Author: May Thawdar Oo
Many iGaming content marketers and project managers will have probably asked themselves the following question at least once:
“How do I generate new leads and engage existing customers without breaking the bank on the marketing budget?”
The solution? Email marketing.
After all, email is still one of the best media with which to target your audiences across all industries – no exceptions. Email on a private server, unlike social media and social messaging apps like Twitter, Facebook Messenger, or WhatsApp, can’t just be de-platformed willy-nilly for any perceived infringement of the Terms of Service.
Imagine how massive the unlock is for iGaming operators as far as estimated revenues are concerned – with a potential customer base numbering in the several billions – 4.3 billion email users in 2021, according to projections.
That’s over half of the world’s population with an email address they use in their day-to-day lives.
Therefore, no matter how big or small your iGaming business is, email marketing remains an incredibly powerful tool to reach potential and existing customers on a 24-7-365 basis and connect with your target audiences in an instant.
And here’s a quick overview of how you can create your own email content that has a big impact on your iGaming business.
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According to the Data & Marketing Association of the UK, for every $1 put into email marketing spend, brands can expect an average return of $42. That’s crazy ROI.
As much as 87% of marketers employ email marketing as a content marketing strategy. This makes email the second most popular content distribution channel, just behind social media at 89%.
From massive ROI margins to enhanced engagement across social platforms, email marketing has been a tried and tested way to generate interest for the iGaming industry.
Email newsletters are the perfect vehicle with which to increase player engagement, promote new offers, games, and content, boost customer retention for online casinos, and ultimately cultivate a deeper connection with players to retain customers for sportsbooks.
Three Compelling Reasons Why You Should Publish an Email Newsletter
1. Email newsletters offer insight into the iGaming brand.
They build deep connections and trust between players and brands.
How?
For the longest time, brands have been and are still using email as the primary way to provide their customers with advice, updates, and reassurance as a primary channel for both marketers and consumers throughout each stage of the customer lifecycle.
No other medium comes as close to enhancing customer experience across verticals as email does.
2. Composing email newsletters that convert requires professional content writing expertise.
Professional writers can create campaigns that open a host of opportunities at every marketing stage. An effective cold email marketing strategy can be a gold mine for brands across industries.
3. Email newsletters have a long shelf life, giving even the tightest iGaming marketing budgets more bang for the buck.
Conversions are the ultimate benchmark of success for email newsletters. In the iGaming context, that could mean getting new players to sign up, existing customers to opt into exclusive bonuses, or directing them toward revenue-generating activities.
You might be able to draft the spiffiest iGaming newsletter with all the UX/UI bells and whistles, but if its content isn’t formulated to maximize conversions, it’s not working.
How to Write iGaming Email Newsletters That Truly Stand Out
Generally speaking, email sequences within iGaming newsletter campaigns tend to be shorter than regular medium or long-form content for websites.
They’re also easier to pore over than your sexy, stat-filled infographics.
Nothing against beautifully done infographics, but…
…therein lies the rub: newsletter content – much less iGaming newsletter content – is challenging because it has to stir up engagement among readers and call them to action in just a few sentences.
iGaming content marketers and managers that see newsletters as nothing more than just another piece of content to whip up will likely lose engagement and customers over the long run.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Therefore, in order to retain iGaming audiences’ interest, spur ongoing engagement, and ultimately achieve better click-throughs, crafting compelling newsletter content about online casinos and sportsbooks is a must.
And depending on what your iGaming email newsletter wishes to achieve based on your target demographic’s tastes and preferences, you can use the following hacks to create compelling email newsletter content that converts, and liven up your emails with engaging, value-added content.
We’ve compiled 7 of the best iGaming email copywriting best practices for content writers, project managers, and marketers working in the iGaming industry.
1. Map Out the Content Plan Ahead of Schedule
One of the most challenging things for iGaming content marketers and project managers is obtaining a steady stream of fresh, relevant, and targeted ideas to publish.
Email marketing is all about consistency and frequency – running out of content, to be quite honest, is not an option.
iGaming content marketers know this all too well, and it’s a very valid concern for those that worry about where to get the next interesting blog article, viral social media post, how-tos, and other content formats that support the broader online casino and sportsbook industry.
Fortunately, by thinking ahead and mapping out the content plan in advance, you’ll be able to focus on generating content for a variety of formats over a set period of time.
Implementing a content plan enables various team members involved in creating and distributing iGaming content to stay on the same page – keeping abreast of what’s happening and by when it needs to happen.
Here’s a simple content plan you can adopt for iGaming email marketing:
Date
This is when your email is due to be sent out. Will you be sending out your emails daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly?
Choosing a frequency and sticking to planned dates will help you and your team stay on track with your deliverables.
Topic/Theme
This is the theme of your iGaming email newsletter – a brief overview of what its contents will be all about.
What’s going on in your online casino or sportsbook? Are there any company updates your customers might need to know about? Any new offers or promotions players might want to avail of?
Some good iGaming newsletter examples might include a compilation of weekly blog articles on sports betting, a round-up of the latest iGaming industry news, a rundown of the weekend football fixtures’ predictions, or game quizzes for prizes.
Purpose
What do you wish to achieve by sending said email? Is it meant to attract new customers with deposit bonuses? Is it meant to bring attention to the casino’s latest offerings? Do you need your readers to respond or do you need to get them to act?
