Inside Sweepstakes Casinos: How Promotional Gaming Became a Digital Business Strategy

The free sample is one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book. It goes back centuries, where innkeepers would offer a taste of their drink to prove its value. In the 1850s, Benjamin T. Babbitt formalized this, giving away thousands of bars of soap for free, and the rest is history. Now, in the time of digital business, the free sample has been reinvented through many different promotions. No business model demonstrates this more than the sweepstakes casino.

The Promotional Gaming Model

E-commerce and digital services made it easier than ever to give away ‘free samples’ through discount codes, giveaways, and free trials. There’s a reason why the free trial was instrumental for growing streaming services like Netflix and is still used for Amazon’s digital product ecosystem.

Then there are sweepstakes casinos – websites that operate under a promotional gaming model alongside other casino sites. These game platforms attract and retain players by offering a digital, proprietary currency to new sign-ups, as well as other rewards for those who stay. Here’s a more detailed overview of how sweepstakes casinos work, including how their currencies – Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins – are spent.

At its simplest, these casinos promise a set amount of coins to newcomers when they make an account. Then they’ll run a calendar of rotating promotions for the different games on offer. For example, Monday might start with players getting free spins for a certain slot game, then on Tuesday, they’ll just give some coins away, and then on Wednesday, they might have a bonus that only works with their live table games. The aim of promotional gaming is twofold: welcome new users to the platform and, through consistent bonuses, reward returning players.

Why Promotional Gaming Works

From the free sample to the digital currency giveaway, promotional marketing works for two reasons. The first is that it’s a way of acquiring social proof. The sample of a product, in this case, the games found on a sweepstakes casino, will give players enough information to determine if the business is legitimate. If that results in a large audience who likes the service, then the casino gets a good reputation, and it becomes a lot easier to justify investing time on-site. It also allows players, at the individual level, to see if they like the games or not.

The second, more basic reason it works is the law of reciprocity. Asking users to make an account and play at your casino is exactly that – an ask. Attracting any customer is a negotiation, and promotional marketing is all about making a good-faith gesture to that customer so you can start on good terms. Then, if they want to reciprocate, they know they can by signing up. Likewise, the repeating bonuses continue that business-customer relationship.

New Technology is Making Promotion Smarter

Promotional marketing is still developing, even today. Thanks to automation through generative AI, online businesses have a useful tool they can use to sort through large sets of user data and identify trends they can capitalize on. For sweepstakes casinos, this can result in more personalized promotions.

An AI agent managing promotions can monitor thousands of players and suggest the promotion type that would appeal to them. So, while some slots players get free spins for their most-played slot, others would get a deposit boost at the blackjack table. This kind of automation allows smaller businesses to efficiently manage a giant audience while keeping the attentiveness of one-to-one client management.