iGaming 2023: How to get Real Time Results from your Data!

Operating within the fast-moving and continually growing iGaming sector means that brands are often having to deal with extremely high volumes of customer interactions at any one time. This produces an almost infinite stream of data points that operators have at their disposal to leverage and hopefully maximise customer engagement.

Robbie Sexton, Director of Partnerships & Sports Betting and Gaming at Xtremepush believes that the key to being able to extract the most value from this data comes from the ability to seamlessly process it and respond in real-time. We caught up with him recently to find out exactly how this can be achieved and how we, as an industry, can continue to improve the customer experience well into the future.

Operators have the continual challenge of being able to effectively respond to their customer’s needs in real-time, an especially difficult process when done at scale. How can operators improve this?

“The process of real-time communications might be new to some operators, but it is not as difficult as they may think to achieve. In order for it to be real-time, minutes or hours will not suffice. It’s about having the right systems in place that can handle vast amounts of data and make it actionable in milliseconds. Events and behaviours change rapidly, so operators need to make sure they can keep up with these changes and deliver real-time and personalised campaigns which leads to an enhanced player experience.

“With the significant increase in in-play betting, real-time and personalised communication is what sets operators apart from their competitors. In order to facilitate this more popular type of betting, operators need to respond to customer behaviour in real time.

“When it comes to in-play betting, real-time really means automation. It’s not possible for humans to react fast enough to deliver personalised communications during a game. The challenge is syncing all of your data points to deliver the most relevant message more often. Your systems should gather all of that first-party data, help you understand your players and their behaviours, then deliver the right message at the right time through the right channel.”

Many brands operate within data silos, managing various data pools across a disparate range of platforms. What are the benefits of managing all data and communications in one place and how easy is it for operators to make this transition?

“Apart from the obvious benefits of saving on time and money, the biggest benefit of data unification is the freedom that your data allows within your business. Every team needs to have an understanding of their customer, and this is made much easier when you can build a single customer view. Siloed data makes this far more difficult.

“Further down the line, it helps operators improve the overall player experience. We just spoke about the importance of real-time and personalised communications and how that impacts the player experience. You can’t have that unless all your data for any player is pointed to the one location.

“Making the transition to having all of your data in one place doesn’t mean totally starting from scratch. Operators don’t need to get rid of their siloed data, they just need a platform, like Xtremepush, to sit above those siloes and tie that data together.

“We are designed to take in data from disparate sources and aggregate it all together seamlessly for marketing and CRM teams. This allows for an easy transition from data silos as the data merge is managed for you.”

The relationship between the analytics team and marketing team is critical to successful engagement, especially at scale. How can this workflow be improved and leveraged to maximise ROI? 

“Here are a few things that we see our most successful clients doing:

“Ensuring everyone moves towards the same goal. Both teams need to align and share objectives and KPIs. Sharing team goals and agreeing on a direction can lead to more success in the long run.

“Focusing on data unification and business intelligence tools which can analyse data from all sources and improve marketing performance for the best ROI. Teams often work in data siloes, preventing them from seeing and understanding the full customer journey.

“Diving into important metrics: click rates vs open rates vs conversions. It may be totally obvious, but your focus needs to go towards the one that will move the needle for the company. They’re all important, but when it comes to it, conversions bring home the bacon.

“Communication and alignment between teams is important when running a successful business. There needs to be feedback and reviews on a regular basis. Every campaign, even those that are higher performing, need to be reviewed and learned from. Understanding what you’ve done in the past, and how to fix certain elements, will impact future campaigns and overall conversions.

“A good relationship means better results in the future.”

Player Retention is an increasingly pertinent topic and is now the foundation that many leading operators have built their retention strategies upon. How can new AI-driven tech that’s incorporated into Xtremepush products help maximise player retention objectives?

“Player retention has long been an issue in Sports Betting and iGaming. Historically, operators have placed an emphasis on acquisition over retention, which can encourage players to look for the next best deal in the market rather than staying loyal to an operator. VIP programmes are effective when done correctly, but can become stale and more needs to be done to retain players intelligently.

“There are great AI-driven products we offer that drive retention in the Sports Betting and iGaming market.

“Our Real-Time Predictions tool offers highly flexible predictive lifestyle marketing, enabling operators to predict players’ next actions to prevent churn and identify high-value players. This also includes an AI Recommendation tool that uses machine learning and predictive analytics to significantly enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns. Pinpoint player preferences, such as their preferred sport or game, and their communication preferences to target them with the right message and send your campaigns.

“We also offer an AI Copywriting Assistant, helping teams work more efficiently. Our AI technology allows the generation of email content and catchy subject lines in seconds, saving time while improving campaign success by increasing open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to deposits and bets.”

Editor’s Note:

After catching up with Robbie, its very apparent that although the process of real-time communications might be new to some operators, in actuality, it is not as difficult to achieve as many would think. When it comes to popular products like in-play betting, real-time really just means automation. It’s not possible for humans to react fast enough to deliver personalised communications during a game. The challenge is syncing all of your data points to deliver the most relevant message more often. This is why companies like XtremePush are so important, as their products give operators these valuable capabilities.

We look forward to seeing how the industry progresses as more iGaming companies continue to adopt these innovative solutions.