Each email must have a purpose or goal; frivolous, no-value added communications are a one-way ticket to your reader’s spam folder. Implementing this on your content plan will help you always stay on point.
Call-To-Action (CTA)
What action, if any, do you wish your readers to take upon reading the communication? For instance, if you want to get occasional players to play more frequently, your CTA would probably look something like a button for claiming a bonus offer or free spins.
On the other hand, if you wish to direct their attention to another content format, then you could send them a link to your latest vlog or blog post.
Closing out every email with concrete and actionable steps that retain customer engagement, enhance relationships, or otherwise generate action is of paramount importance.
One of the strongest call-to-action is the fear of missing out or FOMO, and FOMO is something good CTAs often draw from.
Just as your newsletter content should be, CTAs should be clear and as specific as to what they need the reader to do next. They should also be placed in such a way that they are easily visible without crowding the layout.
Want to drive your readers to act? Add CTA buttons to content pages or landing pages for deposit bonuses, add links to exclusive subscriber promotions, ask recipients to personally communicate via phone or email, or give out bonuses on referrals.
The possibilities are endless.
And voila! Putting together a content plan isn’t rocket science after all, is it?
2. Think of a Catchy Subject Line – No Clickbait
47% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone, while 69% of them report email as spam based on the same criterion.
The whole purpose of email marketing is to ultimately get people to read your emails.
That’s why you should take the time to think about an attention-grabbing subject line that piques the audience’s curiosity.
And, as tempting as it is to overhype and overmarket something, never mislead the audience by sending them clickbait-y subjects. That’s a one-way ticket to Spamland (and curtains for any hope of communicating your message).
3. Prioritize Readability
Sending out walls of text is so passé – and a surefire way to have your bounce rates increased. Egregiously long blocks of text do not respect the reader’s time.
In a world where attention rates are shortening across the board, brevity is paramount.
In general, individuals gain more visual pleasure from reading texts by “aerating” them with commas and delimiters.
Subsequently, each time you split your content into bite-sized, well-placed snippets, it lends a captivating gravitas to it, making for a more compelling and concise piece of text to read.
Use space.
Lots of it.
See what we did there? Space can be used to highlight the most important things about a certain passage in the most emphatic yet understated way possible.
4. A Simple, Mobile-Optimized Layout That’s Easy on the Eyes
Newsletters should be concise for readers to be able to quickly parse through its main talking points.
To improve readability, use headers, bulleted lists, and well-placed images without overwhelming readers with too much stimuli.
Ensure that the copy is also focused exclusively on the needs of the iGaming audience.
Using visual assets such as images and videos helps further brand awareness and name recall. Implementing a comprehensive newsletter template optimized for a wide array of mobile devices and email clients familiarizes your customers and gives them an idea of what to expect – and in doing so, gives value to and respects their time.
5. Personalize Every Step of the Way
Personalizing correspondences isn’t exactly cutting-edge, but it has changed a lot over the past few decades.
But personalizing emails in 2022 goes way beyond just using your customer’s first name.
That doesn’t work anymore in this day and age.
Nevertheless, If you want your email to stand out in your customer’s inbox, you do NOT want your emails to look like cookie-cutter mass-market blasts.
Rather, you’ll want them to be personalized at a 1:1 ratio, just as though they were receiving a personal message from an old friend – or your mom, for good measure.
The numbers don’t lie, either: according to Salesforce, 84% of customers responded that being treated like a person, rather than just being another number, is critical to winning their business.
No personalization? No wallet share. Customer expectations are THAT high.
Today is the age of hyper-targeted and personalized advertising.
Therefore, your newsletters should include special-interest topics for your dedicated customers, helping you derive the insights that will engage your customers and enhance their overall reading experience.
This might include sending them personalized birthday or holiday well-wishes with promotional offers they could avail of, or directing them towards customized landing pages to provide another layer of personalization.
6. Test, Analyze, and Measure
Testing, analyzing, and measuring the statistics of your marketing campaign is a critical aspect of email marketing success.
Insights such as which subject lines are opened, which topics are most read, which days of the week and times of the day garner the most engagement, as well as the number of new subscriptions and unsubscriptions, among other key performance indicators for customer retention.
Moreover, brands that A/B test their emails gain an ROI of 48:1.
Conducting A/B tests and KPI reviews helps you measure the success of your email newsletter. Brands that don’t conduct split testing for their campaigns are losing out on having their content marketing strategy implemented at their full potential.
The modern players demand personalized experiences, a humanized tone, and most importantly, the ability to be heard and educated about your brand differentiators.
Crafting engaging email newsletters plays a huge role in convincing and converting core iGaming audiences while building your brand’s authority. They cultivate trust with your core audience, resulting in conversion rates that ultimately translate into revenue.
Being familiar and available to your audience helps you achieve an air of approachability, consistency, and predictability to your customers. In turn, this allows your potential customers to feel good about playing at a particular online casino or sportsbook, and build real, long-lasting rapport with your community.
Header Image Source: Photo by Maksim Goncharenok on Pexels
How did you like May Thawdar Oo’s blog post “7 Proven Hacks for Creating Engaging iGaming Email Newsletters”? Let us know in the comments if you have anything to add, have another content idea for iGaming blog posts, or just want to say “hello.” 🙂
