Imagine being able to produce your own direct mail shots in just a succession of clicks using a web-based interface. Imagine a web site that made this possible, backed by a direct mail company who specialise in such wish fulfillment, that could print and post your mailshot in a fraction of the time you're used to. Now add a scratch-off game where you choose the winning margins. Read on, and check out www.dmplay.com when you're done…
Mailshots are usually considered way in advance, for a number of reasons. Print can be expensive, design can be painstaking, and it's often tied in to a long-term promotion, the budget for which was agreed months ago. DM Play can potentially give an operator the freedom to generate their own marketing material using their own template, and the creators say it's cost-effective and very quick from concept to completion. What's more, you can include a promotional scratchcard-style game and set the prize split for your database – and all from your own desk. Sound perfect? Managing Director Chris Arthur explains more.

Casino International: What's DM Play all about?
Chris Arthur: DM Play is online software, it’s a direct marketing tool. We’ve been involved in direct marketing and in particular direct mail, linked to the gaming industry; bingo casino and greyhound racing, amusement arcades now for up to 12 years really. What we’ve identified is that a lot of direct mail is purely letters or post cards that don’t really reflect the buzz or experience you get when you’re in a casino, for example; the casino environment is quite lively, it’s buzzing but the communication that can be sent out by direct mail can be quite flat and formal, so we’ve created DM Play which is an online tool that allows an online casino operator or a land-based casino operator to create direct mail campaigns via the internet very quickly.
The key element to DM Play software is it allows them to build into the direct mail piece a game, a scratch-off game that’s relevant, so it could be a poker game for example or a slot machine game or a roulette game. Within that they can control the value of the prize they get to put into the game and the mail pack and the number of winners.
It’s really about making the direct marketing, the direct mail communication to casino members or bingo members far more interesting, relevant, fun and exciting. Say you ran a number of casinos or you had an online gaming site, you go to the DM Play software and there are some templates which are basically the layout of the mail piece. It could be a four-page A5 template, that can be totally branded for the gaming company, the casino's brand. What they can do is tick a game they want to be in there, the game is a scratch-off game so rather than saying 'come along on such and such a night and we’ll give you five pounds worth of free chips' it can be 'play this poker game and you could win five pounds worth of free chips if you come along next Wednesday – but you might win a hundred pounds worth of free chips!'
The operator, using the software, uploads their database of members they want to mail and they can determine the split within that database of how many people they want to win a £5 prize, or a £10 prize, or £100 prize. They can then key in their own text and in effect they’ve created their own direct mail piece that’s tailored to the recipient and they control the prizes, the number of winners of each level of prize and the actual message.

CI: How long does it take to turn around a direct mail request?
CA: Customers can create a direct mail piece very quickly in a matter of minutes, we actually receive the data that they have uploaded and the template they’ve used and templated to their particular mailing they want to do, and we turn those round within 48 hours. That means promoters can react to things like the weather or a live event or, for example, a sports betting company might say right, after the Cheltenham Gold Cup, we can upload the data of people who have won or lost and create a campaign directly tailored to them and the end user can have it within a couple of days, which for direct mail is good.

CI: Does Perspektiv handle the mailing as well?
CA: Yes, there's two parts to Perspektiv, one's a creative agency, and the other's a direct mail and digital print production facility.
Of course, there's two different applications to the cards; you can upload a database of members or players and create a mail piece that’s sent through the post, but alternatively it doesn’t have to be posted individually, we could create a batch of non-personalised communication pieces with a scratch-off game in there, delivered back to a retail casino for them to give out on the door to drive someone to a new game, or a new slot machine or other promotion.

CI: What's quite interesting is that this removes the need for somebody in the casino to know how to buy print, for example, or to even work with an agency. There are potential cost savings all over DM Play.
CA: Certainly with regard to unit costs, because you’re not designing what you do, or the initial design up front. There’s a lot of what I call web-to-print and web-to-print mail applications out there, but we believe this one is different. The key thing for any direct mail campaign is the response rate you get – ultimately you’re after the highest response rate that you can get, and response rates are usually governed by how relevant the mail piece is to the recipient. Most people receive lots of credit card offers and things like that, but they're not relevant so typically when they’re doing cold mailings like that a company might only get a half a percent response. But with DM Play, because you’re communicating with an existing player in a relevant and interesting way, we’re hoping to get 25, 35 per cent response, and that is all driven by relevance.

CI: Presumably this could work easily in other languages?
CA: Yes it can be tailored to work in other languages. It would be interesting to communicate this to the US because we work with Gala a lot in the UK.

CI: You launched the product at ICE in January 2008 – what sort of feedback did you get at the show?
CA: It falls into two schools. Those that are online gaming don’t necessarily use direct mail a lot, they’re almost entirely reliant on e-mails, so there’s a bit of an education process there that mail can actually work harder in some instances for you and you need to start thinking about integrating the two so there’s a bit of a selling concept there. But the best responses we got were from gaming companies that were already using direct mail. One senior marketer from a household name said it’s really refreshing to see a business that understands direct marketing in the gaming industry – that's the best testament you could get, really.

See www.dmplay.com for more details.

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