2024-07-04 18:53

Working With Affiliates

Affiliate marketing is a cornerstone of the iGaming industry’s promotional strategies. It’s a powerful tool that drives targeted traffic to gaming platforms, essential for attracting and retaining players. This is particularly crucial in markets with strict advertising regulations.

By collaborating with diverse partners, iGaming businesses can tap into new market segments and employ various marketing tactics to engage different gamer demographics.

What is this?

At its core, affiliate marketing is a performance-based strategy that delivers measurable outcomes. It’s the efficient half of your marketing spend, ensuring that resources are invested wisely. Affiliates generate content to attract a large audience, guiding them to partner sites. They earn commissions based on the players they refer, with each user click on a unique link translating into a predefined percentage of the transaction.

Evolution

The iGaming ecosystem’s affiliate marketing is rapidly evolving, with regulatory shifts presenting both opportunities and challenges. Adapting to these changes is vital for success. It’s important to understand how to navigate affiliate marketing across various regions and how to optimize strategies amidst fluctuating regulations.

Role

Affiliates play a pivotal role by creating content that resonates with a broad audience, directing traffic to partner sites, and earning commissions based on referred players’ actions. As online gambling grows, affiliate programs become key components of a comprehensive gambling affiliate strategy, fostering beneficial partnerships.

A Tiered Perspective

Affiliate marketing, a pivotal component of global commerce, categorizes countries into three tiers based on economic development and market potential.

Tier 1

Encompasses the most affluent and advertiser-friendly nations, known for their stringent regulations and competitive markets. Despite the challenges, these countries offer significant opportunities due to their affluent consumer bases.

Tier 1 Countries: These include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Tier 2

Represents middle-income countries with developing economies. The regulatory landscape here is less rigorous than in Tier 1, yet certain rules and standards must be observed.

Tier 2 Nations: This group comprises Andorra, Argentina, the Bahamas, Belarus, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guyana, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, the UAE, Vanuatu, Montenegro, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Fiji, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, and South Africa.

Tier 3

Includes emerging economies with less developed infrastructure and lower purchasing power. While regulations may be more relaxed, there are still guidelines to ensure ethical practices and responsible gambling.

Tier 3 Nations: These are Albania, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bahrain, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Vietnam, Gabon, Guatemala, Haiti, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Comoros, Congo, Egypt, Guinea, Georgia, Honduras, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Zambia, Chad, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Madagascar, North Macedonia, Mali, Mauritania, Mongolia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Moldova, Namibia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Suriname, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

Affiliate Marketing Across Regions

Africa

In Africa, affiliate marketing is nascent yet brimming with promise. The surge in internet access and mobile technology adoption is carving out new avenues for affiliates to tap into an emergent audience. Nonetheless, the terrain is marked by challenges such as ambiguous regulations, payment transaction complexities, and the vast cultural mosaic of the continent.

Latin America

For Latin American markets, the customization of content to resonate with local preferences is paramount. Collaborations with regional affiliates, who possess an intimate knowledge of the market, are instrumental in tailoring campaigns for optimal engagement and conversion. With rigorous gambling regulations in certain areas, compliance with statutory requirements and advertising norms is critical to circumvent potential pitfalls.

Europe

In Europe, the strategic deployment of diverse communication channels is vital for audience development in affiliate marketing. This multipronged approach not only broadens the reach but also amplifies traffic to affiliate sites, thereby boosting conversion metrics. Given the unique advertising laws and promotional constraints within each European nation, meticulous legal compliance is essential. The European affiliate marketing domain is a vibrant and contested arena, where astute strategies and professionalism pave the way for substantial industry advancement and expansion within the iGaming sphere.

Evaluating an Affiliate Program

At the forefront is the caliber of content produced by affiliates. It’s not enough for affiliates to generate substantial traffic; the traffic must also be of high quality. For blogs, this means offering well-crafted, insightful articles that provide genuine value. Trustworthy blogs are those that offer sound advice on casino gameplay or betting strategies. For streamers, high-definition or ultra-high-definition video quality, coupled with engaging charisma, is essential to retain viewership.

The result of quality content is twofold: it attracts a large audience and cultivates an informed audience that is more inclined to engage in gameplay themselves.

Regulatory Compliance

Another critical aspect is the regulatory landscape that affiliates or their programs operate within. Regardless of audience size, legal non-compliance can lead to immediate market exclusion, erasing the audience and potential player inflow.

Partnership Management

Post-partnership, it’s imperative not to become complacent. Continuous analysis of the affiliate’s traffic—both in size and quality—is necessary.

This is particularly pertinent when affiliates earn commissions per sign-up. The longevity of the players they refer is vital to justify the commission.

Compensation Models

This necessity often leads to the preference for a revenue share (revshare) compensation model. In this model, affiliates earn a portion of the referred players’ lifetime losses. This incentivizes affiliates to foster an audience that is not just passive viewers but active participants.

Contact the BCraft team

BCraft is the key to overcoming the complexities of affiliate program data management for online gambling platform operators. This advanced tool allows you to monitor and review affiliate programs with real-time analytics, streamlining decision making.

We offer a comprehensive solution that integrates multiple affiliate systems, data management and commission model formulation - all accessible through an intuitive back-office interface.

Get a free consultation to learn how our team can increase traffic and revenue to your website by building an affiliate base.