Email Marketing Mistakes Casino Marketers Keep Making (And How to Fix Each One)

Email Isn’t a Channel. It’s a Relationship.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth Andrew Kordek brought to the Drivetime table: many casino marketers are still running email like it’s 2005 — batch, blast, and hope. The offer goes to everyone, the template never changes, and “engagement” means the send didn’t bounce.

Andrew has spent more than two decades on every side of email: client, agency, vendor, and now consulting. His reframe is simple and underpins everything that follows: email isn’t a channel you push through. It’s a relationship you build. “People want to make this connection with you,” he said, “and the only way to do it is over a period of time.” Once you accept that, the common mistakes stop looking like tactical slip-ups and start looking like what they are — relationship problems.

Mistake #1 — Treating a New Email Address Like a Number

Andrew says that the moment a player gives you their email, you’ve been handed the golden ticket — “their digital social security number.” Treat it like gold.

The trap is that acquisition feels easy. Asking for an email address is easy. So teams chase volume and brag about list size. But size isn’t the scoreboard. “You can get 100,000 email addresses, or you can get 10,000 and do it right,” Andrew said. A small, well-treated database will out-earn a bloated one every time because the value isn’t in the count — it’s in what you do next. Promise nothing, deliver everything. The instant you start over-mailing a name you barely welcomed, you’ve turned a golden ticket into an unsubscribe.

Mistake #2 — A Weak Welcome Email (Your Digital Front Door)

If the email address is the golden ticket, the welcome email is the digital front door to your brand. Most casinos waste it on a generic “Thanks for signing up.”

Welcome players like guests, not subscribers

Andrew’s analogy is one your whole team will remember: welcome a new subscriber the way you’d welcome a guest into your home for a party. Here’s where you lay your coat. Here are the hors d’oeuvres. Here’s what’s coming and when. Translated to a player: here’s what you’ll get from us, roughly how often, and what’s in it for you. Send it fast — in real or near-real time, and no later than 24 hours.

Avoid the “marketing barf”: dumping everything about the property into one email because we know it all and assume the player does too. They don’t. “Don’t tell me how great you are,” Andrew said, channeling the player. “Tell me what I should expect.” A welcome series that paces the relationship beats an overwhelming brochure.

Why IT should never own the first email

Andrew said this twice for emphasis: the first email experience should never be owned by IT. Not because IT isn’t valuable — they keep the systems running — but because the welcome is a marketing relationship moment that needs to live in your email service provider, where it can be automated, tested, and refined. When the welcome gets routed through an internal IT system “because we have our own way to send,” you lose the automation, personalization, and control that make a welcome series work.

Mistake #3 — Getting Frequency Wrong in Both Directions

Frequency is where casinos fall short on both sides.

On the heavy side, there’s the “just send another email” syndrome. Because email is effectively free to send, it becomes the default response to every request — and, Andrew notes, the loudest complainers are usually the people who say “just send one more.” Every redundant send rings the player’s doorbell again with the same message. Do that enough, and you build a negative impression of the brand. “You don’t want to ring the doorbell too many times with the same message just for the sake of bookings or revenue,” he said.

On the light side is the opposite error, and Andrew was blunt: sending once a month “so we don’t bother them” is a flop. You’re not the local power company sending a wattage newsletter. You’re a casino. You should be the fun in the inbox — and a single monthly send leaves real revenue on the table. The fix isn’t “more” or “less.” It’s more relevant, less redundant: send more often when each send earns its place, and stop sending the same thing to everyone.

Mistake #4 — Overcomplicating Segmentation

Casino marketers have an edge here — chopping up data and segmenting are muscles this industry uses more than most. The mistake is letting the highlight reel of other people’s segmentation strategies make you freeze.

Start with what you want to learn

“First, when it comes to segmentation, don’t freak out,” Andrew said. The second thing is to ask what you actually want to learn — from your best players, your most engaged, your high-value, and your at-risk — and how the message will differ for each. Someone bragged to him about 3,200 segments. His response: great, what’s the message difference across 3,200 segments? If you can’t articulate it, it’s not a segment; it’s a spreadsheet.

Start with one or two segments. Cap it at around five unless you have the dynamic creative to support more. A perfect first cut for casinos: loyalty-tier proximity. A player approaching the next tier receives a different message than a brand-new member who doesn’t yet understand the tiers. That’s a real segment with a real message difference, and it ties directly to player development and reinvestment.

Mistake #5 — Testing Without a Hypothesis

Testing intimidates people because they picture multivariate matrices. Stop. Start with one variable you can control — and never test without a hypothesis.

Before you send, answer two questions: What do we want to learn? and How hard is this to pull off? Make the variation big enough to matter. Swapping a percent sign for a dollar sign won’t teach you anything; an urgent tone versus a warm tone might. Decide your KPI in advance — opens, clicks, return-to-property because “what are we even testing here” is not a result.

The 10/10/80 subject-line test

Andrew’s practical format works even if your tool doesn’t have native A/B testing: send the control subject line to 10% of the segment, the test subject line to another 10%, then push the winner to the remaining 80%. The discipline that matters most: don’t crown a winner after two hours. Give it at least six to seven hours so the data is reliable. Julia flagged this as the takeaway: it’s a testing method any property can run by hand.

