Promotions in a Gaming Club: Setup and ROI

Promotions in a Gaming Club: Setup and ROI

A promotion in IZI is any time-limited offer that a club creates to move a specific metric: fill slow hours, react to a new event, win back a dormant base, or push a particular product. Unlike a permanent discount on products or the always-on top-up bonus ladder — which runs as a background loyalty engine — a promotion has a defined active period and deactivates automatically when it ends. In IZI CRM a promotion is assembled from catalog and bonus building blocks: a bonus rule with dates, a temporary product price, a promo code, or a combo pack. No developer is needed — everything is configured in the CRM interface. The key principle: every promotion should move a concrete metric (average check, hour-slot occupancy, reactivation rate), otherwise it is simply a margin reduction with no upside.

What a Promotion Is Built From

A promotion in IZI is not a standalone menu section. It is a combination of tools from the catalog and the bonus module. Understanding these building blocks lets you construct the right scenario without unnecessary rules.

Bonus Rule With a Limited Period

The most flexible tool. In the bonus engine, every rule has an Active Period field — a start date and an end date. The rule fires only within that window, then stops accruing automatically.

Typical scenarios:

Scenario	Rule event	Condition	Action
Elevated weekend bonus	Balance top-up	Period: Sat–Sun	+5% above standard tier
Club anniversary promotion	Balance top-up	Period: anniversary date ± 7 days	+10% above standard tier
Late-night session bonus	Session completed	Time: 23:00–06:00	Fixed bonus per hour
Dormant base reactivation	Balance top-up	Segment: inactive 30+ days	Double bonus, expires in 7 days

The period is set in rule settings: Bonuses → Create Rule → Active Period. After the end date the rule deactivates without any manual intervention.

Promo Code Campaign

A promo code is a targeted tool for promotions with a trackable acquisition source: influencer, partner, flyer, referral program. Created under Bonuses → Promo Codes, it grants a client bonus credits when the code is entered in the app or at the register. Each promo code has a maximum activation count and an expiry date — these act as natural promotion limiters.

For a full comparison with the continuous top-up bonus, see Promo Code vs Top-up Bonus.

Temporary Product Price

For physical products (drinks, snacks, peripherals), a promotional price is set as a temporary price in the product card under Catalog → Products. While the period is active, the cashier sees the promotional price automatically; when it ends, the base price resumes. This is simpler than a bonus rule if the goal is purely to reduce the price of a specific item for a fixed window.

More on catalog structure: Products.

Combo Pack

A combo pack is a predefined bundle of multiple items — for example, “1 hour + burger + drink” — sold as a single unit at a combined price below the sum of parts. It works well for trial promotions: the client pays less than the individual total, and the club promotes what it wants to move. Combos are configured in the catalog and can be activated for a limited period.

Promotion Scenarios: Task Determines Tool

Launching a promotion without a clear objective is the most common mistake. Each tool above solves a specific problem. Choose the instrument based on the business task, not on the desire to “run something”.

Fill Slow Hours

Daytime occupancy on weekdays (typically 11:00–17:00) is a chronic challenge for most clubs. The goal is to raise the seat load factor during those hours without restructuring pricing overall.

Solution: a bonus rule on “session completed” with a time condition (weekdays 11:00–17:00) and an elevated bonus per hour. Clients do not receive a visibly “cheaper” slot — they earn bonus credits that bring them back. This avoids the pattern where regulars shift all their visits to the discounted window.

Alternative: a dedicated daytime tariff at a lower price with a restricted sales policy — but that is a catalog restructure, not a promotion. The distinction is explained in Tariff Sales Policy.

Formula: target occupancy lift in % ÷ typical conversion rate from a bonus incentive (drawn from your own analytics). If a similar period last year showed 8% occupancy lift from a 20% per-hour bonus, you may only need 15%.

Raise Average Check (AOV)

The always-on top-up bonus ladder is not a promotion — it is background infrastructure. A promotion targeting AOV (average order value per visit) is a temporary elevated percentage at the anchor tier of the ladder. For example: “this week only, the anchor tier gives +15% instead of +10%.”

Goal: shift clients who are on the fence between the entry tier and the anchor tier into the anchor. After the promotion ends, a portion of them stay in the new habit.

Measurement: compare average check for the cohort “received promo bonus” versus “did not” under Analytics → Top-up Bonus → Behaviour Change.

