Monday Sales Call 9-1-08

In August, publishers that chose to offer our Races and Rolls promotion saw a significant increase in player sign-ups, deposits and MGR. The goal of Races and Rolls is to bring the biggest and best rake races and freerolls to Internet players throughout the world. If you haven’t opted in to this promotion you should consider that promotions like Races and Rolls give you competitive advantage over your competition. It enables your site to stand out and makes players excited about signing up with YOU. Promotions mean conversions. It is something you can accentuate and market to your userbase. When players see $100k in overlays, it encourages them to sign up for that free cash. Upon signing up on your site, the players deposit and begin playing poker. This process ends with you the publisher making more money.
Basically, there is no reason that you should not be taking advantage of this free promotion.
All members of the Poker Affiliate Solutions network of publishers are able to offer this promotion to their players. In September, you have the opportunity to offer over $100,000 in promotions to your players FOR FREE! For information on how to opt in to these promotions please contact me at TonyG at PokerAffiliateSolutions dot com.

In other news, for months, the poker community has discussed the pros and cons regarding the implementation of a new schedule for the final table of the 2008 World Series of Poker main event. Commissioner of the WSOP, Jeffrey Pollack, announced on May 1 that the final table of the main event is going to be delayed until November 9th. Pollack’s plan is to have the head ups battle for the first place prize of $9,119,517 broadcast live on ESPN on November 11th.
The WSOP commissioner commented on the reasoning behind the final table delay saying, “I think this same-day telecast is really going to be a cliffhanger that will be must-see appointment television. Really, what we’re doing is shifting the paradigm. Now, poker fans will be anticipating who will win instead of just talking about who won, and after seven weeks of live play at the WSOP, there will now be an additional 16 weeks of promotion and relevance that I think will lift the entire game of poker and further mainstream the incredible personalities that make the WSOP so much fun and so interesting.”
This is great news for us in the poker marketing business. I believe we will see an increase in mainstream media attention towards poker. And with media attention comes advertising. Online poker sites are already battling for commercial spots, player sponsorships, signs, and other branding techniques for the final table broadcast. We will see many of the rooms we offer on our sites all over the television. More media + more advertising = more players! These players get to online poker sites through online marketing companies like ourselves. We provide incentive for the new player to join a poker room through our rakeback program.
It is important you seize this great opportunity. New players will be looking to the Internet for information pertaining to online poker room offers. While our publishers in the United States are not allowed to purchase advertised links on the major search engines, our international publishers have more options. All publishers should also work on improving their SEO (search engine optimization) in anticipation of increased poker related word searches in upcoming months. Additional design work can be very helpful for publishers as well. As marketers, we want to keep our potential customer’s attention on our product. To increase conversion rates, be sure that your rakeback sub-domain is linked in a number of places from your homepage and interior pages. Come November, their will be an influx of new players combing the Internet for information on poker rooms and special offers. Let’s be sure that we are ready for this great opportunity to increase our player base and branding.

Tony G