Drumroll drawings. Tricked-out trucks. Cash tornadoes. Pulling off a successful casino promotion is harder than it may seem. Here are 15 tips, tricks, and ideas to get you there, without breaking the bank. (Unless, of course, Break the Bank is your promotion of choice.)

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1. Start with planning.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. It’s definitely more fun to think about what kind of game show briefcase you’ll use in that Deal-eo or No Deal-eo promo, or how the balloons will drop on the new car, but if your casino promotion idea is going to be successful, you need to set the fun aside and first ask yourself this: what, exactly, am I trying to do? Acquire new guests? Reward loyal guests? Increase guest spending? Increase visits? Once you settle on your goals, things get much easier.

A good marketing calendar has balance, a mixture of mass and targeted promotions. Sometimes the goal is to see a big bump in revenue; other times the goal is to boost a certain demographic or daypart. Targeted promotions can also elbow their way in front of the competition. (See #4.)

One other thing: Do not start with how much you should — or have to — spend. Expense should be planned in line with potential revenue, and you’re not going to know that until you define what you’re trying to achieve.

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2. Determine how you’ll measure success.

You’ll need to know what “success” means in order to achieve it. This may sound like a “duh,” but it can get a bit tricky. Be sure to isolate your base business, as sometimes traffic isn’t driven by promotions. And in addition to traditional ROI calculations, you may want to check in on other less-obvious factors like customer satisfaction or conversion. Be sure to define how you’ll measure those in advance.

3. Know thy audience.

In order to know the right day, the right way to spread the word, the right briefcase for that game show promotion, get to know your audience as well as you possibly can. Because no matter how enticing you may think your promotion is, if your audience hasn’t heard, isn’t interested, or can’t come, you’re in for a flop.

If, for example, drive time is short and your identified target audience isn’t employed full-time, you may be able to bump that 50% slot floor occupancy on a Tuesday. Or, your audience demographics may tell you the smartest day to make the biggest bang for your buck is Friday, even though the slot floor occupancy is already at 60%.

4. Keep your guests close and your competition closer.

The more you know about your competition, the better you can react or — better yet — act proactively. Keep an eye on competitive websites, Facebook pages, newsletters, and mailers. Identify timing and details on promotional events big and small, as well as competitive strengths, weaknesses, and potential impact on your business. And then act.

Say, for example, your competitor has their big monthly giveaway on a Saturday. Knowing your audience has limited discretionary income, you encourage they spend that money on the Friday preceding the giveaway with an enticing offer.

Technology makes competitive tactics crazy easy. Let’s say one of your high-spend customers is entering your competitor’s parking lot, headed to their Big Bucks promotion. You can send a real-time text that says, “Get over to our place in the next half hour and get a GUARANTEED 50 big bucks in FREE play.” Presto, guest-o. (Small Red Circle plug — we can help you get here. See #15.)

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5. Know when enough is enough.

A promotional calendar that’s filled to the brim with exciting giveaways, gifts, and games will produce more profits than a calendar that has sporadic promotions, right?

Wrong.

A constant merry-go-round of promotions, and those ponies lose their luster. Guests are no longer excited. And, if you’re always in promo mode, how can you calculate the bump a particular promotion creates? When you spend money you can no longer measure, you stop being able to adjust, react, and improve your bottom line. Plus, if you’re not careful, those happy, excited guests become angry, entitled guests who wonder where their free meal is already.

When it comes to promotions, choose quality over quantity. Go back to the drawing board and remind yourself of your objectives. Evaluate if and when promotions fill those objectives, and get ahead of the game. Or the tournament. Or the drawing. You get the point.

6. Brand it.

If your promo name looks and sounds just like your competitor’s promo name, you just might have spent your money giving them business. Brand colors, typeface, name, tone, personality — make sure that promotion speaks to guests in your voice. And the more unmistakably yours, the better.

7. Limit time.

We are predictable, we humans, and we assign greater value to limited-time offers. From an old-fashioned circus barker’s “hurry, hurry, hurry” to today’s social media flash sales, time — or lack thereof — creates buzz. And buzz creates action.

Choosing the right start and end dates can have a big impact. Don’t run the promotion long enough, and your guests won’t have enough time to enter. Run it too long, and it loses its punch. Two to four weeks is usually the sweet spot, but it’s important to experiment with your particular casino audience.

