Released on: March 16, 2009, 6:50 am
Author: Virgin Games
Industry: Internet & Online
Virgin Affiliates casino player reports will be unavailable for seven days (starting Thursday, March 12) for essential upgrade work. Tracking will remain unaffected while this is taking place, and all your new players will show up in your reports as soon as the new system in live. Virgin Poker and Virgin Bingo tracking and reporting will work just as usual too.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
As part of this upgrade, please note that the Virgin Casino signup bonus will increase tomorrow (Thursday 12/03/2009) from 100% match Bonus up to £50 to 100% match Bonus up to £100.
We thank you in advance for updating your sites accordingly.
What is happening at Virgin Games?
Virgin Games is historically a marketing company that has promoted gaming services from three different gaming operators (Wagerworks for Casino, Boss Media for Poker and St Minver for Bingo).
We have made the big jump Last November when we officially became an operating company in our own right. That's when Virgin Poker was added to our new shiny single account/single wallet system.
This is now Virgin Casino's turn. From tomorrow onwards your Virgin Casino players will be able to switch seamlessly between Virgin Poker and Virgin Casino play, using the same wallet and same Virgin Games account and qualifying for common bonuses. As an affiliate you will be rewarded for all their Poker and Casino activity without having to promote the products individually.
The circle will be completed in May, when Virgin Bingo joins the party. At this stage Virgin Bingo remains independent from the rest, and you should still promote it as an individual product.
What does it mean for the players?
Becoming an operating company not only means Virgin Casino customer will now be helped by our new in-house call centre from tomorrow, it also means we will own and manage player databases and payment processing systems.
Improved customer experience
Customer service is at the core of the Virgin philosophy. Up to now, this part of our Virgin Casino support business has been in the capable hands of Wagerworks, but the time has now come to get our hands dirty and leverage what Virgin is best known for. Our plan is simple: inject Virgin's tradition of great customer care to the world of online gaming, and make sure our visitors are welcomed, entertained and supported the way they deserve to be.
Centralized, owned and managed player database
Each of our gaming products has required individual registration. Until now it was hard for our players to browse seamlessly through our game offerings. This is about to change. No more Virgin Casino, Virgin Poker or Virgin Bingo players, we're building a happy home where all of our players will become Virgin Games players, regardless of their game-play preferences. Once all our products are integrated, new players will only need to register once, after which they will have access to our full library of games. Whether they prefer slot games, multi-table poker or a quick game of bingo, they'll only ever be a few clicks away from thrilling entertainment.
Centralized, owned and managed new single wallet
Imagine owning three different wallets for your shopping: one to buy bread, one for vegetables, and a third one for milk. Doesn't make much sense, does it? Not to worry: as Bob the builder would put it, our single wallet will fix this! Under the new system, all deposits, awarded bonuses and winnings - regardless of the type of game played - will be safely stored in the new Virgin Games single wallet, which will allow your players to use their funds wherever they want, whenever they want. Just like in real life, only without the queue at the supermarket checkout.
What does it mean for you, the affiliate partner?
From increased cross-product revenues and holistic player reports to across-the board prime commission rates, this brings our affiliates nothing but good news!
More cross-product revenue
By making it easier for our players to get in touch directly with us, register, deposit, withdraw and - most importantly - switch quickly and seamlessly between game types, this is guaranteed to generate increased cross-product revenue for the affiliates sending us players.
Only prime commission rates
We are keeping the 50% welcome rate for 2 months, after which our standard base rates jumps from 30% to 35% flat for both Poker AND Casino, and we are dropping the tiered system.
Virgin Bingo rates remain unchanged at this stage.
Confused? Here's an example :
You are a new affiliate who sends us a new player from a Cleopatra or Elvis banner from your site. Chances are this player likes playing slot machines. As the affiliate who sent us this player, not only will you get 35% (or whatever rate you're on) revenue share on his slots game-play, but you will also - should this player decide to play poker a few days later - get a full 35% on his poker rake. Whatever game the player you sent decides to go for, and whatever the software provider, you will receive prime rates for their play, across all games all the time.
New reporting
Even though most of our promotional strategy through the affiliate system will remain unchanged (we will still provide game specific banners and marketing tools), the boundaries between products and type of players will slowly fade, and your reports will change accordingly.
When is this happening?
Virgin Casino will be integrated tomorrow 6am GMT. From this time onwards everyone you send who registers at Virgin Casino will become a Virgin Games player, earning you automatic commission on both Casino and Poker gameplay.
What is going to change, and how?
Player report
Your new "Virgin Games" Player Report will now show Virgin Games players who have played at Virgin Casino AND Virgin Poker (as opposed to one report for Virgin Casino and another one for Virgin Poker). Virgin Bingo will remain as a separate tab until it joins the party next May.
Filters will be added to the Player Report so you will be able to run it only for Poker or Casino gameplay, or both.
A drop down archive report will also be available for you to check your old stats:
- pre Virgin Casino integration - taking place tomorrow,
- pre Poker integration (i.e. before 19th November 2008, but that\'s already available in our system)
It might get a bit confusing at first but you will soon be able to make sense of it all. In any case, help is - as always - just a click away:
affiliates@virgingames.com.
Snapshot report: unchanged.
Creatives report: unchanged.
Payment report : unchanged.
Marketing tools
Important: Virgin Casino signup bonus is changing from 100% match bonus up to £50 to 100% match bonus up to £100. Make sure you modify our bonus information on your sites accordingly.
Virgin Casino Banners will be automatically updated with the new bonus, nothing for you to do here (unless you host the banners yourself, then read the end of this email).
Casino Bonus aside, no other change, each product will be promoted individually, the only difference is that a player coming from a Virgin Poker banner could make most of your commission on Virgin Casino without you having anything to do about it.
Groovy!
Tracking
There will be no change to our trackers. We take pride in the backwards compatibility of our system, so you will not need to do anything when switchover happens tomorrow. You can keep on using the same tracking links you've always used, as we took care of plugging them into our new database.
Graphics, Banners, Branding
New structure generally involves new branding, and we won't be the odd ones out: new logos, new messages and imagery are part of the reshuffling, and that's exciting news. Again you will not need to move a finger. We'll make sure our banners, logos and other graphic materials are overwritten with the flashy new version, so the updated versions will show automatically on your site.
Note: if you are hosting the banners locally, it is your responsibility to get the updated version from our site.
We remind you that Virgin Casino will increase signup bonus from 100% up to £50 to 100% up to £100. Make sure you pick up and host the new banners!
We understand it may be more practical / reassuring for some affiliates to host the banners themselves; but if you do you will be responsible for the extra work that goes with this decision, i.e. you will need to manually update all of your outdated banners. This is really important as the last thing anyone wants is a visitor getting to our site through an interest for an outdated promotion. This is as bad PR for us as it is for you (the affiliate), as we will have to apologize to the player and explain that you should have updated your site and didn't.
Contact Details: Virgin Games Customer Support Team
Landmark House,
London,
W6 9DR
+44 (0) 20 8237 1590