671 Registrations and 265 Depositing Players in 14 Days: An Influencer Marketing Case Study for a Game Provider Entering the CIS Market
A slot and game provider operating under NDA needed a fast, honest answer to one question before committing to a long-term acquisition strategy: does influencer-led marketing actually convert in the CIS market for a new entrant, or is it just reach without registrations? We ran a two-week, $40,000 influencer campaign to find out. It generated 671 registrations, 265 depositing accounts and $17,000 in first-14-day deposit volume — and the breakdown of how those numbers came together is more useful than the headline figures themselves.
The situation
The client is an international slot and game provider preparing to enter the CIS market — a region where player acquisition through paid social ads is heavily restricted by platform gambling policies, and where trust in a new, unfamiliar brand has to be built through people the audience already follows, not through display banners. Rather than commit a large annual budget to an acquisition channel with no local track record, the client asked for a contained, time-boxed test: a fixed $40,000 budget, a two-week window, and full transparency on whether influencer-led traffic would actually deposit or just register and disappear.
That framing matters for reading the results below. This was never designed as a full-scale, always-on acquisition engine — it was a controlled pilot built to answer a specific commercial question with real player behavior, not projections.
Our approach
Creator mapping across CIS-native platforms. We built a tiered roster of micro and mid-tier creators active on the channels CIS gambling audiences actually use for discovery and trust signals — prioritizing creators with engaged, geo-relevant audiences over raw follower count.
Localized creative, not translated creative. Every piece of creator content was built around local slang, local payment-method familiarity and local platform norms, rather than adapting a global creative brief word for word.
Individually trackable funnels per creator. Each creator ran a unique promo code and tracked link, so registrations and deposits could be attributed to the specific piece of content and creator that drove them, not lumped into one undifferentiated campaign total.
Staggered launch inside the 14-day window. Rather than releasing every creator on day one, activations were staggered across the first week to control pacing, catch underperforming angles early, and reallocate the remaining budget toward what was already converting.
Daily read on registration-to-deposit conversion. Because the test window was short, we monitored deposit conversion daily rather than weekly, so budget could shift toward creators producing depositing players, not just traffic.
The numbers, broken down honestly
These are the raw campaign numbers as reported, plus the derived metrics that actually determine whether a campaign like this is worth repeating at scale.
| Metric | Value | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign budget | $40,000 | Fixed, time-boxed test budget |
| Duration | 14 days | Deliberately compressed to get a fast read |
| Registrations | 671 | Top-of-funnel volume from creator-driven traffic |
| Depositing accounts | 265 | Registrations that converted into a real, funded account |
| Registration → deposit conversion | 39.5% | Nearly 2 in 5 registered players deposited within the window — a strong signal for a brand-new entrant with no prior local trust |
| Total deposit volume (14 days) | $17,000 | First-touch deposit volume only, not lifetime value |
| Cost per registration | $59.61 | Budget ÷ registrations |
| Cost per depositing account | $150.94 | Budget ÷ depositing accounts — the number that matters most for acquisition economics |
| Average deposit per depositing account | $64.15 | Deposit volume ÷ depositing accounts, in the first two weeks alone |
All figures are the client’s own campaign data, unmodified. Brand name, game titles and creator roster withheld under NDA.
A $17,000 deposit figure against a $40,000 spend looks, at first glance, like the campaign didn’t recover its cost — and in a 14-day window, it structurally can’t, because that number only captures the first deposit activity of players who are, on average, two weeks old. iGaming acquisition is judged on player lifetime value over months, not on deposit volume visible in the first sprint. The number that actually matters here is the 39.5% registration-to-deposit conversion rate: for a brand with zero prior presence in the CIS market, converting nearly two in five new registrations into a funded, depositing account within days is the signal that determines whether this acquisition channel deserves a real budget, not a one-off test.
Why the conversion rate is the headline metric, not the deposit total
Plenty of influencer campaigns generate registrations that never convert — followers click a link out of curiosity, sign up, and never fund an account. A 39.5% registration-to-deposit rate in a market where the brand had no existing reputation suggests the creator selection and localized creative were doing the harder job correctly: building enough trust for a stranger to hand over payment details, not just enough curiosity to click a link.
What we’d change for a scaled follow-up
- Extend the window before judging deposit volume. A 30 to 60-day view would capture a meaningfully larger share of these players’ actual lifetime deposit behavior, since 14 days only shows the very first wave.
- Double down on the creators with the highest deposit conversion, not the highest registration volume. Per-creator tracking made it clear that some creators drove more registrations, while others drove fewer but far more likely to deposit — a scaled campaign should weight budget toward the second group.
- Pair the influencer layer with retention infrastructure. A community layer (Telegram or Discord) alongside the creator campaign would give newly acquired depositing players somewhere to stay engaged past the first deposit, instead of the campaign’s job ending at conversion.
Frequently asked questions
What results can a game provider expect from influencer marketing in the CIS market?
Results vary by budget, vertical and market saturation, but in this documented case, a $40,000 influencer marketing budget for a slot and game provider generated 671 registrations and 265 depositing accounts in 14 days, working out to roughly $59.61 cost per registration and $150.94 cost per depositing account. Those numbers reflect a new-market entry campaign specifically, not an established brand’s retention spend, and should be treated as directional rather than guaranteed.
Why was the campaign only two weeks long?
The client needed a fast read on whether influencer-led acquisition would work in the CIS market before committing to a longer-term retainer, so the engagement was deliberately scoped as a two-week sprint with concentrated creator activity rather than a slow-ramping quarter-long rollout. That compressed timeline is also why the reported deposit volume reflects only the first 14 days of player activity, not full lifetime value.
Can you name the game provider in this case study?
No. The client operates under an NDA that prevents us from disclosing the brand name, specific game titles or exact creator roster. The campaign structure, budget, and performance numbers in this case study are accurate and unmodified; only brand-identifying details have been withheld.
Does a $17,000 deposit volume against a $40,000 budget mean the campaign lost money?
Not necessarily. The $17,000 figure is deposit volume collected in the first 14 days only, from 265 newly acquired depositing accounts, not the lifetime value of those players. iGaming operators typically evaluate acquisition campaigns against player lifetime value over months, not the deposit volume visible in the first two weeks, so this number is a leading indicator of acquisition quality, not a final profitability figure.
Related reading
Considering influencer marketing for a market you haven’t entered yet?
Tell us the market, the budget and the timeline you’re working with. We’ll tell you honestly what a test campaign like this one can realistically show you before you commit to a long-term retainer.