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Ukraine Affiliate Marketing Strategies for Internet Casinos in 2025
The referral promotion sector is valued at $16 billion, with almost 20% of wagering contracts. The sphere has hundreds of online casinos, thousands of publishers and dozens of associate networks.
To receive real benefits from advertising and not get lost in this volatile area, a manager must choose an effective promotion strategy.
The Smart Money company offers to get acquainted with the specifics of referral advertising strategies in the gambling industry.
Affiliate Marketing: Features and Benefits
This is a modern method of promoting an iGaming project. An operator (advertiser) delegates marketing responsibilities to the associate to obtain measurable benefits including conversion growth, return of old customers and increase in profits. The remuneration of the partner directly depends on the quality of the work performed.
Entrepreneurs can cooperate with private webmasters or specialised companies. Another option is to integrate a referral program into a web casino and use it to select contractors to promote the gambling resource.
Benefits of Affiliate Advertising
The solution has the following advantages:
- High efficiency. A customer receives a quick and measurable result. This is an increase in internet traffic, conversion, the number of repeated registrations, and the profitability of web casinos.
- Actual payment. Affiliate remuneration is proportional to the work performed. The more attracted customers at the end of the reporting period, the higher the payment. This approach allows optimising advertising costs and redirecting the freed funds to strategic business development.
- End-to-end control. Operators can evaluate the effectiveness of an affiliate campaign as early as a week after its launch. If the client does not get the expected result, it is necessary to adjust the stages of promotion.
Nuances of Cooperation
The order of interaction between an advertiser and a publisher is fixed in the offer (contract).
This is a multi-page document that includes the following points:
- description of the digital casino (licences, entertainment catalogue, deposit/withdrawal methods, verification procedure, etc.);
- target audience (core — young people aged 18–34, additional user groups);
- traffic sources (paid, free, mobile, social, search, or native);
- current and planned indicators (conversion, number of repeated registrations, minimum client deposit, gross income);
- payment methods (for views, clicks, verification, and received revenue);
- geography (gambling is prohibited in some countries, so it is inappropriate to attract internet traffic from there);
- clarifications on creatives (used content);
- marketing analysis of competitors and previous advertising campaigns.
Popular Methods of Remuneration
The following payment schemes are most often used in affiliate offers:
| CPA | Fee per target action. For example, registration on the site, replenishment of a personal account, participation in gaming tournaments and much more. The more difficult the task, the higher the reward. If the attracted users visit the site and play several rounds of slot machines, the affiliates will receive a bigger income |
| RevShare | This is a percentage of the operator's net income, earned with the help of customer attraction by the publisher. At the time of account registration, the gambler is assigned to a specific affiliate. The income is calculated based on the results of the reporting period (usually a month). Further, a commission for the work of the publisher is paid from this amount |
| Hybrid scheme | The model contains CPA and RevShare elements. The scheme is distinguished by increased efficiency and value for owners of web portals |
Benefits of Referral Programs
Affiliate networks are platforms for popularising iGaming projects. Associates suggest their services, while advertisers — relevant offers.
The referral program acts as a kind of arbiter between a client and a contractor, protecting the rights of both parties.
Benefits of joining an affiliate network:
- access to thousands of options (operators can promote casino or sportsbook sites);
- assistance in the correct offer forming;
- control over the timely execution of contracts and payments under them;
- access to tools for tracking traffic, conversions and other parameters;
- publication of ratings of the best webmasters, etc.
