A short while back, I had the opportunity to meet with Raquel Rodriguez, the VP of Marketing at The M Resort in Las Vegas, and Dennis Becker who is the CEO at CommerceTel, to discuss The M Resort’s mobile marketing initiative. The M Resort launched their mobile marketing initiative for the purpose of improving loyalty and frequency of visits to the casino from their target customers. The initiative is tied to their Imagine Rewards loyalty program and is already experiencing better than expected results.
CommerceTel assisted The M Resort in their implementation of their mobile marketing initiative.
The interview provides some insight and is valuable to those looking to implement their own mobile marketing solution. The transcript of the interview is included below.
M-F.com: Raquel, can you describe the solution that the M-Resort has implemented?
R.R: The M’s challenge was to build a database of numbers with which we could communicate with our customers immediate and effectively. To build that database we created M Call. Every customer can make the call everyday and win a guaranteed prize of points in our Player’s Club system. To claim those points, they have to come into the casino and earn 1 point, and then those points belong to the caller. They can call everyday for 30 days and at the end of 30 days, we expect to have a very large database of mobile number that we can text offers to anytime we want. For example, yesterday, we created a new promotion for today and we sent via text message to the 9000 people who have already enrolled in our M Call program. In the old days, you had design a piece of collateral, you had to proof it, you had to go to press with it, and then you had to send it out. It’s a 2-week turn-around. With a text message it’s today.
M-F.com: Are there any other casinos in the Las Vegas area that have similar programs?
R.R: There are other casinos that are dabbling in mobile marketing. Nobody is doing anything like what we are doing, with a give-away to capture numbers. They’re generally sending messages to saying “Come on in and spend $50 on a room and we’ll give you $25 in free slot play”. Our program is a little different and our goals are a little different. We’re trying to build a database and we’re also trying to drive frequency because we are a local casino.
M-F.com: Meaning that you serve the local market?
R.R: We serve the local market. We want to see our players everyday
M-F.com: So that’s a key differentiator for you then. The program gives you access to those individuals and you can market to them quite frequently. What benefits are you deriving?
R.R: What we are going to see is increased frequency. With M-Call the players have to come in everyday, and players coming into a casino everyday translates to dollars to the bottom line. But because we can reach our customers anytime we want once we’ve built this database, if I have availability in my restaurants, I can text out a message. If I have a room available, I can text send a message. I can reach the local customer right now.
M-F.com: What made you want to go mobile vs. using the more traditional channels
R.R: Because it’s immediate, it’s inexpensive, it’s personal. A text message feels very personal. In a local market, we call our customers the board of directors. This casino is personal to the customers.
M-F.com: How long did it take you to roll out this program from concept to actual implementation?
R.R: The roll-out from start to finish was about 6 weeks maximum. Most of the challenges were on our casino system side. Not on the mobile side. The mobile side was up and running in a matter of days. It was the challenge of communicating with our casino system that took the longest
M-F.com: Have you been able to measure response rates, and are you reaching your expectations at this point?
R.R: This program has been live since June 1, and it has exceeded our expectations. We took 4500 phone calls on day 1 and we had projected to take 1500 calls. We’re hitting 5000 calls /day now
M-F.com: How do you plan to evolve the program? Do you have a strategy for the next 6 months?
R.R: Right now, that strategy is evolving based on what we are seeing. But the basic plan is to simply build the database and then communicate our programs and promotions to our local player via mobile instead of by direct mail or email.
M-F.com: So you chose CommerceTel as your partner in this program. Were there others that you had considered? How did you come across CommerceTel?
R.R: I had worked with Sky Mobile in the past – they did our original program and they are working with CommerceTel, so there was really only 1 choice in the industry – it was this group.
M-F.com: Dennis, maybe you can describe CommerceTel, what you do, what products and services you offer?
