Interview with Shek Pandeya, Senior Acquisition Marketing Manager at Bingos.co.uk

Read the other half of this interview on Gaming Industry Media.

Last month, the Bingos.co.uk affiliate program was launched in the Income Access affiliate network. Since then, bingo affiliates have been able to earn up to 40% revenue share through the program.

Well, we recently sat down with Shek Pandeya, Senior Acquisition Marketing Manager at Bingos.co.uk, to discuss how the brand’s affiliate marketing strategy. Overall, Bingos.co.uk (and its parent company NetPlay) regards its affiliates as the backbone of their acquisition strategy. From investing the lion’s share of the marketing budget into affiliate marketing, to having a support team on hand to help affiliate maximize their own sites, Bingos.co.uk is a remarkable affiliate centred brand.

125x125_f020 Annabelle Agnew: How long have you been in Affiliate Marketing and what would you say has been your greatest success, and greatest challenge?
Shek Pandeya: Since the beginning of my career in online marketing I have been involved with managing affiliates and affiliate networks – this is around 4 years ago now. The greatest successese I have achieved [have been] on a personal level where I have developed new relationships with the affiliates which went beyond purely work, [as well as] the satisfaction you achieve when you recruit a new affiliate and turn them into the mega buck earners. Also, the knowledge shared between affiliates has proved to be highly successful for affiliate programs and, in turn, been a success factor for me.

The greatest challenge within affiliate marketing has been to manage communications and timely implementation of the communications. There are times when we still come across our brand on sites which haven’t updated themselves and are still carrying messages and offers which are over 2 years old.

AA: How valuable are affiliates to your overall online marketing strategy?
SP: Within NetplayTV, affiliates are to be established as the backbone of our marketing strategy. As a gambling client, our business relies on profit revenues, and affiliates on revenue share offer us the opportunity to achieve this with a minimal risk. High quality acquisition drivers are also are very important to us as; even though they are working on a CPA model, they help keep the revenue margins up for us to maximize on.

AA: What percentage of your overall customer acquisition do you aim to get from your affiliate programme?
SP: Ideally, we would aim for over 75% of our acquisition strategy to be aimed toward affiliates. As long as the affiliates can drive good quality traffic, our retention team can help ensure that these [visitors] are spending the revenues required, and in return make sure that the affiliates are making the most of the program.

AA: What percentage of your total online marketing budget goes towards your affiliate programme?
SP: We keep an open ended budget for the revenue share affiliates to maximize from. This helps ensuring that the affiliate feels more in control and feels free to gain as much as they can from the program. Regarding the CPA side of the program, around 30% of the current budget goes towards the affiliates, but we aim to increase it to 70% to lie in line with the increase in the affiliate activity.

AA: From your experience, what motivates affiliates to promote your brand more prominently?
SP: Trust and Transparency. Our personal relationship with the affiliates, keeping the affiliates updated on all activities within the brand and total transparency with the numbers can motivate the affiliate to bring the most that they can.

Another step that we want to take towards helping affiliates is by providing them expert advice to help promote their [own] brand and the look-and-feel of their site. This can help them provide a better environment for their visitors and, in return, help them drive more traffic to our site. We have Affiliate, Display, and Search experts on board whose primary job requirement is to make sure they can provide the expert resource center to our affiliates and help develop their business so that they, in turn, can help our business.

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About Bingos.co.uk
Bingos.co.uk is operated by a company called NetPlay (Malta) Ltd. NetPlay (Malta) Ltd. operates under a provisional license issued by the LGA (Lotteries and Gaming Authority) of Malta. Players at bingos.co.uk can play with the absolute security that the site is honest, trustworthy and secure within a modern jurisdiction. The Bingo software used by Bingos.co.uk is developed and maintained by Parlay Entertainment Ltd (www.parlaygroup.com), a leading online gaming software company. Affiliate can find out more about the Bingos.co.uk affiliate program here.

Tagged as: bingos.co.uk, Senior Acquisition Marketing Manager, Shek Pandeya