ICE PREVIEW
How building an online community helps to convert new customers into loyal and engaged users
This is set to be a big year of sport as the FIFA World Cup takes place across three countries for the fi rst time – the USA, Canada and Mexico. As an acquisition mechanism for betting operators to attract new customers, this has to be the biggest event in the global sporting calendar, says Blaz Zitnik, SVP, Betting Entertainment Tools at Sportradar.
T
he focus on customer acquisition is huge within our industry, but a major challenge is how do sportsbooks hold onto those new customers beyond the event they came in for and convert them into loyal and more regular customers? In today’s distraction economy, operators fi nd themselves competing against entertainment services and content providers for the attention of sports bettors. As the worlds of sport, betting, and media converge, and operators are competing with other forms of entertainment for the attention of customers. Now more than ever operators need to nurture their existing customer base to realise their growth objectives. It is well-known that it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one so surely any way of engaging bettors further is a win.
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT SOLUTIONS One area that is making a difference from a retention perspective is social betting. Certainly, in Europe at least, traditional betting has been a social pastime where customers visited their local betting shop to place a bet. The advent of online betting and more recently mobile betting has changed that dynamic completely, and the process of placing a bet is now a solo endeavour. But we know that humans naturally have an appetite for social connections and sharing; social media engagement rates are proof of this. To enhance the customer experience and differentiate their bet offering, operators are now able to transform online betting into an increasingly social experience by providing a tool for customers to engage and interact with each other during sports events.
By nurturing their online communities and providing a safe space to chat, share and socialise, operators can increase the amount of time customers spend on their websites, extend the betting experience beyond placing a bet, while opening up new revenue generating opportunities.
The introduction of social engagement solutions, like Sportradar’s Virtual Stadium, represent a shift towards an increasingly social betting experience and can easily be leveraged by
ADDED VALUE FOR OPERATORS But where these social engagement solutions add real value for operators is in the bet sharing functionality. If one customer has a bet selection, they can share that information into the chatroom for others to copy. There is a degree of social infl uence and these organic interactions between customers stretch the bet discovery process and present operators with a soft cross sell opportunity. In the past, the chatroom functionality in particular may have been thought of as something of an operational burden and a potential risk to an operator’s brand, because previous tools required operators to employ someone to manually monitor and moderate the conversation for bad language, for example. Providing a safe space for customers to engage
the industry. The integration of tools that allow bettors to connect with their peers and share the live sports experience will become more prevalent. This development is about facilitating social engagement and user interactions. So, rather than leave the operator’s betting website to express an opinion about a sports match via social media, customers can share those views with other bettors in a chatroom on the operator’s website. This provides operators with some obvious benefi ts, such as increased website dwell time and customer engagement, but more importantly these social engagement features allow operators to build a community that customers want to be a part of and visit again.
and interact is a key aspect of building a community that people want to belong to. Advances in technology and increased use of AI now allow operators to automate the moderation process. The AI is always learning and updating, to better understand what’s being said in the chatroom. Furthermore, the technology can implement key actions such as approving or rejecting content reported by users and putting temporary bans in place. It’s a process that the technology is able to complete at speed and with high accuracy. As operators double down on customer experience, we’re witnessing a shift towards ‘customer empowerment’ – whereby customers have the resources and options that allow them to shape the kind of experience they have with a brand. Today’s social engagement tools, and Virtual Stadium in particular, are sport agnostic and scalable. This allows operators to deliver a social betting experience across every sport and every match. The match specifi c set-up connects customers with peers who share an interest, rather than connecting a soccer bettor with, say, a tennis one.
What’s more, the versatility of the technology allows operators to apply this solution across a signifi cant number of betting categories and verticals, including iGaming. Providing customers with this depth of choice is an extremely powerful retention tool for operators to leverage.
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