Slot marketing is at a crossroads these days—the point between slot-club coin coupons that used mailings to reward players weeks after play, and the newest systems, which can use mobile phones and system triggers to reward players for their play in real time, before they even leave the property.
One product that bridges the gap between the two is the result of a joint venture announced at last month’s Global Gaming Expo between printer supplier TransAct Technologies, Inc. and Acres 4.0, the latest company headed by gaming technology pioneer John Acres.
The partnership joined Acres’ new CyberMax casino management system to Epicentral 4.0, the newest version of TransAct’s promotion and bonusing print system.
The Epicentral product line distinguished itself by interfacing with a property’s casino management system to provide customized bonus coupons, printed through the same portal as TITO payout tickets. CyberMax from Acres 4.0 links to player and play data to provide those reward coupons while the player is still seated at the game.
“TransAct launched Epicentral as a way to communicate with players in real time as they played at the slots,” explained Tracey Chernay, senior vice president of global gaming and lottery for TransAct, in an interview with GGB News. “We relied upon a data connector to the casino management system to provide us with the data, such as coin-in and carded/uncarded, that allowed us to make intelligent offers to the players. We found the existing legacy casino management systems to be lacking in their ability to reliably provide us with that real-time data.”
Acres 4.0’s CyberMax system, currently on the verge of approval and rollout to casinos, solved the problem. “CyberMax from Acres 4.0 created access to instantaneous slot player data across casino floors, regardless of the legacy system,” Chernay said. “This takes the Epicentral 4.0 promotions and bonuses to a whole new level.”
“The idea is to be able to provide that information on a play-by-play basis,” Acres told GGB News, “an occurrence that’s no more than maybe a half a second behind the reality of that occurring. That’s what CyberMax does. It literally collects a thousand times more bytes than existing systems and stores them for each player. That data gives us the resolution to know more about what you are experiencing and what you like and don’t like.”
“With the Acres CyberMax system, Epicentral now has access to thousands of real-time data events that the CyberMax system collects,” said Chernay. “The Epicentral software relies on those real-time data points to trigger the printed coupons at the game. Epicentral can trigger an offer on coin-in, card-in, and games played, for example, but combine that with qualifiers such as player tier, carded or uncarded player, has the player won an award today, and many other criteria. Combined with Acres CyberMax, the power of Epicentral is fully realized.”
CyberMax runs in parallel with any existing casino management system, so addition of the real-time function does not require disruption of the current system. It allows coupons to instantly print—much like coupons that print out when checking out at a grocery store—in response to what a player is experiencing at any given moment.
“What the casinos need to know now is that a player put in $200, and started off wagering 50 cents a game,” explained Acres in a typical scenario of how the combined system works. “He got his wager up to $2, he lost 32 times in a row and now he’s down by $150. We need to think about what we can do to rescue that player’s confidence in us, right now.”
The CyberMax system in itself has many ways to issue those rewards, from adding credits right to the credit meter to use of the Acres 4.0 Kai remote system to alert a host to arrive at the machine with a personal offer of a free meal or other comp. But according to Chernay, there’s nothing like the automatic printing of a reward ticket to break the monotony with an interactive event.
“Players understand that a ticket coming out of the game means money,” Chernay said “They are easy to understand, easy to use and are offered across the casino floor on every game type. Coupons continue to drive action—they are immediate, in the player’s hand, and drive results for the casino.
“Many of our casinos have the ability to make electronic offers. The printed offers consistently drive more results, and most casinos use both to reach their players. Epicentral is one of the only ways to communicate with and make offers to uncarded players, which is huge.”
Acres says it’s all about using all the available data owned by the casino. “CyberMax is really about two things,” he said. “One is collecting a firehose of real-time information and making that available on an open platform. Secondly, the casino can choose to share it with as many entities as it wishes to—it’s not ours to give; it belongs to the casino. With Epicentral, our system feeds the real-time data from the play. When reaching a predetermined trigger point, I’m going to give this person a reward. Then, we transport the information back to the ticket printer.”
Casinos can not only determine the types of rewards in response to which triggers; it can customize each coupon ahead of time. “Ten or 15 years ago, we would say, well, if a player loses $200, we want to go see them, where today, it really depends on the player,” Acres said. “But we need to be very personal. So if you’re coming in every week and you’re playing $500 and you’re down $200, I’m not too worried about you because that’s within your normal realm of experience. But if you come in and you spend an average of $50 a week and you like to stay for two hours and now you’re down by $40 after only 30 minutes, then I need to intervene with you.”
The customization allows for any kind of ticket to be printed in response to one of the triggers—even a TITO ticket for free play or even cash-out, where regulations permit.
“TransAct designed their printer to have two masters,” commented Acres. “One master is the machine, which says, ‘Print this TITO ticket.’ That’s all for regulated, processed payouts, but here’s this a printer with lots of paper in it. The paper’s blank. So they have another port, another master—the system. ‘Print up this kind of a coupon. It could be a promotional coupon good for $10 off of the buffet or for entries for an upcoming drawing, two-for-one show tickets or anything the casino wishes.
“It’s even better than getting offers online. It’s something that the player sees right there—it’s an interaction with the player.”
The Acres CyberMax system is currently before Gaming Laboratories International for certification, and Acres said it will be tested soon in a Washington state casino and will be linked to around 2,000 machines for the test by the first quarter of 2020. Upon approval, the technology will be available as part of the Epicentral 4.0 printing and couponing system.
“We’re delighted to work with John Acres and his team to implement Epicentral 4.0 alongside CyberMax,” said TransAct Chairman and CEO Bart C. Shuldman in a press release announcing the partnership. “And we believe that this new partnership will pay dividends for both companies and generate higher levels of future success for our customers. Real-time information sharing is something no other company has been able to deliver in casino settings to date, and we believe this represents a game-changing opportunity for application providers such as TransAct.”