Mistake #6 — Chasing Everyone Else’s “Magic Bullet”

Initial caps, all caps, emojis, and first-name personalization — the “magic bullet” of the month is always making the rounds, and casinos chase it. Andrew’s verdict: there is no universal magic bullet.

He pulled five months of casino emails from his inbox and found the same top subject-line words everywhere: “stay” and “play.” That suggests most properties are using them because the casino down the street is, without knowing whether they actually work. The only real edge is your own data. “You have to be the one to set up your silver bullets,” he said — a library of what has and hasn’t worked for your players. Emojis might land for one property’s brand and fall flat for another. The point isn’t the word. It’s whether you’ve earned the right to know.

Mistake #7 — Letting Templates and Subject Lines Go Stale

Two staleness problems emerged. First, templates: running the exact same look every time has a decay factor. Andrew’s recommendation is three to four simple templates organized around your real content buckets — free play, stay, entertainment, social/community, philanthropy — that let you move content around so the program never feels like the same flyer every week. They’re not hard to build in a solid ESP.

And kill the image-only emails. A template that’s just a stack of images is a flyer in an inbox, and when a player has images turned off (Andrew does), they see nothing. Use live, untaggable text and structure.

Second, subject lines that ignore your brand and the calendar. As Memorial Day and the Fourth of July approach, Andrew saw casinos say nothing about the holidays — a missed, easy, on-brand moment. Match your subject lines to your brand’s actual tone (serious, playful, entertainment-forward) and to the moments your players are already living.

Fan, Flop, or Fix: Andrew’s Rapid-Fire Verdicts

Julia’s quick-hit segment, with Andrew’s calls:

• Sending the same message to everyone: Fix
• Emojis in subject lines: Fix (he’s a fan — just use them with intention)
• Sending from a generic address like marketing@ or offers@: Fix
• Trigger-based emails: Fan
• Sending only once a month “so we don’t bother them”: Flop — a big one
• Short emails vs. long emails: Fan either way — he’s seen both work across hundreds of brands, so test it

His meta-point: almost everything is fixable. The flop list is short.

What This Means for Casino Marketers

You don’t need a bigger list, a bigger team, or the platform the property down the street uses. You need to run email like the relationship it is. That means a real, automated welcome that sets expectations; a frequency that earns each send instead of defaulting to “just send another”; one or two meaningful segments before five; a testing habit built on hypotheses, not hunches; and your own library of what works instead of copying the competition. For a lean regional team, that’s not more work — it’s better-aimed work. And it’s the difference between email as a cost-of-doing-business blast and email as your highest-ROI line to players.

About the Guest: Andrew Kordek

Andrew Kordek is the VP of Customer Engagement at iPost, an enterprise email and marketing-automation platform with a strong focus on the casino, association, and franchise sectors. He calls himself the “quadfecta” of email marketing, having run programs on the client side (Quest Software, Sears, Groupon), founded and led strategy at the email agency Trendline Interactive — which he grew from three people to nearly 200 — and worked the vendor side, before moving into consulting. With more than two decades (he’ll tell you 26 years) in email, he’s a recognized speaker, writer, and advocate for treating the subscriber like a person. You can find him on LinkedIn, and he hosts the Email Never Sleeps podcast.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should a casino send marketing emails?  

There’s no universal “ideal” frequency — but sending only once a month to avoid bothering players is a mistake. A casino should be a welcome, fun presence in the inbox. Send more often when each message is relevant and earns its place, and stop sending the same generic offer to your entire database. The problem is rarely volume; it’s redundancy.

What should a casino welcome email include?

Send it within 24 hours and automate it. Tell new players what to expect from your program — roughly how often you’ll email, what kinds of offers and content they’ll get, and what’s in it for them. Welcome them like guests arriving at a party, not like database entry #10,411. Avoid cramming everything about the property into one message.

How do casinos get started with email segmentation?

Start by asking what you want to learn, not how many segments you can build. Begin with one or two segments, and don’t exceed about five unless you have dynamic creative to support more. A strong first segment for casinos is loyalty-tier proximity — players close to the next tier get a different message than brand-new members. A segment only counts if the message genuinely changes for it.

How do you A/B test a subject line if your email tool doesn’t support split testing?

Use a 10/10/80 split. Send the control subject line to 10% of the list and the test version to another 10%, then send the winner to the remaining 80%. Wait at least six to seven hours before picking the winner so the data is reliable, and decide your KPI (opens, clicks, on-property return) before you send.

Why shouldn’t IT own a casino’s email program?

The welcome and ongoing email experience is a marketing relationship, and it needs to live in your email service provider so it can be automated, personalized, and tested. When email is routed through an internal IT system instead, you lose the automation and control that make the program work. IT keeps the systems running; marketing should own the messaging.

Is there a “magic bullet” subject-line word for casino emails?

No. The trendy tactic changes constantly, and copying the words competitors use (like “stay” and “play”) without testing is just guessing. The only durable edge is your own library of what has and hasn’t worked for your players. Build that history through disciplined testing.