GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 31 - February 2015

incorporates a panda’s face. But it was all worth it — things like the crown create a link between casino and player, which we’re very proud of. Royal Panda offers both a live dealer product and mobile games. Were these products available when you launched? And how important are live and mobile products to your players so far? They were both available at launch, but not on the same scale we have now. Initially our live casino selection was equipped solely with NetEnt games, but during the sum- mer those were replaced with Evolution’s live casino games, which we believe to be the best available. Our mobile casino was thoroughly overhauled this past summer as well, and now offers a huge selection of games and a very slick interface. And it’s certainly something we feel our players appreciate and enjoy. Evolution’s live casino games are fantastic, not only from a technical perspective (such as their TV-quality video streams) but also be- cause they offer a great balance of variety and quality from a gameplay perspec- tive, too. And we’re now seeing more and more big winners on our mobile casino, so obviously players are digging that. The online gambling industry is awash with sites that started up and failed within a year or two, so affiliates are of- ten a bit reticent to sign on with a new site, choosing instead to wait and see if it's going to take off before they decide to promote the new brand. That said, how difficult has it been to convince af- filiates to promote Royal Panda? And what are the unique selling points you offer affiliates (and players) that will lead to success and longevity in this industry? RP Affiliates, our affiliate pro- gram, offers affiliates 50 percent revenue share for the first two months, no negative carryover and our assurance that their revenue share is guaranteed for life. And obviously, we ensure that our affiliate management team is staffed with friend- ly, professional staff, too. But I think our main strength is that we of- fer a casino that’s designed to retain players as well as attract them. And that’s not just important for us, but for our affiliates, too. Ultimately, we’re all dependent on play- ers continually playing — and depositing — for our revenue, but that’s something a lot of casinos seem to slip up on. So that’s something we’ve set about improving. Obviously, to start with, you want pro- motions that make a strong statement. So we have a creative marketing team that dreams up wild and wacky promotions that you just don’t find at any other casi- no. Take the space-trip promotion that we launched with, for instance: Not only was the prize itself something few of us will ever experience, the game the promotion revolved around, Starburst, is one that’s been immensely popular (and we gave most players 10 free spins for it, too). We felt that sent out a really strong, positive message to prospective players. But we also work hard to keep our play- ers. We have our Loyal Panda reward pro- gram, which gives them reward points every time they play. And we have a re- tention team that frequently gives our regular players personalized offers and promotions, which help reinforce that feeling of being appreciated as a cus- tomer. We had our customer service team in place six months before the launch, to ensure they knew Royal Panda not just in- side-out as a product, but also understood its values and mentality. Certainly, we’ve been very pleased with the reception Royal Panda has received among affiliates. From a very early stage, we’ve been fortunate enough to work with some big affiliates in promoting our brand, and we’ve had a continuous stream of affiliates signing up since launch. One of the most important issues online casinos must address is problem gam- bling. What does Royal Panda do to try to identify and help players with gambling problems? It’s something we take very seriously. As you probably know, Malta’s Lotteries and Gaming Authority (LGA) has strict rules regarding responsible gam- ing, and player protection in general, and naturally we ensure (as does the LGA) that we’re fully compliant in that regard. Furthermore, a large chunk of our cus- tomer service training syllabus is given over to responsible gaming, so our cus- tomer support team is able to help people when the need arises. It's one thing to bring in new people to a site. It's another thing entirely to get them to stick around. What does Royal Panda do to retain players sent by affili- ates? A player is a player as far as we’re concerned, so we always do our utmost to retain that player irrespective of whether they’ve been referred to us or not. To this end, we actually have a retention team dedicated to delivering on this aim. The team does a lot of promotion testing as well, so many of our regular players are ac- tually first in line to test new concepts. And if that concept is successful, we then con- sider rolling it out for other groups as well. And of course, we like to reward our play- ers with things like the bamboo bonus, Loyal Panda, gifts or free spins for new games, and the like, which we think helps keep them on board. Royal Panda's affiliate program — RP Affiliates — offers revenue share of 50 percent for the first two months, and a sliding scale from 25-50 percent based on net revenue and the number of new depositing players per month thereafter. Why did you decide on this commission plan? I think the main reason behind that (and our guarantee that referrals really are for life, and our lack of negative carryover) was fairness. A lot of the Royal Panda team (myself included) actually has experience working for affiliates, so we know how predatory a lot of affiliate programs can be. So we thought fair rates and honest terms would be the way forward. So one of the things we decided on ear- ly was that if an affiliate decides to pro- mote Royal Panda heavily (potentially in place of one of the big, established casi- nos), the least we could do was reward them accordingly. So not only would we start them off on 50 percent revenue share, we’d put in place the mechanisms required for them to stay on that rate, or close to it, if they saw value in the brand and continued to promote it to their audi- ence as such. And I think it’s something many of them have been happy with. Many programs are hesitant to offer CPA deals because they have been burned too many times by CPA fraud. Will you work with affiliates who prefer CPA deals over revenue share? If so, how do AFFILIATE MANAGER INTERVIEW SERIES Affiliate Manager Interview Series