During the first few years that social slots existed, we relied on real-money gaming slots thinking for monetisation. Mainly this: why would people spend their real money?
The answer was simple, we all believed. People would pay because they had run out of coins and they want to keep playing.
It makes sense, right? After all, that’s how it works in the real world. The thing is, over the last few years most leading social slots have been able to consistently spike their monetisation — even double it — based on features, mini-games and other tricks that have nothing to do with losing coins in the games themselves.
In this article, I’m going to take you behind the scenes and show you something surprisingly simple that should increase your revenue from your top-paying players by tens of percent a month.
Understanding why people pay
First, let’s define who this strategy is for. This is for your paying players. In fact, it’s for your top-paying players. These are the players who pay you hundreds, even thousands of dollars a month and in exchange get millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of coins at a great discount. With these coins, they can play for a week (if they’re heavy players) or months, without paying you again.
So they don’t need to pay, right? Wrong.
Sure, people pay for coins. The thing is that most people would pay for other things as well. And one of these things is status.
Players will pay to get status. And, even better for you, players will pay to keep their status. Once we understand that, we can create a system that allows us to benefit from this.
The Billionaire’s Club trick
Let’s start by giving status to your top-paying players. Let’s say that any player with more than a million coins is officially in the Millionaire’s Club.
Being in the Millionaire’s Club is cool. It gives the player special perks or discounts on things. But, most of all, it gives the player bragging rights. However, if their balance falls below one million, they will lose that status, the bragging rights that come with it, the discounts, etc.
But being a millionaire is kind of common, since people can get there by being lucky, without paying.
So let’s give them something to strive towards. Being in the Millionaire’s Club may be nice, but being in the Billionaire’s Club is really something to aim for. It has true bragging rights and absolutely amazing discounts and perks.
But, if a player drops below one billion coins, they are out of the club. So when that happens, they may get a message from you suggesting they pay more money for more coins to keep their status (even though they have more than 999 million coins and don’t need any extra ones). If you give great perks and a great way to brag about being in the club, most of them will pay to stay in.
Now repeat that process: being in the Billionaire’s Club may be awesome, but being in the Trillionaire’s Club is stupendous! It has the BEST perks and discounts. And it has the bragging rights of being in true rarified air, in a club that numbers only two or three people, or maybe even just you.
Once more, if the player drops below one trillion, they get a message from the game, and he or she will most likely pay — even though the last thing they need is more coins. Status is more important than coins. That is human nature.
You can see how this works: a player can lose their amazing status, a player must pay to keep that status, and the player always has a higher status to strive towards. Most importantly, players can brag and you should give them ways to do that.
One last tip
Since boasting is important, keep in mind that there is more than one way to do it.
Follow your players to learn how they brag. For example, if you look at Facebook fan groups of some of the top games, you’ll see that players like to post screenshots of massive wins. Some wins, you’ll notice, are wins of 100 million or more. The only way to get wins like that is to play with huge bets, the kind that mean that the player has paid to get a large number of coins.
Therefore, if people like to post really big wins, help them. Fix it so that anyone in any of the clubs can take a screenshot of their big win and big win celebration and save it or share it. The saved picture or shared picture will also have a stamp on it, stating Millionaire’s Club, Billionaire’s Club or Trillionaire’s Club, etc.
This is one example of many
These club monikers are just an example — no doubt you’ll have your own ideas about what to call your clubs. As long as you give players a status that they want, and threaten to remove it in the nicest possible way, this should work.
This is just one of the many tricks you can employ to improve monetisation in ways that have nothing to do with your actual slot games. There are many reasons people pay, especially people who have already paid you. Rather than trying to squeeze a few more non-paying players for a few dollars, why not go to your existing toppaying players and give them more of what they want, in exchange for significantly increasing their monetisation? Try this trick. You’ll be surprised.
Guy Hasson worked for Playtech for three years before becoming Playtika’s content manager, responsible for the content of Slotomania and Caesars Casino. He is now a social-slot consultant, specialising in game popularity. His website: hassonslots.com