Martyn Beacon and Stephen Croft are Affiliate Managers at Affiliate Edge, which currently runs nine online casinos, with seven of those operating in the US. They are among those rarely-stumbled-upon individuals who exude endless enthusiasm, energy, and positivism, not to mention that their knowledge and experience in the iGaming business has most certainly won them the right to call them industry experts. Martyn and Stephen spent a few minutes at their LAC booth to talk to us about their brands, their experience at the conference, and other industry matters.
And here is a good place to thank them for inviting CasinoNewsDaily at the traditional annual dinner they organize with Intetops during the LAC. Although we were the rookies there, we really felt as if being among friends.
Can you, please, first introduce yourselves?
I’m Martyn Beacon from Affiliate Edge.
I’m Stephen Croft from Affiliate Edge.
What are you doing? How long have you been in the industry?
M: We’ve been in business for ten years. This is our eleventh year in business. We run nine casinos, seven US-friendly. We’ve got a European brand and a South African brand.
S: Our reputation is good. We always tend to treat players well. Payments are always paid on time to players. It’s the same with affiliates.
We’ve got numerous awards – Casinomeister, iGB, and many more. It’s all about reputation and keeping players happy. When players are happy, affiliates are happy, too.
And how do you keep players happy? How do you make them come back to your websites?
S: It’s all about what players want – a good gaming experience, which we provide. And they also want to be paid on time, which a lot of casinos and a lot of companies in the US stall on. And I think that’s why we are the best in the US because always get players’ money back and we get them fast.
We mainly concentrate on keeping players happy with bonuses, cash-backs, Facebook promotions, giveaways. We do lots of different stuff just to keep players entertained and make them come back.
And it all goes down to paying them on time, friendly customer support, all of our CS speak English, we have six or seven other languages also. Some CS members speak Italian, some speak French, some speak German. We answer in other languages, as well. We answer chats and emails. Our target is for all chats to be answered within a minute and emails within an hour. We have a 24/7 customer service. If you ring, you’ll be answered any time of the day.
We just concentrate on the player experience all the time and that’s the main thing for us. We’re not here for two minutes. We want to be here for the next ten years and the way we’re going to do that is by keeping our players happy, keeping them come back. It doesn’t matter if they are low rollers or high rollers, we’ll give them all a good gaming experience. We’ll show them they are valued.
We assume this is not your first time at the LAC.
S: No, no. This is my third time and Martyn’s tenth, maybe. He’s been here for a long time.
In what way events like this one help your business?
S: We get to meet the affiliates face-to-face. Sometimes, an email isn’t everything. It’s about the personal touch. We get the chance to say ‘Thank you!’ for all the hard work because we are working together and we want affiliates to feel valued as well.
Where do you see the industry in five years from now?
S: A lot of people think that online gambling is going to go legal in the US but I, personally, think it’s going to be 10-15 years before anything major changes. It’s taking them too long, they can’t agree on what they want because there so many different states. I think it will be long, long time before the US market opens, if ever. In my point of view, we’ve got a good 15 years, at least.
Finally, how would you comment on RTG malfunction scandal that occurred last summer, when four players technically won a large jackpot but were eventually not allowed to withdraw their winnings? One of the players was from your place.
S: Yes, this didn’t happen only at our casino. It happened at four casinos. Basically, four people won the same progressive jackpot. It was RTG (Real Time Gaming). They were testing what they were testing not on a test account but on a real one. So, four people won the same jackpot. And one of them was from our place.
We got a certificate from RTG, saying that they made a mistake. And we apologized to our player, we explained that it was not us, but it was RTG. She was a regular player. We gave her a phone call right away and explained what happened. And we credited a large bonus in her account to apologize, to say we are sorry. It shouldn’t have happened but it was out of our control. It was nothing we could do. Eventually, she was happy. She got a large bonus and a lot of play time.
It’s not good for us, it’s not good for the player, it’s not good for anyone. But instead of hiding our heads in the sand, we called the player instantly to make sure that she understood what was going on.
