Casino gifting can look deceptively simple. Pick a product, determine the quantity, place the order, promote the giveaway, and watch people come through the door.
But if that is where the strategy begins and ends, we’re missing the point.
A gifting program should move something in the business. Maybe the goal is an incremental trip. Maybe it’s reactivating players who haven’t visited recently, moving play to a different day of the week, strengthening a VIP relationship, or giving our guests another reason to choose us.
I recently sat down with four professionals who live and breathe this business: Stephen S. Jemal, Chairman of the Board, Made Simple; Zack Raucher, Chief Executive Officer, Global Promotional Sourcing; Harry Hidary, managing partner, Comp Trading; and Dean Katris, owner, Power Promotions. We talked candidly about what operators should expect from their gifting partners — and what we should be asking ourselves.
Because before we ask, “What should we give away?”, we need to answer some bigger questions.
1. What are we actually trying to accomplish?
Start here. Not with the gift.
A busy gift day looks great. The casino is full. Guests are walking around with merchandise. Redemption is high. But does that mean the program worked?
Raucher challenged one of the easiest measurements to fall back on: “Number of redeemed gifts is not the metric to use.” Instead, he pointed to something he believes is underutilized: Who came back who hadn’t been there in a while? Did the gift drive incremental play or an additional trip?
That is the conversation we need to have before the PO goes through.
If I’m asking my executives to commit to a six-figure continuity program — or putting together a gifting strategy that could represent millions annually — I need the data and the confidence to explain what success looks like.
Otherwise, an executive is walking the floor at 12:30 a.m. counting how many suitcases are still rolling around and deciding the promotion didn’t work.
I’ve been there.
Agree on what you’re measuring before you start.
2. How Well Do We Really Know Our Players?
Jemal has a twist on KYC — Know Your Customer — that fits this business perfectly: “KYP: Know your players.”
Casinos have collected player data for decades. Use it.
Jemal’s larger point is that gifting shouldn’t be driven by somebody’s opinion of what players might like. Especially with VIPs, he argues for a data-driven approach based on the individual property, its definition of VIP, player preferences, and budget. As he put it, “It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.”
I couldn’t agree more.
We have properties with 300 machines and properties with 3,000 machines. Some have hotels and restaurants; some don’t. Our players aren’t the same, and neither are our VIPs.
Know who you’re targeting, what behavior you’re trying to influence, and what those players value. Then talk about the gift.
3. Have we defined the outcome before we build the program?
Katris kept coming back to one question: What is the desired outcome?
For a VIP program, he goes one step further: “Define a VIP for your property.” Every property has different parameters, so he wants to understand the target group, the desired outcome, and the type of experience the casino wants to create before building the program.
That’s an important distinction.
It’s not always about getting the most people through the door. Sometimes it’s about getting the right people through the door. Maybe we’re moving a day of the week. Maybe we’re looking for an incremental trip. Maybe we’re building an experience around a very specific player segment.
And then there’s planning.
Custom and imported merchandise can require 75 to 90 days, but Katris also made the case for staying nimble: Listen to the machines, listen to the players, survey them, and use what you learn to plan what’s next.
Don’t buy something just because it’s available.
4. Are We Measuring Fast Enough to Do Anything About It?
I’m a broken record on this one.
Get as close to real-time analytics as you can.
Two weeks is too long.
Fourteen days can put you into next month’s financials, budget season, or decisions affecting the next four months of your gifting calendar. I want to know what happened while I can still do something with the information.
Look at redemption, but don’t stop there. Look at lift, ROI, ADT, incremental trips, reactivation, day-of-week movement, and the behavior of the players who participated.
When we’re doing our data and pro formas and asking leadership to green-light a big buy — and often a quick buy — we need more than “people really liked it.”
We need the story behind the results.
5. Are we giving VIPs something they actually want?
Hidary summed up the VIP gifting challenge in a way only a gifting guy could:
“They usually have everything they need, and they don’t want your gift.”
Unless, he added, it’s something they actually want.
That’s why choice matters.
Hidary shared that in a program offering 50 items, the highest-redemption item accounted for only 12 percent of selections. People want different things. VIPs especially aren’t going to make a trip just to pick up another version of something they already own.
He saw it firsthand at a VIP event where guests walked past beautiful, expensive merchandise saying, “I have that. I have that. I have that.”
There was some healthy disagreement in our conversation about digital versus in-person fulfillment. Good. There should be. Digital offers convenience and choice. An in-person shopping or fitting event can create interaction and emotional connection.
There isn’t one answer.
That’s really the point of all five questions.
Your property is different. Your players are different. Your budget is different. Your desired outcome may be completely different from the casino down the road.
So don’t start with, “What are we giving away?”
Start with: Who are we trying to move, what are we trying to accomplish, and how will we know if it worked?
Then push the needle as far as you can.
