Ten tips for a successful casino affiliate channel

How profitable can an affiliate casino channel be if done well? The monthly profit of established affiliate networks can exceed $1 million, with new casinos reaching $100,000 or higher just with the right affiliate channel. Affiliate marketing is becoming more profitable in iGaming, bringing more topics, events, and gatherings each year. In 2022, the iGaming industry’s total revenue reached $173 billion.

But to launch a successful affiliate channel for your casino brand, a few important aspects should be considered. In this article, we will find out how to keep the affiliate channel constantly active while bringing relevant traffic and boosting your revenues. The tips below will be helpful both for start-up brands and established casinos.

Ten key tips for a successful casino affiliate channel

So, let’s look at some fundamentals on how to enhance the promotion of your affiliate program for online casinos and draw in more gamers.

1. The right software is the base. Choose carefully

Specialists who have been in the market for some time know the value of appropriate software. Using better affiliate software will give you more alternatives for promoting your affiliate channel and better control over your campaigns. But what factors should you focus on while selecting software? The truth is that affiliate software is a highly complex mechanism that needs all the necessary marketing, security, and reports tools while providing the ability to create flexible commission models and provide transparency for both casinos and affiliates.

(!) Naturally, the software solution that runs the affiliate program is essential to its success. For the high-end iGaming affiliate software, check PartnerMatrix, which covers all the aspects of modern affiliate marketing.

2. Create a partner website to showcase your affiliate program

A partner website is the best way to showcase your offer and engage the most relevant affiliates. On your website, affiliates should find not only technical information about your offer and commissions but also the advantages they’ll receive after partnering with your casino.

Consider the following steps when creating a presentable website:

• Use simple navigation and a visually appealing design.
• Present your commissions as simply as possible, and mention the number of your program benefits.
• Create an FAQ section where visitors can find the answers to all possible popped-up questions.
• Keep the content updated frequently to match the rates and new commission models.
• If you have testimonials, it’d be great proof of trust in your program.
• If all mentioned above is done well, remember to place contact information and the ability to give feedback (chats, emails, social media links).

3. SEO is key in promoting your affiliate program

Search engine optimization is one of the most important aspects to implement for your website. To engage the best types of affiliates, you should use the right keywords and have a user-friendly webpage. The right structured website with informative landing pages will help you generate organic traffic, bringing exactly those affiliates who interest you.

You must always keep an eye on your website’s possible technical issues. Install certain SEO plugins, use HTTP protocols, create correct meta tags and titles, improve on-page and off-page SEO, check and improve your website speed, and more. In order to boost your traffic, you can also initiate outbound publications, create guest posts, and bring relevant traffic to your webpage through link building.

4. Grow your ranking through link building

As part of your SEO strategy, link building will assist you in obtaining backlinks from authoritative websites in your niche, which will help you score higher in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. In their case study, Ahrefs showed how pages with more backlinks rank higher in Google or any other search engine.

Another interesting study by Backlinko revealed that, after examining 11.8 million search results on Google alone, the majority of the pages that appeared high on the search engine results page had 3.8 times more backlinks than the website that appeared lower on the list.

5. Visit iGaming events and start networking offline

The worldwide gaming community, which includes affiliate marketers, casino operators, software providers, and iGaming bloggers from all over the world, is brought together by several events, conferences, and exhibits throughout the year. One of the most famous industry events is ICE London, which is held each year and brings together iGaming specialists from all niches.

Another “must-go” event is LAC London, which is the continuation of ICE London with a focus on the affiliate industry. iGB Amsterdam is another big gathering that benefits thousands of affiliate specialists from various gaming verticals.

Each market holds its own major event, such as Sigma Asia or Cartagena LatAm, focusing on regional regulation, responsible gambling discussions, and marketing issues. 2023 is full of iGaming affiliate-related events, after which you will return with a load of new information to think about, leads to process, partners to collaborate with, and superb ideas to bring to life.

6. Network through social media channels

Another important component of casino affiliate marketing is social media promotion. This entails producing and disseminating content on platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Through social channels, you can share your recent affiliate news, deal types for new affiliates, information about your casino bonuses, the latest software updates, new system features, etc. Connecting with influencers in the gaming/gambling industries might also be effective in engaging the right audience.

(!) Keeping in touch with your affiliates and newcomers on social media is crucial. A great company always finds time answering questions and comments and keep a constant connection with an audience.

7. Take advantage of online ads to reach your target audience

You may reach your target audience using online ads and ad networks. You can place information about your brand on websites and online media channels where your target audience is most likely to be found. Affiliates and bloggers can discover more about your casino and the offered rates by visiting your website via the links in these advertisements.

The gambling restrictions on casinos’ online promotions are what makes it challenging. Sadly, Google has robust policies and guidelines regulating gambling-related traffic. Before using the most precious iGaming advertising terms, you must fit certain rules of regions. Facebook Ads are similar to Google Ads but with additional limitations.

(!) Apart from major advertisers, there are other options to promote your brand. In this article, you can learn more about popular ad networks in the iGaming industry.

8. Set the right affiliate commissions

There are several ways in which an online gambling platform рrewards its partners:

• Revenue Share/Revshare – allows affiliates to receive a part of the amounts that players lose on the gambling site during a certain period of time/whole lifetime.
• CPA/ Cost per action – the CPA model rewards affiliates every time the player, after clicking on the link, fills out a contact form, makes a deposit, registers, or performs another action agreed with a casino.
• Hybrid model – this is the name of the mixture of RevShare and CPA models. For example, casinos can pay a certain amount for a certain action but also continue paying a commission from players’ spending, as in the Revenue Share model.
• First-Time Depositor/FTD commissions are popular in iGaming and are a type of CPA model. Affiliates get their commissions only when players make their first-time deposit.

(!) In order to develop the right commissions, first, you need to analyze a certain region and niche and get familiarized with the rules and common rates.

9. Make sure your emails look great

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generates an average ROI of 4300% for US-based companies. No doubt, email marketing can also be effective for casinos looking for the right affiliates. By pushing correctly structured and informative content through email channels, you can drastically higher the quality and quantity of interested affiliates. Another thing is where to get those relevant emails. This is another task you need to constantly maintain by creating email campaigns, finding those emails in relevant directories, and creating target audiences for your email marketing.

(!) Email marketing is relatively simple, establishes a direct connection with your prospects, and provides additional traffic sources.

10. Build an effective affiliate marketing strategy

In order to reach success in all the previous points, you need to implement the right strategy for your affiliate marketing. This should include a clear plan for promoting your casino program: what communication channels you use, how often you post on your blog, and what design and tone of voice you should implement.

The answers to these and many other questions can be found in analyzing your market, finding out all the essential aspects of your competitors’ businesses, writing down a clear plan and starting to bring those plans to life. Only through well-planned marketing will your affiliate channel begin to make a profit and soon pay off all investments.

Summing Up

In addition to this, we should clearly understand that each region and niche may vary in the sense of commission rates, affiliate types, and common game rules. But another tricky thing is that even established rules change over time, so it is another important thing to keep a constant gaze at recent trends and new affiliate formats and tools.

If you’re looking for advanced affiliate software for your casino or gaming platform, reach out for a live demo presentation of the PartnerMatrix system!