TopRanked.io Weekly Affiliate Digest: What’s Hot in Affiliate Marketing [Codere Affiliate

As a reminder, our closing thought last week was about the impossibility of ever truly winning an argument. That is, if winning is defined as genuinely changing someone’s mind on something and not just “owning” them in a viral “rekt libs” moment.

Of course, with this whole affiliate digest thing being more about marketing and less about debate team skills, we of course linked this to marketing.

Conclusion — the same logic applies. That is, you’re rarely going to sell something to someone who doesn’t already want it. The best you can do is give them a gentle nudge towards the “right” product/decision/etc.

So, now we’re all caught up, what’s this SEIGMA report got to do with changing people’s minds?

Easy — the report was (partially) about advertising’s influence on people. Specifically, advertising for gambling products.

The interesting finding was that 77.8% of respondents said advertising has no impact on their gambling behavior.

Guess that means there were other things that gently nudged them into it.

Now, to be precise here, this is talking about influence on behavior — that is, do people gamble more or less because of advertising? It’s not asking whether advertising caused them to gamble in the first place. Although, presumably, people who gambled “more” because of advertising would include people who weren’t gamblers who then took up the hobby because of advertising.

Anyway, long story short, for the grand majority of people, advertising had no impact on their behavior. Then there were 15.1% who said advertising made them gamble less. And that leaves about 7% of the population who gamble more because of advertising.

So, cool story aside, what are we to make of this?

Well, let’s take a look at a couple of other findings from the report. Specifically, the findings from follow up questions to the people who gambled more.

Here’s what tempted them:

• 64.3% were tempted by advertised promotions
• 26.6% were tempted by targeted promotions
• 28.6% were influenced by general news stories

Now, as for what type of “general news stories” were tempting people to gamble more, I have no idea. If I were to take a wild guess, it might be things like some breaking news story about some development with a sports team which creates a fun betting opportunity. Insert link to sportsbook, and bingo.

But that’s just a wild guess.

As for the whole promotions thing, there’s not much guessing needed there.

Running general ads for promotions (e.g., sign up bonuses) was the biggest driver. And “targeted” promotions also had some influence — but way less than general promotions.

Takeaway

The big takeaway here is just how effective broad advertising for gaming promotions is.

Remember, 64.3% of people were tempted by promotional advertising, far outpacing other influencers like “targeted” promotions and “general news stories”.

Now, what comes next is going to veer into reading between the lines more than drawing from hard data. But I think it’s a pretty logical conclusion to say that promotional advertising would likely be the biggest driver of new signups at a sportsbook.

Just think about it. Apparently, advertising has little influence over people’s behavior. But when it does, it’s far and away because it was advertising a promotion.

And hey, this makes a lot of sense. I mean, when do people spend the most money on just about anything?

Yeah, that’s right. When there are big promotions.

And while “gambling more” (the behavior in the report) is distinct from “signing up with a new sportsbook”, the two aren’t mutually exclusive either. I mean, one can imply the other.

And also, even when they are exclusive, people change providers all the time. Promotions help that to happen.

So here’s an idea — if you’re currently running any sort of campaigns for casino and/or sportsbook operators, why not try highlighting promos in your campaigns?

After all, most of your content is likely being consumed by people already into gambling. So your job is to convince them that they absolutely must sign up with your operator of choice. And it would seem that promotions are the best way to do this.

But, what do you do if your current operator’s not offering great promotions to tempt new sign ups with?

Well, here’s one solution. Join a program with a product that runs constant promotions.

Need an example?

How about the Codere affiliate program? Here’s an example of what they’re running right now.

Yeah, I know, I know. Sorry it’s in Spanish. But surely you can read the 200€ bit.

And I assume you can decode the “1” and the “deposito” bit. My guess is that’s “first deposit”.

Wanna tell me your traffic won’t be influenced by that?

Of course it will. So go sign up for the Codere affiliate program now.

Here’s Another Fun Fact

On the topic of that little SEIGMA report, here’s another fun fact that I thought was worth mentioning but didn’t want to burry in the bit about advertising and behavior.

In 2022, about 4% of people in Massachusetts had gambled with an “illegal” (i.e., offshore) sportsbook.

In 2023, that figure skyrocketed to 18%.

Wanna know what changed between 2022 and 2023?

Yep, you guessed it — Massachusetts legalized online online sports betting in late 2022.

Weird right?

Now, I’m not going to even pretend I know the reason why this happened.

Maybe people were just more honest once online gaming was less of a (legal) taboo.

Or maybe the whole “well, technically it’s legal now” thing influenced peoples’ behaviors.

Who knows.

