Nearly 30 years after the first slot accounting and player tracking systems appeared, some 95 percent of casinos have their slot machines linked to an online card-based loyalty program. However, many casino marketers have yet to realize the full value of the data generated by such systems. Database marketing is still maturing three decades after the databases were created. Customer loyalty programs are still maturing as well, often with consulting assistance from some of the professionals who pioneered such programs...

The key, of course, to effectively using the technology allowing real-time offers and promotions is to know the customer. Casinos of all sizes have turned to consultants such as Randall Fine to help them mine the data being generated by casino management systems. Fine gained prominence in the marketing field at the former Harrah’s Entertainment, where he was one of the architects of the industry-standard Total Rewards national players club program. His Fine Point Group, founded in 2005, offers consulting and operations help in all management disciplines, but its core function has always been to help casinos develop effective customer loyalty programs.
 

“Most of our business is consulting to typically smaller operators who want the sort of horsepower the bigger operators get, but who can’t afford it,” Fine explains. “We have the ability to bring world-class loyalty marketing and analysis to smaller properties that can’t afford the full-time people to do those kinds of things.”

The Fine Point Group starts with the database that was created by a casino’s card-based loyalty program, and separates the customers into segments—unique groupings of customers based on frequency of visit, gender, age, marital status and other demographics. The goal, says Fine, is to customize the marketing for each group. “There are lots of ways we can group customers and speak to them in a more customized way,” he says. “Each customer can be sent a perfect set of offers for them, but almost no casinos are doing that. They send everyone four cash coupons.”
 

Fine says a good player loyalty system will offer personal demographic information, and track what customers play and when they play it, as well as what other amenities each customer likes. “Once you have all that raw data, you can figure out what to send that customer,” he says. “Operators should be sending each customer a unique offer based on them.”