Exclusive Q&A w/ Fraser Linkleter, CMO at Slots Temple

How is the affiliate space changing? Is it important to offer more than just written word articles and casino reviews? 

To be successful, you always need to offer the full package. Reviews are certainly still important, and you must show what’s both good and bad, giving a rounded, impartial opinion. But we think affiliates these days need to offer some extra special sauce as users want to interact more with the product. So free games to play are great, plus something different that makes your site really engaging and entertaining. An extra ‘stickiness’.

We want to give people a reason to come to us and spend time on the site, not just bring them in and push them out to operators straight away. There are loads of sites which just list off operator offers, but we give something more.

Tell us about the new free-to-play slots tournament formats you’ve launched.

Our slots tournaments have always been very popular. Previously, people played for fun for the chance to win merchandise or avatars, and to earn Xpoints to open chests.

Now we’re offering even more reason to get involved, with a free chance to win cash prizes, and it’s a huge success. People still love climbing the leaderboards and earning Xpoints, but cash prizes add extra value for the player and really enhance the user-XP.

We’re also launching new types of tournaments. These includes Turbos, which run for one to three hours to speed up the fun of winning a prize, and Risk tournaments, where players are given a fixed balance and can adjust their bet size on each spin.

How can you use these tournaments as marketing assets?

We focus on some of the most popular games for our tournaments, meaning there’s double appeal – play one of your favourite games whilst also being in for a chance to win a cash prize, so there’s double benefit to the player

The chance to win a cash prize in a free tournament is massively appealing and gives people a reason to register (you don’t have to register to just play a demo game). But once they’re registered, we can target our marketing to them.

We can really tailor our messaging more effectively. If a user has just played a tournament on a certain game, we can talk to them about where they can play the game for real money and tell them about the welcome offers available. This is so much more effective than blanket marketing.

We can also offer tournaments on new games releases, creating a real buzz around a launch, which adds value for the operator or games studio.

Is there a plan to offer paid-for tournaments to build even bigger prize pools?

Absolutely! That’s the next phase. By offering paid for tournaments, we can fund even bigger prizes that go deeper down the leaderboards to give more people chance to win. This will attract more players and create an even bigger buzz! Of course, free tournaments will still be available. There will be no obligation to play for real money if you don’t want to.

You’ve recently launched in the US and Canada. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced entering these new markets?

Different regulations are the biggest challenges and making sure we’re always compliant. We’ve had to be very flexible entering the Ontario market and had to adapt quickly to comply with the changes. One example is age verification, which has always been important to us, even though our games are free to play. Each jurisdiction has different verification requirements, which means working with different data providers and building our registration processes differently.

Sports betting is huge in the US, but how do you see the online casino space developing there?

You’re absolutely right that sports betting is massively popular in America. Around 30 states have legalized sports betting, while only a handful so far have launched online casino markets. So, casino is proving to be a slower process, and there may be less political appetite for it currently. But we’re keeping an eye on the landscape there and are always looking for opportunities to expand into new markets.

What’s next on the horizon for Slots Temple?

We want to continue building and diversifying our tournament product, and that means introducing more tournament variants to make it even more exciting and compelling.

Soon, we hope to introduce the paid-for tournaments we spoke about, so we can offer bigger prizes. We want to attract more players and continue building a bigger community among our users. Player communities are vital to what we do and should be a crucial part of an affiliate’s strategy.