Fortune Lounge's IM Solution Looks Like a Winner

In their never-ending efforts to retain customers, I-gaming operators are constantly creating incentives and adding new features to their sites. To that end Fortune Lounge Group this year rolled out a new instant messaging program that--in addition to enabling players to communicate with one another and adding numerous convenient account-maintenance features--creates a channel for delivering promotional content directly to players' desktops.

The program, which Fortune Lounge believes to the be the first of its kind, resides in the player's task bar and is activated when a new message is received--similar to typical instant message and chat applications.

The latest version (currently in beta testing) enables players to check their account balances, communicate directly with support staff via chat, e-mail and callback services, access their players club accounts, review tournament winners lists, read the casino newsletter and receive personalized casino offers and tournament invitations.

The key, of course, is that it enables Fortune Lounge's marketing arm to offer highly targeted promotions to users.

"We do a lot of personalized promotions," a spokesman for the company said. "In fact, the majority of our promotions are individualized, so the Fortune Lounge Personal Messenger allows us to deliver these promotions more effectively than if we were to rely solely on e-mail and other traditional communications channels."

One of the major bonuses is that promotional messages previously bound for spam filters can now be delivered with guaranteed assurance.

The application offers automatic and manual message retrieval, meaning that players can choose to receive alerts when new content becomes available or check for new messages and updates manually. Further, the program can be removed at any time without disrupting the operating system or casino play.

Creating a system with which customers are comfortable had to be a major focus, and Fortune Lounge is confident it has achieved this.

"We have had a few players who expressed reservations about loading applications onto their machines," the spokesman said, "but overall our players have been excited to receive their casino-related communications via this tool."

The company reports that more than 90 percent of its customers are using the service--a stat that that competing interactive gambling network providers surely can't ignore.

The system, built entirely in house, took around two months to develop and is constantly being upgraded.

Several of Fortune Lounge's casinos, including Desert Dollar Casino, Fortune Room Casino, 7Sultans Casino and Vegas Towers Casino, have adopted the new feature.