But what I do know is that there’s a takeaway here.

Takeaway

The takeaway here is that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Obviously, legalizing online gaming helps “legitimate” operators (i.e., deep-pockets operators with the funds to lobby politicians and government officials for preferential treatment).

But it also seems that there’s a positive spill over effect into “illegitimate” operators, too.

Anyway, this whole rising tide lifting all boats thing means something simple — you’re probably going to find the most gamers in places where gaming is already legal. Even if you’re promoting an “offshore” operator that refused to lobby the local government.

So, here’s a few ideas you can use here.

• Check out our BetUS Affiliate Program review edition for details about where online gaming is legal in the USA. (Psst… that edition’s a year old, so there will be some minor changes. But it will cover 95% of the current situation.)
• Check out our Bovada Affiliate Program review edition for a recent “offshore” operator we reviewed — an operator that pays great commissions and operates literally (almost) everywhere. (PS: I say “almost” because Bovada isn’t entirely rouge. E.g., just this week, it stopped accepting gamers from Michigan and Colorado after the states sent “cease and desist” letters… but everywhere else is probably still fine.)
• Alternatively, if you’re more into promoting operators that are properly licensed in whatever geo you’re targeting, an operator like the Codere affiliate program is hard to beat.

Closing Thought

So, after spending the week looking at the findings of a boring research report, guess what we’re gonna do for our closing thought?

Yep, we’re gonna look at another boring research report.

This time, it’s another hot, fresh-off-the-press report about another tired old topic.

Yep. We’re gonna look at the whole features vs. benefits thing.

Most of you should already be familiar with this. But for those who aren’t, the tl;dr is that generally, you should sell “benefits”, not “features”.

For example, let’s say you’re selling Axe body spray.

Instead of selling its “features” (it stinks), sell its (supposed) “benefits” (it gets you laid).

Apparently, it’s way more effective that way.

But, like everything in marketing, so much of what we’re told tends to resemble hearsay more than hard facts.

And that’s why I’m pulling up this research report. Because it finally gives us some hard facts based on a bunch of different studies.

Here’s one example from one of the studies:

• In part A, people bought more yogurt products when they were categorized according to benefits (2.89 items) as opposed to attributes (1.94 items).
• Dito for part B, which used bread products (0.63 items for “benefit-based” vs. 0.40 items for “attribute-based”).
• Consumers also rated “benefit-based” categorization more positively (8.71) than attribute-based categorization (7.59).

That first study was based in a physical setting.

But what about online where we operate?

Lucky us, the authors reviewed some studies here, too:

• In one study, people added more teas to their shopping basket with benefit-based categorization (4.91 items) vs. attribute-based categorization (3.98 items).
• Another showed that the benefit-based categorization enhanced mental imagery (5.57) more than the attribute-based (5.22)
• It also increased anticipated consumption value (5.90 vs. 5.76).

There was plenty of other data in the report, too. But I have a limited attention span. And you don’t want 20 thousand words to wade through.

So let’s just get to a few examples to help you put this into practice.

Let’s start with the features vs benefits used in the studies I just quoted, starting with the first one about yogurts.

In that study, they compared yogurts categorized on features like “low-fat yogurt”. When they categorized them by benefits, they instead said things like “high protein for muscle building” and “probiotic-rich for digestive health”.

For the bread one, they compared categorizing by “type” of bread against bread categorized by things like “mood-boosting” and “healthy diet” bread.

And for the tea study they did online, it was a similar story. Teas categorized by attributes like “green tea” and “chamomile tea” sold less than those categorized by benefits like “stress relief” and “energy boost”.

Oh, also, here’s one other fun finding — the advantages of the “benefits” approach is nullified as soon as you tell someone to “imagine” themselves. So don’t go using any of the cheesy “imagine yourself” type of copy. Apparently, it turns people right off.

Anyway, now we know this stuff works for a fact, let’s put it into an example you can use right now.

How about selling a sportsbook that’s offering a 200€ first deposit bonus?

Well, arguably, that’s almost a benefit in itself. Most people don’t need much prompting for their minds to immediately see the benefit.

So you could just say “Get a 200€ bonus on your first deposit” and be done with it.

But I think we can do better. So let’s try something like this.

“Bet bigger with a 200€ first deposit bonus.”

You could also change out “bet bigger” with a bunch of other stuff. I mean, why not also try “Bet for free” or some other variant?

Why not?

Oh right. You don’t know which sportsbook’s offering a 200€ first deposit bonus for you to trial this with.

That’s okay. I do.

It’s called Codere, and you can promote it with the Codere affiliate program.

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(Featured image by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS via Pexels)

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