Do you know PAM?

PAM stands for player account management. 

But I thought PAM was for the iGaming operators?

It is, until now.

So wait, there’s a PAM for iGaming affiliates too?

Maybe there is but I don’t know but let me share some insights from the past year of conferences and talking to affiliates.

Shoutout to supporters StatsDrone and FTDx. DM if you want to support this newsletter and remember to join the same newsletter we have hosted on Beehiiv.

Here are some of the points that I think all contribute towards this idea of even making a PAM for an affiliate so they themselves can manage their own players.

Let’s start with Google’s influence on affiliate content sites.

Affiliation is changed forever thanks to HCU

We all know HCU, that is the main Google Helpful Content Update in September 2023. 

Your standard affiliate sites are kinda dying and evidence of this is easy to find looking through Ahrefs. 

So what does HCU have to do with a PAM?

Simple. Google is not rewarding sites that are either not communities and indirectly punishing sites that don’t have newsletters.

You see, having your own database means you can send your users back to your site which is likely a signal. Regardless if you believe Google cares about these signals or not, your player databases are worth something.

Any site that didn’t capture first party data over the last 5 years has really lost out.

Why product matters

The affiliate sites that are becoming the new leaders are more products. Products also imply that your users likely have a good reason to signup. 

Here are a few products for you:

  1. Forums
  2. Complaints service
  3. Odds service
  4. Tipsters
  5. Streamers

A solid product will capture the attention of the user to the point where they will want to give you their contact info. 

Newsletters as a tool for affiliates

I think more of the top affiliate sites all seem to have a newsletter. This wasn’t always the case but the sites that are floating to the top seem to have something of value to give to players.

As much as I’d like to say email is kinda dead, emails are still valuable. 

First party data with dynamic variables

I recently wrote how there is this idea of getting not just the revenue data of your players but being able to track it through the use of a click ID tracker.

For affiliate programs that have dynamic variables data for their brands, you can send a random click ID to the program and know if that referred player made any deposits.

Even better is when you assign these click IDs to users in your own database, you’ll be able to map their revenue activity.

Just how powerful would dynamic variables and first party data be?

I had an affiliate manager, that I won’t name, tell me they’d never offer dynamic variables for that reason. To paraphrase, they said ‘why on earth would I let our affiliates email our players to go play at another casino’. My reply was that if you had a great product and retention, then there shouldn’t be any fear of this. 

The Motley Fool, subscriptions and first party data

I interviewed Noelle Spagna who’s an insanely knowledgable affiliate manager at The Motley Fool. 

She pointed out in a recording I had with her on the Affiliate BI podcast that The Motley Fool has multiple revenue streams of their site.

It isn’t that it has multiple revenue streams but the moment they do subscription revenue, they instantly have first party data. 

I predict that sites that have predictions and subscription revenue will become more valuable. Just look at OddsJam acquisition for a cool $160M by Gambling.com Group.

Player engagement reports

We are working on this but we are not ready with it yet.

Player engagement reports are insights from your programs on what games your players play and any other data point that you think could be useful assuming they provide in that report. 

I did have a great discussion with Golden Whale this week talking about this very subject. For context, they help operators drive more revenue by going deep with player engagement reports. Shoutout to Claudia Heiling and Thomas Kolbabek.

The discussion we had about seeing how we could collaborate did lead to an understanding that if affiliates could build anything like their own PAM, it could give a lot of power and leverage to the affiliate and no joke, some people don’t want that.

PAM, the holy grail for affiliates

Collecting an email is a great start for building your own PAM for your affiliate business, but you could likely take it to the next level.

The first person that I’d dare ask to build me a PAM could be CMO expert, Joe Hatch. CMO standing for Chief Monday Officer. You know, Monday.com the amazing CRM.

I’m sure there might be a few affiliate groups that have their own PAM.

Personalization affiliate tools

We all dream of having the best personalization tools as affiliate marketers, but what out there actually exists?

I think most affiliates assume the operator, product or service that you’re sending the traffic to, is supposed to be doing all the personalization work.

But why can’t you be part of this equation too? 

Shoutout to Shlomo Freund for showcasing the RightMessage tool via the Snowball Club.

So what's next?

If I was an affiliate company, I'd be getting back to the drawing board with the product team coming up with strategies to capture first party data beyond a newsletter.