Attracting new players is so important for casino brands, yet retaining them is then arguably a greater feat, which is where features such as bonuses, tournaments and complimentary points come in, Alina Ziatsikava, product owner at SoftSwiss, told CasinoBeats. 

Giving an overview of the player engagement and retention tools available on the SoftSwiss online casino platform, Alina explained that it is fundamental for operators to deploy a range of strategies that will ‘keep players in the game’ and fuel greater interest in their products.

CasinoBeats: With so many different online casino platforms available to operators, how is SoftSwiss helping its partners stand out through engagement features?

Every platform has its own set of tools on how to engage and retain players, i.e. bonuses, tournaments, lotteries and complimentary points (comp points). 

The SoftSwiss platform allows you to issue all kinds of bonuses to your player, whether that be sign-up bonuses, deposit bonuses, cash back bonuses, birthday bonuses, etc.

We also enable our partners to create any sort of tournaments, editing them, awarding prizes and search through created tournaments. In terms of our B2B partners, these tournaments have shown to drive both engagement and retention among online casino players.

CB: You mentioned bonuses, can you tell us a little bit about the different types of bonuses available on the SoftSwiss platform?

There are several bonus types. No deposit bonuses are issued to the player as soon as they confirm registration via email, thereby motivating the player to go ahead and play. 

First deposit bonuses, as the name suggests, are awarded to a player once their first deposit is made. This then increases the motivation of a player to engage with the online casino brand. Meanwhile, an Nth deposit bonus is issued for the Nth (2nd, 3rd, etc.) deposit the player makes, which increases loyalty of the player and makes them more invested in the game itself as well as the casino brand. 

And then there is the personal bonus, given to a particular player for certain events – for example, birthday bonuses or some kind of anniversary bonuses (the player’s registration date anniversary for instance) – increasing player’s loyalty. 

The reload bonus is a simple type that helps retain players and keep them engaged on hold (usually is performed on weekends or on Fridays) by granting bonus credit via a promotional code.

SOFTSWISS also has a variety of interesting bonus cases with automatic cashbacks for players who had a lot of deposits the previous day, but luck wasn’t on their side; or just good prizes without a wager for tournaments or some special holiday bonuses.

CB: Are these bonus offers sent out to all players, or is there a degree of personalisation, which enables them to be tailored towards individual bettors?

All things about bonuses are extremely customisable, they can be tied to the player’s country with very flexible conditions for clients.

Besides the common types of bonuses that we’ve already touched upon, the SoftSwiss platform also enables you to assign personal bonuses to individual players or prevent some players from receiving bonuses upon their requests.

When you issue a bonus to a player, the player will get a notification. Depending on the bonus settings, it can be issued to a player with status ‘not activated’ or ‘active’. In this case, the bonus money will be automatically added to the player’s balance. The player will be able to cancel the bonus. 

At SoftSwiss, we believe that bonuses are a sort of the pillar on which everything stands – they not only help to retain players but also acquire new ones in the first place. The player doesn’t need to do anything for this – they just get started and register at the casino.

CB: You previously touched upon tournaments. How are these fueling interest in gameplay? And can you give us some examples of previous tournaments?

Well firstly, to take part in a tournament, you need to be a regular, active player. But what we have seen with our B2B clients is that these limited-time tournaments are working to keep players in the game.

Among one of the most interesting tournaments that was held by a SoftSwiss client was an interesting “invisible” tournament where the players were simply informed that on a particular day the tournament would be held for two hours, for example, but without specifying the exact time. 

What made it so interesting is that it motivated players engage into gaming more and in case they happened to be playing during that ‘invisible’ specified time of day, this could mean that they would win a surprise prize in return.

Tools like these do immensely help towards increasing loyalty in terms of an online casino brand. The SoftSwiss online casino platform allows for the creation of tournaments based on different strategies. Consequently, our clients can be quite creative in the tournaments that they offer to players!

Another interesting example is lotteries. What we’ve seen is that lotteries motivate players to place more bets, therefore once again increasing player loyalty, becoming a so-called loyalty scheme for players. 

Lotteries are a good way of encouraging players to play their favorite games in a casino. Whenever there is an active ongoing lottery, players who make deposits will receive lottery tickets based on their deposit amount. Players can also exchange their comp points for a lottery ticket. Winners are selected randomly at the end of each lottery.

CB Speaking of comp points, what are these? And how are they helping to drive player retention and engagement? 

Typically, a casino often creates opportunities for players to accrue bonus points (comp points) for particular individual actions (bets, deposits). In other words, comp points are the internal currency within the casino that allows gathering certain benefits within the game. 

Delving into this a bit further, there are two types of comp points: status and redeemable. In a casino, you can use both types, or only one of the types depending on the necessity of the client. 

Status comp points are applied to user statuses within the casino. Accordingly, the more comp points a user earns, the higher their status. 

Meanwhile, the redeemable type (exchangeable) comp points are used to exchange for money, bonuses, free spins or lottery tickets. 

As is the case across any industry, the possibility of earning ‘points’ depending on your actions will likely keep the customer coming back. Casinos are no exception. By offering players comp points and the chance to elevate their status, it is fuelling additional interest in our partners’ sites and making sure their players keep playing.