Crane Payment Innovations (CPI) Partners With Evron to Launch a Market-Shifting Cashless Payments Strategy, Generating $480K in Pipeline

Before Evron

CPI had long dominated the casino and gaming industry with an 80% market share in cash-handling solutions. However, as digital payment adoption accelerated, casinos faced increasing pressure to integrate cashless payments into their operations.

CPI recognized this shift but faced a significant challenge: the market wasn’t ready.

A previous attempt by a competitor to introduce cashless payments had failed spectacularly, leaving casino operators skeptical and unwilling to adopt new solutions. Despite CPI’s deep industry presence, they needed a new approach to reposition cashless payments—not as an operational risk but as the future of gaming transactions.

However, CPI’s marketing efforts lacked the demand creation necessary to change industry perception. Their traditional marketing approach focused on incremental product improvements rather than reshaping market narratives, making it difficult to build momentum for a fundamental industry shift.

CPI needed a strategic partner that could change the narrative and position them as the leader in the cashless payments revolution.

How We Got Started

CPI approached us with a clear goal: introduce and normalize cashless payments in an industry resistant to change while positioning CPI as the go-to solution for casino operators looking to modernize their payment systems.

We started by conducting an in-depth analysis of:

• Historical market adoption trends in gaming and fintech.

• Customer sentiment toward cashless payments, identifying key concerns and barriers to adoption.

• Competitive positioning, including the failures of previous cashless payment initiatives.

This analysis made it clear that CPI’s challenge wasn’t product adoption—it was trust. Casino operators weren’t convinced that cashless payments were secure, compliant, or beneficial to their bottom line.

We needed to reframe the conversation around cashless payments and establish CPI as the company leading this transformation.

Campaign Development and Execution

CPI’s success in the cashless payments space hinged on more than just promoting a product, it required reshaping the industry’s perception of digital transactions in gaming. We approached this challenge by implementing our Campaign Development methodology, which emphasizes the alignment of strategic narrative, buyer education, and revenue-driven marketing execution.

Our first priority was to craft a cohesive, market-shifting narrative that positioned CPI not just as a vendor but as the driving force behind the industry’s inevitable shift toward cashless payments. To do this, we conducted in-depth research into the historical failures of previous cashless payment initiatives, identifying the core objections from casino operators. This allowed us to address key concerns such as compliance, security, and the impact on player spending before they became roadblocks in the sales process.

Once the foundation was in place, we developed a multi-channel marketing program that integrated thought leadership, branded content, product value, and event-based engagement. Rather than relying solely on direct response campaigns, we structured CPI’s campaign into three distinct layers:

Industry Education & Thought Leadership

We created a steady stream of high-value educational content to establish CPI as the go-to authority on cashless payments. This content was distributed across LinkedIn, industry forums, and strategic partnerships, ensuring CPI was influencing the market conversation at every level.

Targeted Demand Capture & ABM Execution

To engage high-value accounts, we launched high-intent demand capture campaigns through LinkedIn Paid. These campaigns were built around specific use cases, offering tailored insights and solution breakdowns for operators based on their size, technology stack, and existing payment infrastructure.

Event-Based Pipeline Acceleration

Given CPI’s presence at major gaming expos, we developed on-site engagement strategies that turned industry events into pipeline-generating opportunities. We aligned CPI’s digital marketing efforts with in-person activations, ensuring that prospects who engaged with CPI at events were nurtured through follow-up content, account-specific messaging, and direct executive outreach.

This full-funnel, demand-driven approach ensured that CPI wasn’t just participating in industry conversations, but they were shaping them. By integrating content, paid media, and direct sales enablement efforts, we were able to change how casino operators viewed cashless payments, turning what was once a risk into an opportunity for business growth and modernization.

Key Shifts That Led to Success

The transformation of CPI’s marketing approach required a fundamental shift from product-first promotion to market education and category leadership. Instead of positioning cashless payments as an optional upgrade, we reframed it as an inevitable evolution in the gaming industry. One that operators needed to adopt to remain competitive.

From Product Marketing → Market Education & Category Leadership

Initially, CPI’s messaging focused on the features and functionality of its cashless payment solutions. However, this approach failed to address the root cause of adoption resistance…a lack of trust in cashless systems due to previous industry failures. We repositioned CPI as the authority on cashless payments, ensuring their narrative led the market conversation and preemptively tackled objections.

From Isolated Campaigns → Unified, Multi-Touch Demand Strategy

Before our engagement, CPI’s marketing efforts were fragmented, with different teams handling paid media, content, and events in silos. By implementing our Campaign Development methodology, we built a cohesive, full-funnel strategy where each marketing initiative supported the next. Paid media drove awareness, content deepened engagement, and events accelerated pipeline creation.

From Low-Intent Lead Generation → High-Intent Demand Capture

Instead of chasing low-quality leads through broad, undifferentiated campaigns, we focused on high-intent demand capture. We leveraged LinkedIn Paid to identify and engage operators already evaluating cashless payment solutions, ensuring that CPI’s sales team was spending time on opportunities with real revenue potential.

Results and Impact

Through our Campaign Development methodology, we built a multi-channel demand engine that generated $480,000 in pipeline on a pilot program while establishing CPI as the authority on cashless gaming.

One of the most significant improvements came from CPI’s marketing-to-sales alignment. Before working with Evron, CPI’s team struggled to quantify marketing’s impact on pipeline and revenue. By implementing clear revenue benchmarks including lead-to-opportunity conversion rates and opportunity to spend ratio, CPI was able to directly attribute $480,000 in pipeline growth to a new demand engine.

The real impact of this engagement was shifting the industry conversation around cashless payments. The narrative moved from fear and uncertainty to inevitability and competitive advantage. By positioning CPI as the trusted leader in cashless gaming, we laid the foundation for long-term market dominance, ensuring that CPI’s BetBridge solution were not just seen as an option, but as the future of payments in the industry.

Conclusion

CPI’s challenge was never a lack of market opportunity, it was the perception of cashless payments in the gaming industry that stood in the way of adoption. Through strategic market education, targeted demand capture, and event-driven engagement, we built a marketing program that not only generated pipeline but also changed industry sentiment toward cashless payments.