Ensure you understand the terms of any online casino bonus offer

There are several important factors involved in running a successful business, but there is no doubt that identifying and communicating with potential customers is essential. It is also absolutely vital that having identified who your customers are you also understand what they want from your business. There are many examples of once successful businesses, particularly in the retail sector which lost contact with what their customer base wanted and failed as a result. Nowadays of course almost every business dealing directly with the public relies in some way on the internet to communicate with their customers, and many are totally dependent on the internet for their very existence. Our online casinos clearly fall into that category because they can only be accessed online and have very little if anything in the way of physical assets. It is important to remember however that all the online casinos which dominated the market in the early days of online casino gambling were operated by the big bookmakers, many of which did have a significant high street presence through their chains of betting shops. The first online gambling sites were introduced by these big bookmakers for the benefit of their sports gambling customers, but it wasn’t long before they started to add some casino games to these sites and the first online casinos were established. Even in the early days however the online casino sector was extremely competitive and although these big bookmakers which were operating the sites already had a strong customer base, they quickly realised that there was a whole new potential audience for playing casino games online. At the time the actual product they were offering, namely the casino games were not that different from one online casino to the next, so they had to find a way to attract those new customers to their site rather than to those of their rivals. Unlike some businesses there was also no scope for competitive pricing as a marketing tool, so almost all of them decided that offering an online casino bonus was the best solution. It would be wrong to suggest that the online casino bonus was the only strategy the big bookmakers used to attract new customers to their online casino sites, and advertising was and still is an important aspect of their marketing efforts. Online casino operating companies such as Paddy Power for instance have been extremely successful in raising the profile of their brand name through innovative marketing techniques, but in the absence of a totally different product range and with no opportunity to compete on price offering an online casino bonus to new customers became the norm.

Introductory bonus offers in the sports gambling sector can be very different from one site to another, and again operators such as Paddy Power have come up with some very interesting deals over the years, but we have yet to see the same imagination in the online casino sector. Most of the welcome bonus offers offered to new customers by the online casinos are very similar in format, but they are all also accompanied by a range of terms and conditions which can make them less appealing than they first appear. Most of the bonus offers found on the sports gambling sites are very straightforward, and although there are still terms and conditions to be considered they are generally easy to understand.

The usual format for an online casino bonus is a promise to match a new customer’s initial deposit with a 100% bonus, effectively doubling their available stake money for playing casino games. Many online casinos also offer a reduced bonus applicable to the second and even third deposits made into an online casino account. On the face of it all these offers enable the new online casino customer to play casino games using the site operator’s money as well as their own, which is clearly a very attractive proposition. As we have already implied however the terms and conditions attached to these bonus offers may significantly reduce that appeal for some potential players, and it is imperative that anybody considering accepting one of these welcome bonus offers fully understands what they mean. The most important of these terms and conditions is the play-through requirement. This stipulates how much money the player needs to stake on playing casino games before being allowed to withdraw any funds from their online casino account. It is usually defined as a multiple of the total of the initial deposit plus the bonus, and is usually at least 20 times that total and can be as high as 30 times the total. Putting that in plain English, a player who deposits 25 euros into their account and accepts a bonus of a further 25 euros will need to stake at least 1000 euros on playing casino games before being allowed to withdraw any money. There is also sometimes a time limit on satisfying the play-through requirement, and some casino games may not even qualify fully towards that requirement. For some people this type of online casino bonus does represent an excellent deal greatly increasing the stake money they are able to access, but for others there can be a temptation to greatly exceed their planned budget simple to get hold of the bonus and that is never a good idea. To be fair to the online casino operators offering this type of welcome bonus, they are offering to finance new casino games players and enable them to play casino games free of charge, so they clearly need those players to stay on their site as long as possible to enable them to recoup that investment.

There are of course now several new online casinos available in Ireland, one of which does not offer this type of welcome bonus. Aptly called the NoBonus casino they have chosen to offer a cash-back incentive instead of an online casino bonus. The cash-back applies to both new customers and existing customers and kicks in if they have a run of bad luck. Anybody who makes a deposit and loses the whole of that deposit on the same day automatically receives a 10% cash-back the following day, with no strings attached. An interesting alternative to the standard online casino bonus.