Parametric note: the gap between tiers should be at least 4× in bonus value when the top-up amount doubles — that makes the anchor tier feel like an obvious choice.

Win Back Dormant Clients

The “no visit for N days” segment is a built-in filter in bonus rules. A win-back promotion for this segment: elevated bonus on the next top-up, with a 5–7 day expiry on the credited bonus — this creates urgency without aggression.

Steps in CRM:

1. Bonuses → Create Rule
2. Event: “Balance top-up”
3. Condition → Segment: “Dormant (no visits in 30+ days)”
4. Action: accrue bonus (percentage or fixed amount)
5. Active Period: your campaign dates
6. Bonus expiry in the action settings: 7 days

The client receives a push notification in the mobile app (if enabled on the rule), returns, and redeems the bonus. This flow is covered in detail under Comeback Campaigns.

Promote a Specific Product or Tariff

Use a temporary price on a product in the catalog or build a combo pack featuring the item. Applies to: a new drink on the menu, unsold peripheral stock, a specific tariff tied to new hardware.

Principle: not a blanket “sale on everything” but a targeted promotion on one item with a clear goal — clear stock or introduce the audience to a product.

How to Protect Margin on Promotions

A promotion is an investment that must pay for itself. The baseline calculation:

Real cost of a bonus to the register — roughly 30% of its nominal value at a typical 70% gaming-time margin. If you issue 1,000 bonus units, the real register load is approximately 300 units.

The promotion breaks even if the ARPU (average revenue per player — the base profitability metric) lift over the promotion period exceeds that load. Formula:

ARPU lift per period × players in promotion > Cost of issued bonuses

What to check in IZI Analytics after the promotion:

Metric	Where	What to expect
Average check before vs during	Analytics → Top-up Bonus → Behaviour Change	Growth ≥ program cost
Unique players in the program	Analytics → Top-up Bonus	Promotion reach
Rule firing count	Analytics → Top-up Bonus → Breakdown by Rule	Actual bonuses issued
Bonus redemption rate	Client card → bonus balance history	How much the bonus drove action

Common mistake: counting issued bonuses as direct cash out of pocket. In practice, a portion of bonuses is never redeemed — clients forget or the expiry passes. For gaming loyalty programs this breakage runs 15–25% at a 30–60 day expiry. The program is more profitable than it looks at launch.

What Not to Do With Promotions

Do not make promotions predictable. A promotion every Friday trains clients to skip Tuesday through Thursday. The club creates its own dead weekdays.

Do not run too many rules simultaneously. Rules can stack and produce a combined bonus you did not plan. Before launch, verify in test mode which rules fire on a single event.

Do not promise something not yet live in the system. If staff tell clients “today there’s a promo” but the rule is not yet active in CRM, trust erodes quickly.

Do not use promotions as a substitute for a base loyalty program. A promotion is an accelerant, not a replacement. The continuous top-up bonus runs in the background and builds habits. A promotion adds a pulse at the right moment.

Step-by-Step: Launching a Promotion in IZI

For a bonus-rule-based promotion (the most common scenario):

1. Define the goal and success metric. What do you want to move: average check, seat occupancy, visit count, a specific product? How will you measure it 2–4 weeks from now?

2. Choose the tool. Elevated bonus → bonus rule. Code-based campaign with a trackable source → promo code. Lower a product’s price → temporary price in the catalog. Trial bundle → combo pack.

3. Configure the rule in CRM.

   • Bonuses → Create Rule (or Promo Codes / Catalog depending on tool)
   • Select the event (top-up, session, bar purchase)
   • Add conditions: segment, active period, minimum amount
   • Set the accrual: percentage or fixed amount, bonus expiry
   • Save — the rule activates immediately

4. Brief your staff. Even with full automation, the team needs to know about the promotion and be able to explain the terms to clients.

5. Measure results at 2–4 weeks. Open Analytics → Top-up Bonus and compare metrics before and during the promotion. If the needle hasn’t moved, adjust the parameters. If it has, consider scaling or making it a permanent rule.

Related

• Bonus Engine in IZI — full architecture of loyalty rules
• Top-up Bonus Guide — the primary tool for raising average check
• Promo Code vs Top-up Bonus — when to use which
• Product Discounts — permanent discounts in the catalog
• Combo Packs — bundle offers
• Client Segments in Bonus Rules — promotion targeting
• Tariff Sales Policy — restricting tariff access by channel and client type

FAQ

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