GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 37 - February 2017

What do you wish you could change about the industry? There is a distinct disconnect between casino software pro- viders, affiliate software providers and affiliate managers. What affiliate man- agers – and affiliates by proxy – need to truly succeed is rarely fully available. Casino software operators like to keep things close to the vest, as the saying goes, while most affiliate management soft- ware is designed for general affiliation, and casino affiliate management is very different. I would love to get all of these people in the same room and get them to understand each other. Where do you think the industry will be in five years? While I am no economist, this industry seems very stable. Google will continue to release their updates, and while this is not a popular sentiment, I think that is a good thing. Aperson looking to find a deck of cards online does not need to get poker rooms as a result. Even if that generates a click, or even a registration, the player will not be the same quality as that of a person looking to play online poker. With Google keeping everybody as honest as possible, this industry will continue as it has. the more productive the partnership is and the longer it lasts. Most mornings I take an hour to eat with my girls (ages 4 and 7) and take them to school. Once they are at school, the “typical day” goes out the window. Every day is different. Some days I can’t get off Skype, while oth- ers I barely touch it. No two days are the same, which I love about this work. I try to be done with my day when I pick my kids up from school, but I am always connected by my phone, so I am never fully off. Describe the office culture at Allegro. How does your team work together? While we have an office that we meet at, at times, we mostly work from home. We are all family people and balance our work with our families. The great thing about this team is that while small, we are mo- tivated and efficient. Skype and Google Drive keep us connected and emulate an office environment. While laid back, we keep things professional during office hours. There is always a lot to do and less time to do it in. On the flip side, when we get together outside of work, we try to keep work out of things, allowing us to be friends as well as colleagues. ship helps us get in front of top-quality affiliates who have the ability to take our offers and make them work. How do you ensure that payments are sent out on time? And when do your payments go out? We collect prepay- ments from our brands before we begin promotion. Those funds are held so that there is never any chance that we won’t have the funds or that affiliate payments are delayed by the brands. We pay on the first business day of the new month. It’s one thing to bring in a new person to a site. It’s another thing entirely to get them to stick around. What does Allegro do to retain players sent by affiliates? As we do not own any of the brands we promote, we have very little control over that. What we can control is who we part- ner with. We do our due diligence before agreeing to work with any new partners. Player retention is one of the key metrics that we look at when we evaluate a new brand. How do they retain players, what do they offer, how do they contact players and how often? These are all things we need to know before we agree to partner with a brand. Because we only offer rev- enue share opportunities, and because we earn a percentage of what the affiliates earn, player retention is as important to us as it is to the affiliate. Describe your typical work day. How much time do you spend in meetings? Howmany e-mails do you send out? Do you spend much time on the phone or on Skype? How many affiliates would you say you communicate with on a typical day? I am in the U.S., but most of my business is not. So, I get an early start to the day, usually around 5 a.m. I always start with e-mail; there are usually five to 10 waiting for me. I follow that up with a check of the affiliate system. Are there any new affiliates? Has anybody had a big gain or loss? I like to try to contact new affiliates with a personal e-mail to try to develop a relation- ship from the beginning. I have found that the better my relationship with an affiliate, Affiliate Manager Interview Series David with his oldest daughter Emily in their home in Celebration, Florida, 2013. 64 w w w . g p w a t i m e s . o r g