8. Create a sense of mystery.

We know gamers index high for risk-taking behaviors. So, while many of us love a good mystery, your audience really loves a good mystery. Unlike a typical promotion, use mystery, and you use a lever to create excitement separate from the actual prize. Through an intriguing, mysterious challenge or adventure, your guests are more engaged and more motivated, which leads to higher participation.

Another benefit to using mystery in your promotions? Cost containment. While a guest might not come in if he or she knows, statistically, she’s likely to win a small bit of free play, that same guest may decide to visit if she’s guaranteed a “mystery” prize (that turns out to be that same free play).

9. Use theater.

These days, guests, hosts, staff, they’re all busy. What’s more, they’re bombarded with lots and lots and lots of messages. So if you want to capture attention, generate enthusiasm, and otherwise engage, go a little wild and bring out the theatrics. A stage, an announcer, music, dancing, balloons, game show drama, whatever it takes. Out of the ordinary — and that can include downright wacky — is the name of the memorability game. In addition to kick-butt promotion results, memorable experiences have the added benefits of building a positive brand, getting great word of mouth, and, ultimately, creating a bigger audience for your next promotion.

10. So who’s promoting this promotion?

The stakes are higher than you may think. If your crew buys in, understands, and is genuinely enthusiastic about a promotion, you just got yourself a lot of free PR. If, on the other hand, staff perceives taking part in the promotion as a chore — or they’re in the dark about the specifics — no amount of promotional ad spend will make up for what happens when your guests walk in the door.

Moral: Promote your promotion. Sell your staff. In fact, treat your staff as your customer. If you do a good job, they, in turn, will pass on that enthusiasm, help create buzz, and be walking examples of your brand.

11. Spread the word wisely.

If you’re encouraging participation in a mass promotion, it makes sense, of course, to buy mass media. If it’s a targeted promotion, though, think outside the box for ways to get your message directly to your target.

Or another way to think outside the box: What about turning a big mass promo into an acquisition strategy by taking a winning car — or another prize so cool your target audience just has to check it out — and showing it off outside your casino? State Fair? Local mall? Where are the customers you want to acquire?

12. Check goals against data.

After the promo, it’s time to dig into the data. Did the promotion create incremental revenue? Did you see a lift year over year? What type of players participated? Were expenses in line with revenue, or were they too high? Did the promotion attract new member signup on the day of the promotion? How was slot occupancy? Quickly get to the bottom of what worked and what didn’t, so you can process the whole picture while it’s fresh. If your data analysts are pulling manual reports, and getting your hands on data just isn’t going to happen quickly, it might be time to get some help.

13. Debrief already.

The numbers are one thing, but there’s always more to the story. Within the week, while everything is still fresh, make sure to gather info from the people closest to the promotion. Ask what worked and what didn’t. How were the lines? The weather? The logistics? How was the wait for the valet? Get the customer experience story that rounds out the numbers.

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14. Present findings in a way that engages your audience.

Think about it. You just thoughtfully intrigued a target audience enough that you created a desired response. You now need to turn around and approach your managers, board, or tribal leadership the same way.

We’re guessing you have a small window of time in a room full of busy, sometimes impatient people. So get to what they care about right away: high level findings, recommendations, and an action plan. Keep it short and on-point. Create summary slides. And be prepared for those questions you know are coming.

15. Get help if you need it.

If your data analyst is pulling manual reports, and you’re not getting information for weeks, you can’t possibly gather great insight and react to that promotion in a timely or effective way. And if you have to analyze mail, email, and mobile communications separately, you’re probably sinking fast. How can you check goals against data across platforms, factor in guest experience, and recalibrate when you’re already well on your way with another promotion?

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You can say goodbye to the slow going and heavy lifting — without a big cha-ching out of your bottom line — with database marketing software that does the work for you. We happen to know just the one. It’s a database marketing software suite designed for casino marketers, by casino marketers, and it’s called RECON. This little genius projects your profit margin before your promotion even runs. RECON mines, schedules, and replicates across mail, email, and mobile. It’s easy so you save lots of time. And it’s affordable because you’ll be able to create and streamline more and more cost-effective programs. If you’d like more info about RECON, our proprietary database marketing software, click here or call Angel Suarez at 612-875-7131.

