SPORTRADAR
Playing the long game
Jay Kanabar, COO of Vaix, a Sportradar company, speaks to GIO about the long-term benefits of shifting from acquisition to retention, the technology that operators are using to better serve their customers, and what the future holds for the marketplace.
Africa where there is untapped demand for betting content, but in a mature market like Europe, there are fewer ‘new’ customers for operators to acquire.
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n a market that’s driven by costly acquisition techniques and market share, casino operators are overlooking the potential that lies within their existing customer base. Marketers need to look beyond customer acquisition and develop a robust retention strategy to improve player lifetime value and drive customer loyalty. By switching focus to customer retention and placing greater emphasis on understanding customer habits, operators can engage more deeply, improve player lifetime value and generate more revenue with less the marketing spend.
It’s funny how operators invest so much of their time and money on acquiring new customers, then fail to effectively engage with them, overlooking the opportunity to retain and grow their business from them and extract maximum value. It strikes me as an odd way to treat customers who have carefully navigated six or seven steps to sign-up to your betting website and shared some of their personal details as part of that process. But it’s nothing new, our industry has historically favoured customer acquisition, prioritising quantity over quality as operators seek to secure market share at rapid pace.
I think one of the key factors behind this approach has been a lack of technology. While operators have been analysing their customers for years to better understand their habits and behaviours, they’ve lacked the technical capabilities to properly leverage the insights they’ve gained.
Instead, to grow their businesses at scale, operators have relied heavily on affiliate marketing, with the industry turning to affiliate betting companies to provide them with a stream of new customers to achieve their objectives. We know the affiliate model can work effectively in some regions, for example in
10 APRIL 2023 GIO
With a diminishing pool of ‘new’ new customers, operators need a change of mindset, switching their focus from acquisition in order to achieve short terms goals, to prioritising the long-term potential of their existing customer base through retention. An effective customer retention strategy is underpinned by deep customer insights and an in-depth understanding of the key touch points within the player lifecycle which includes sign-up, deposit, playing activity and win back strategy. What’s really important however, is to understand that customer needs are continually evolving, throughout the player lifecycle. For
Marketers need to look beyond customer acquisition and develop a robust retention strategy to improve player lifetime value and drive customer loyalty. By switching focus to customer retention and placing greater emphasis on
understanding customer habits, operators can engage more deeply, improve player lifetime value and generate more revenue with less the
marketing spend
example, a customer may have signed up to a casino website due to a particular marketing campaign for a specific type of game, say slots, but over time they may develop an interest in roulette and engage more deeply with that, or show an interest in a particular brand of game. Identifying these changes in behaviour and responding with a message tailored towards an individual’s interests is an extremely powerful retention tool – it improves the relationship with the customer, enhances their wagering experience and can be the driver for increasing customer lifetime value.
To do this effectively and efficiently requires advanced technical capabilities. We’re living in the age of big data, a term that refers to sets of data that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data-processing methods, and a team of analysts just can’t compete with artificial intelligence (AI) driven technology. Incorporating sophisticated AI tech into a retention strategy is going to provide the insights required to engage customers on a personal level and for a longer period of time. For example, we provide our clients with access to a CRM Data Service that interprets customer insights and predicts their future value, their risk of churn and their journey through an operator’s loyalty scheme.
With this information at hand, our clients can use our AI-driven personalisation tools to respond to their customers’ needs in real time, delivering content that’s tailored to the interests and preferences of an individual.
Focusing on the needs of individual bettors and delivering a personalised betting offering is going to enhance the overall customer experience. It’s this superior end-to-end journey that improves retention rates, reduces churn and improves loyalty – all of which contribute towards an improved player lifetime value. While operators will always need to acquire new customers it’s clear that a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing is limited in the long term. By gaining a deep understanding of their customers and using their insights to deliver a personalised betting experience, operators can effectively retain their customers and grow their business.
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