A panel of experts from across the industry joined Kambi to explore the landscape for acquisition and retention in sports betting
Thought leaders from across the sports betting ecosystem joined panel host and Kambi Partner Success manager Raebekkah Pratt-Clarke to examine the challenges, opportunities and potential future for player engagement within the sports betting industry at Kambi’s recent Festival of Sportsbook.
Topics including personalisation, predictive analytics and the smart deployment of tailored content were covered by Ulrik Restorp, SVP Product at Shape Games, Adam Wilson, Founder and CEO at Splash Tech, Joe Plunkett, Head of Sports Personalisation at Vaix, and Robbie Sexton, Director of Partnerships and iGaming at Xtremepush.
Personalisation wields immense influence over the success of any player engagement strategy in betting and gaming. “When they log in, people are expecting that Netflix experience” said Sexton: “With CRM as well, how are operators talking to players based on what’s happening to them? Maybe they’re on a bad luck journey – what can we offer them to give them a good experience and drive retention?”.
Adam Wilson concurred: “For years we’ve seen this homogenised rewarding experience across the industry. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re starting to get really smart about that – delivering the right reward to the right user at the right time.”
The rising potential of personalisation is fuelled in large part by greater depth both in customer data, and the capability of front-end and engagement providers to interpret and put that data into action. Advancing beyond legacy tech-stacks is enabling operators and engagement providers to achieve a holistic, 360-degree picture of each player, and deliver each player content that suits their preferences accordingly.
Joe Plunkett offered his thoughts, underling how far technology has come: “It’s no longer the case that we have that same one-size-fits-all strategy. We don’t have to show the same things to every user and offer the same bonuses, for example offering a VIP a $5 deposit bonus. Those days are gone, it’s now a case of helping operators to adopt these tools.”
“With greater data access, AI tools and advanced algorithms we are able to really peer into the behaviour of the users out there,” added Ulrik Restorp. “There are proper opportunities to be hyper-personalised. How we solve that, and solve it without breaking cost barriers, is maybe the greatest opportunity and challenge we have ahead of us”.
“Good UX not only has to look good, but it has to be really performant as well”.
Ulrik Restorp touched on a key element of modern sports betting delivery as the panel focused in on how to make sure the rich potential of modernised and personalised sports betting content reaches the player in the right manner.
“You cannot have annoying loading screens, and in some of our markets customers are using low-mid tier mobile devices on low bandwidth. You must have strong performance in all spaces otherwise you’re creating huge opportunities for others to go away, learn and grab those customers.”
Loyalty and notifications programmes are a similarly vital aspect of retention. Joe Plunkett expanded on the approach taken by Vaix: “We use our predictive analytics to identify when a player is likely to churn – or how many days they’re likely to play before they churn – and try to hit them with a personalised offer or content.”
The sophistication of the push notification is also growing, with greater responsiveness and dynamism than ever before. Robbie Sexton went into how Xtremepush is pushing the envelope: “We can now deliver push notifications based on an event happening within a game, sending a push notification to a device that will give that update, but also give a potential bet recommendation as well.”
Click below to watch the session on demand and catch up on others, including Kambi’s SVP Trading Simon Noy on ‘AI trading in action’ and Chief Commercial Officer Sarah Robertson on how scale is key to gaining a competitive edge in modern sports betting.
