Welcome to the United Kingdom, where the game of bingo tugs at both the heartstrings and the purse strings of avid fans like nowhere else in the world.

It's true, the British love their bingo. And smart online bingo marketers are devising increasingly clever campaigns to drive player registration, conversion and retention. Quite predictably, as big brands and media properties have entered the marketplace, big marketing budgets have followed. From direct mail to email, from TV to the Tube, bingo adverts are everywhere in the UK. And the excitement around bingo is just heating up.

The first quarter of 2006 saw a flurry of high-profile brands launching bingo sites powered by Parlay Entertainment's award-winning software. Top UK names such as Butlins, Littlewoods, Magic 105.4 and NewWoman magazine have launched bingo offerings using carefully crafted integrated marketing campaigns. In each case, the initial goal has been to target the brand's existing database with the promise of playing bingo with a brand name they trust.

We've spoken to some of the principals involved in a few recent launches to discover more about the strategy behind such splashy campaigns.

Eyes Down, Check Your Balls

One of the smartest campaigns in recent memory is the partnership between Butlins (a famous UK holiday company) and Everyman (a charity for testicular cancer). Butlins Bingo launched in April with the announcement that it will help raise money and awareness for the male cancer campaign. Among several high-profile initiatives planned for 2006 is a promotion that encourages women to check their partners for testicular cancer, rewarding them with £2 in free bingo bonus money.

Celebrity Fran Cosgrave was at the launch and said, "It's great that Butlins is teaming up with Everyman and launching ButlinsBingo.com. It means that both lads and ladies will hopefully be actively checking their balls!"

The genius of the Butlins campaign is that by partnering with a charity, Butlins Bingo is virtually ensuring positive press coverage, word of mouth and goodwill. And the Everyman partnership is just one aspect of Butlins' integrated launch campaign.

As well as raising awareness for testicular cancer, Butlins aims to use ButlinsBingo.com to develop closer relationships with customers, build loyalty and attract new families to its established community of holiday-makers.

"Butlins is utilising their strong brand heritage, wide distribution and traditional marketing efforts to excellent effect," says Leigh Nissim, who is managing director of St. Minver (UK), the bingo network operator that manages Butlins Bingo. "They're already marketing their holidays across the UK, so they're now leveraging the ads and their resorts to promote online bingo at the same time. They're being intelligent with their existing infrastructure."

Such efforts have included a direct mail promotion to Butlins' email database and a pre-registration campaign on Butlins.com that garnered thousands of sign-ups before the site even launched. Butlins Bingo is also heavily promoted at the resorts themselves, including signage, scratch cards and word-of-mouth advertising by resort staff including the famous Redcoats.

We've seen great success in the first few weeks of our launch," says Nissim, "but the mraketing efforts are still ramping up. In June, Butlins Bingo will sponsor three Ladies' Days at horse race events in support of Everyman. There's a whole mix of things coming that will take marketing online bingo in the UK to another level."

Magic to the Ears

Magic 105.4 is one of the most-listened-to radio stations in London. So when the station's owner Emap, a leading media group, wanted to launch Magic 105.4 Bingo, it naturally used its own airwaves to build buzz.

Emap recently launched bingo sites for six of its top UK media properties, including NewWoman, Yours and Mother & Baby magazines. But the marketing tactics used to promote Magic 105.4 Bingo were perhaps the most unique.

On-air promotions were broadcast every few hours between 6am and midnight for eight straight days. Other elements included a mobile text campaign and an HTML email promotion.

On the Wednesday before the site's launch, Magic 105.4 listeners were instructed to text the word "Bingo" whenever they heard a specific sequence of songs on the radio. While a few lucky respondents won £5,000, all others received a text bounce-back featuring the Magic 105.4 Bingo website address, where they could register to play and find more chances to win. A separate email promotion, which promised £100 to the first ten people to register at the bingo site, was sent to Magic 105.4's database of over 70,000 listeners.

"It was a very well synchronised and integrated campaign," says Fraser Quigan, Sales Director for The Gaming Network, which operates the Emap bingo sites. "The radio promotion and text campaign helped build buzz, while the email campaign was successful at generating click-throughs and registrations."

As a result of the integrated campaign, Magic 105.4 Bingo generated a very substantial response by registrants. This lesson has not been lost on the other Emap brands that launched bingo sites around the same time. "This is one of the great advantages of bringing multiple brand properties to the same party," Quigan points out.

St. Minver's Leigh Nissim says that it makes a lot of sense for household brands to get into online bingo. "The online bingo market is becoming increasingly competitive, but big corporations have more sophisticated marketing departments, bigger budgets and more experience altogether. Brands and bingo are a natural fit."

When it comes to marketing branded bingo sites, Mr. Nissim and Mr. Quigan agree that protecting a brand's integrity is crucial. That's because brands like Butlins and Mother & Baby magazine are truly trusted by families.

"We have to be very careful that we maintain an appropriate identity," says Quigan. "For instance, we wouldn't want to promote poker to the readers of Mother & Baby. It just wouldn't be consistent with the brand."