Affiliate Advertising Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Internet casino owners should focus on the following metrics:
| Conversion rate (CR) | The parameter displays the percentage of gamers who have completed the target action to all users of the gambling site. The higher the conversion, the more effective the advertising. There are 3 types of conversion in gambling:
|
| Customer acquisition cost (CAC) | This is the amount that an operator spent on attracting one client. With CPA payment, the parameter will be equal to the associate's reward divided by the number of active gamers on the site. With the RevShare scheme, advertising costs (such as payment to the publisher or affiliate network commission) are divided by the number of users on the site |
| Customer retention rate (CRR) | To calculate the metric, the difference between client quantity at the start and end of the reporting period is divided by the number of gamers at the beginning. Ideally, the CRR should be 100%. This means that the publisher effectively interacts not only with potential customers but also with an already registered audience |
| Customer lifetime value (LTV) | This is the profit that the operator receives from a particular gambler throughout his gaming activity. Monitoring the LTV indicator is very important: the longer users spend time on the portal, the higher the entrepreneur’s income |
Best Referral Marketing Strategies
It is necessary to consider effective approaches to attract affiliate web traffic.
Collaboration with Leaders of Opinions
Most often, these are popular bloggers, streamers, current and former athletes, market analysts and other recognisable personalities trusted by subscribers.
Influencers have thousands of followers on social media and streaming sites. These are Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Instagram and other online communities. Thousands of users will view advertising content posted by bloggers, and some of them will follow the recommendations.
The key points to consider when choosing an influencer:
- the number of real followers (cheated users with the help of bot programs are not counted);
- interaction with the audience (engagement, activity, views, comments);
- image indicators and high reputation.
Use of Messengers
Targeting from social networks is one of the most effective methods of arbitrating internet traffic.
Partners often make posts in messengers, taking into account:
- high concentration of the target audience in social networks;
- legal advertising of gambling on most sites (Facebook is an exception because written permission from the administration is required);
- a rich selection of tools (from specialised applications, for example, WhatsApp Business, to services for creating full-featured chatbots like in Telegram);
- focus on mobile traffic, which brings most of the profits in the gambling industry.
An Integrated Approach to Promotion
It is great to combine the use of instant messengers with other methods of digital casino promotion:
- Native advertising. This is a simple and effective method to increase the number of views and registrations. Managers need to carefully select partners and platforms for publishing native ads. Placement of banners on the site of a bookmaker, for example, will cost quite a lot, but the result will exceed all expectations.
- SEO optimisation. This promotion method works well with targeting. Users learn from social networks about a new online casino, enter a query into Google or Yandex, see the site at the top of search demands and click on the link.
- E-mail marketing. This is the distribution of point notifications via electronic addresses. The method is effective for increasing repeat registrations and improving communication with a regular audience. E-mail promotion is often chosen by publishers, whose remuneration depends on the income of operators (RevShare scheme).
Placement of Copyright Content
To stand out among hundreds of marketing offers, it is necessary to use unique advertising material. Gamers look at text, audio and video content, banners, and messages.
Creatives are explained in a separate section in the offer, which describes the requirements for content quality, publication frequency, and much more.
It is better to work together to create content even if a partner brings good online traffic. This way, the affiliated person gets to know the wishes of the customer better, and the operator listens to the recommendations of the "field agent" — a person who directly communicates with the audience.
The Main Things about Referral Marketing for Internet Casinos
Affiliate promotion is a valid method of popularising an iGaming project.
- The advantages of the solution include its high efficiency, payment only for the final result, and end-to-end control. The nuances of collaboration are described in the offer, including the method of remuneration — CPA, RevShare or a "hybrid" scheme.
- Among the current strategies in referral marketing, cooperation with opinion leaders, the use of instant messengers and social networks, an integrated approach to advertising, and the placement of the author's content are distinguished.
- Whatever strategy the operator chooses, he should focus on such performance indicators as conversion rate (CR), customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV) and others.
Smart Money provides professional marketing services.
Our tasks include:
- development of a unique advertising strategy for the growth of internet traffic;
- introduction of modern promotional tools to improve communication with regular customers;
- connection of the best referral services;
- development of a site with attractive design and filling it with useful reference material;
- installation of chatbots to increase the number of gambling venues.
At Smart Money, you can purchase a turnkey online casino, connect an iGaming White Label project, rent HTML5 slots, or order the development of unique entertainment.
Contact us for more details.
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