Right after last week’s column, I got an interesting email from a long time reader and in order to fully appreciate its value I am going to something I never do. I am going to quote his email in full.

He wrote, (quoting me)” ‘In short Las Vegas, is basically a multi-billion dollar bet on the fact that you are incapable of an early exit, and that’s certainly reason enough to believe that it’s a good strategy.’

Lets flip it around. We know that all (if not most) casinos make lots of money consistently. But casinos never stop taking bets & that means they don’t & never exit. They can lose 20 hands in a row to a full table of blackjack/baccarat players but cannot & would not stop play. No matter how many bets or how large the bets are (subject to table limits) are placed the casino will accept the bets & continue dealing the cards. So basically zero exit strategy even when the casino is going through a huge & extended losing streak. But in the end, long term, they still come up tops by the billions.

So how do they do it? One of the reasons is that every game the casino offers has an inbuilt edge that ensures long term profitability.

Applying this ‘casino model’ to trading, if you (ie any trader) have an inbuilt edge in your trading strategy/approach can’t you then go on trading without early exits & come out tops long term ie be the casino? If you can’t then does that mean your trading strategy/approach doesn’t have an inbuilt edge & you therefore have to rely on ‘early exit’ as your ‘edge’?

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I would very much appreciate your thoughts on this.”

He then included a very useful table of comparison that I am attaching as well.

Certainly his logic is highly seductive and he concludes with final pointed criticism of my approach, “So why do casinos still win in the end year in year out? Why do traders (99%) fail? And among those traders who win – their wins are nowhere close to the casinos’ profits (billions).

Is discretion killing traders? Should traders be more mechanical? Even continuing to trade despite long losing streaks?

Unlike the ‘insurance model’ which takes many small wins & a few large losses, casinos take all small losses, all large losses, all small wins, & all large wins. And they win in the end – big time.”

This is the argument of highly mechanistic traders and in principle it certainly sounds superior to my hunt-and-peck-make-3-pips-and-a-cloud-of-dust method of getting rich slowly and carefully. In practice however, it is not. Let’s start with the underlying foundation of the casino model.

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The game is RIGGED. By definition you cannot win at casino games. The rules are such that odds, no matter how small are always stacked against you. Casinos have absolute control because they control the rules of the game and create a fully closed end system. They know as surely as day follows night, as certain as death and taxes that given enough occurrences they will always win, because they have the edge – because they MANUFACTURED that edge.

Alas, no such certainty exists in the financial markets. Markets are the exact opposite of casinos. They are an open end system where the edge is always fluid and always changing. No system is certain for any length of time. The best example of that in my life occurred very early my career, when as a young broker at Drexel Burnham I helped raise money for commodity fund run by Richard Dennis. Dennis was considered to be a trading god, a man who was one of the original Turtles who was profiled in Market Wizards as the king of trend trading, a man who took $200 and turned it into $100 Million. After we raised money for him Dennis proceeded to lose almost all the funds trading worse than the most rookie retail trader I’ve ever seen. When it was all over he lost something like $75 Million in a matter of months. Why? Because he was stupid enough to believe that he had a permanent edge. In reality, the great boom in commodity prices was over and trend trading failed to work for more than three decades after that.

You know doesn’t believe in permanent edge? Insurance companies. They, better than anyone, understand that life evolves and changes. They constantly research, constantly adapt and constantly change their products. For example in the 1970’s it was a no brainer to sell annuities because most people died of smoking-related illness or cancer and the actuarial table hugely favored in the sellers. But the odds have changed, Better medicine, less smoking and healthier lifestyle have extended the lifespan considerably, so you better believe that insurance companies are not going to “trade that strategy” anymore.

That I think is my answer in a nutshell.

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Casino model is highly seductive because it is static. All you need to win is to repeat the algorithm ad infinitum. Real world is the farthest thing from being static. It is dynamic, always evolving and always demanding reevaluation of your assumptions on a near daily basis. That’s why the insurance model is the much better path for traders. Both casinos and insurance companies rely on the law of large numbers, but that’s where the similarity ends and to believe that your edge is stable much less permanent is to fall for a Richard Dennis scale of folly.