D.B: CommerceTel is a mobile services provider, and what that means is that we work with brands to execute different initiatives on a mobile platform. What makes us different than a number of mobile services providers out there is that most deem mobile marketing around text messaging or the mobile web. We’ve looked at the phone as more of a holistic device, realizing that phone calls are also a big part, if not a hands-down majority of the use for a phone. By adding voice to the mix of the mobile marketing initiative, you don’t have the age demographic limitations of just text messaging. You don’t have some of the usability barriers such as people trying to figure out what the code was that they need to send their text message to etc. We serve a pretty wide variety of markets. We helped to enable the Obama campaign in 2008, all the way to if you watch the NBA finals right now on television, the player of the game voting through text messaging is all done through CommerceTel. We also enable content delivery using text messaging or phone calls to deliver ring tones and other mobile content to devices. We provide all of these services as a unified solution so that most of our brand clients are shielded from the reality and complexity of having to work with a couple dozen mobile carriers, having to talk to a variety of handsets, dealing with everything from toll-free numbers to short codes. We bring that all together and also provide software services so our clients can operate on some things in a do it yourself model, and also try to over-serve our clients and partners with live client services resources. We have all the bases covered, because the other challenge in this is execution. It all comes down to execution to make sure that the campaigns operate. And with everything new there are always issues and problems, but by way of having a dedicated client services team as well as a unified software platform, we’re able to differentiate and also touch a lot of different industry verticals.
M-F.com: Speaking about some of the challenges or hurdles – did you encounter any and if so, what were they and how did you overcome them?
R.R: There really hasn’t been anything
D.B: Again, with something new, we’re touching consumers in a new way. So with anything that you’re doing new with an everyday consumer, there’s going to be some hurdles there. Some people may not understand how a text message relates to their awards account. So there are some new customer service touch points that have developed from that, but technically I think that everything has been very smooth. The campaign that Raquel and The M have designed is very unique in a way that brings a number of consumers that would never have thought of using their mobile phones to engage the brand, to engage the brand by making the entry as easy as possible – using the phone call as a call to action as opposed to trying to get everyone educated on how to send a keyword to a short code, or if they have a data plan trying to find a mobile website.
M-F.com: How have you educated your consumer with the mobile aspect?
R.R: It was actually a very simple concept. They simply call a number, enter their Imagine Rewards Club number, and win a prize. So communication was very easy. We did a direct mail campaign 3 weeks ago. We added outdoor billboards, we ran a newspaper ad, we have several radio and TV commercials going. So it’s been a very smooth process for customers to learn. I just had lunch with 6 customers, and all 6 of them at noon picked up their cell phone and made their M Call. They get it. It’s very simple for them.
M-F.com: There is a notion in the industry that customers don’t want to receive promotions via text message. Did you have any of these concerns when planning this project?
R.R: The casino industry is unique. Junk mail from any other industry is junk mail. Mail from a casino is valued. I had absolutely no fears that anybody would not want a text message from a casino. Customers like to receive phone calls from casinos, they like to receive mail from casinos, and now they like to receive texts from casinos
M-F.com: Why do you say that is?
R.R: When you’re getting an offer from something you’re truly interested in, and people who play at casinos are interested in taking what the casino is offering, that message is exciting to them
D.B: I think that hits a special cord there too. Technology aside, it really gets down to the fundamentals of marketing and with any targeted offer – the key word is ‘targeted’- whether it’s the casino space or any other space, I would prefer if I’m interested in a product to get my offers via text message. If it goes to my email box it could get converted to spam, it’s going to get bumped down my preview pane and I’m going to forget about it. If it ends up in the mail, it’s going to end up on the floor or in the trash or lumped together with other things. So I just don’t feel like the brand is getting to me.
M-F.com: So with mobile there’s the immediacy, you can deal with it right away, you can see it immediately?
D.B: And it’s personal. What they’ve done is that they’ve really aligned the offer with a relevant consumer base. These are Rewards Program members. They want rewards. It’s just like going to the supermarket. I have a Ralphs’ card and an Albertson’s card and a I guarantee you that I don’t have any of those physical cards! The phone numbers associated to each of those cards are legacy phone numbers I’ve had in my lifetime over the past 10 to 15 years and it’s a nuisance that I can’t use my phone to redeem because this is the one device that I’ll never lose. So tying a rewards program to a mobile phone number is a natural extension and they were brilliant by designing it that way.
For information on The M Resort and their rewards program, please visit http://www.themresort.com/ . For information on CommerceTel and their products & services, please visit http://www.commercetel.com/
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