep coming up is one of these ways, and sometimes there are a few numbers that come up more frequently. This is what you want to look for. Keep in mind that this is not a guarantee, but it will help to definitely improve your winnings most of the time.

The best secret that you can learn about roulette is to have complete understanding of the betting odds of each number or color. There are many different bets that you can make and each of them will have different odds. You can learn the odds of all bets easily. The hardest part of this is simply remembering what they are but it won’t take long to remember. The roulette game itself will be easy.

You can find many places online to play roulette. Some casinos even offer you a real life simulation of playing in a real casino. This is a great place to practice your newly learned skills of betting with roulette. When you are playing in the casino its really easy to get distracted from making the right bet. A wrong bet can end up causing you to lose money that you would have won.

Roulette is definitely a fun game to play, even when you don’t win. Winning however would be preferred over losing but at least you had fun, right?

If you want to find a good online casino to enjoy playing roulette it will not be a difficult thing for you to find. Of course it’s more important to find a reputable casino, just begin reading testimonials and you will be just fine.

There are some things that you should begin implementing into your gambling at the casino’s that will definitely help you to avoid going broke. The best thing that you can do is to learn how to focus out the noise of the excitement filled room. This is a huge distraction that often leads you to making the wrong decision, a decision that could cause you to lose money.

Another important thing that you must do is to learn what casino games offer you the best odds. Blackjack is one of these games. The best part about blackjack is that you are playing against the house and the house only. There can be 6 people sitting at the table but the only one that really matters is the dealer. You should familiarize yourself with the basics of blackjack if you have never played before. There are other games that you should look into that will offer you better chances to win. Please understand that better chances don’t mean that you are going to win all of the time.

Discover the best betting strategy and practice it again and again before your trip to the casino. It takes time developing a good strategy and the best place for you to practice is on the online casinos. There are many free online casinos that will allow you to play without paying anything, but you can bet pretend money. This will help you not only to find the best strategy but also learn which method does not work at all.

There are some of you out there that seem to be just lucky, and I really wish that it would rub off on me. But I am not the lucky type, which is why its so important for me to learn the different strategies of the games and betting.

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