Melanie Hainzer, Chief Marketing Officer at Rootz LTD – and speaker at this month’s SBC CasinoBeats conference in Malta (24-26 March) – shares her insights into the most sustainable approaches to player acquisition and personalisation.
iGAMING TIMES: How do we identify the modern player demographic?
MELANIE HAINZER: Our modern vision on player demographic is to rely on data-driven and dynamic multi-dimensional segmentation, which is affected not only by each individual player’s preferences, decisions and actions on their timeline, but also the variance of each of the gaming sessions.
The random number generator behind every spin affects player mood and contributes to their next decision or action – may it be bet more or leave the site. We are trying to be proactive (predictive) and know in advance which sequence of actions or decisions leads to the best experience for the player and the best result for us, given the past and current real-time data about the player’s activity.
iGT: Which verticals are currently providing the best cross-sell rates to slots in particular?
MH: As we only have the casino vertical, from my point of view this is a tricky question to answer. However, we believe in the jackpots vertical, which leads to a bigger jackpot players segment and cross-selling opportunities to a fairly similar, but yet different vertical – slots.
iGT: What tools are companies most commonly using to acquire and retain players at the moment – and how effective are they?
MH: We are developing acquisition and retention tools as part of the gaming platform, so in that sense we are very unique. Instead of having a mixture of different tools from a number of third-party integrations, we implement a top selection of tools or features of such tools as modules of the gaming platform where they run together simultaneously and communicate through a single data channel in real time.
While measuring and controlling acquisition and retention are very different processes, we see player lifetime or lifecycle as a single continuous process which starts before they create the account. Thus we are constantly improving our omnichannel targeting tool which caters for optimal acquisition and maximum retention.
iGT: How are new technologies driving innovation in this area?
MH: Real-time data management and dynamic automated decision making require a mixture of modern technologies that allow high speed, a high level of complexity and a simple user interface.
Starting with events tracking, and finishing with high availability and fast analytics solutions, different technologies are equally important and must work together in order for innovative concepts to become a reality.
iGT: Do you expect personalised to get even more nuanced in the near future – if so, how?
MH: Yes! Personalisation is key to player lifetime value optimisation and we are looking to expand our automated decision making techniques to higher levels. This will ultimately create a unique experience for every single player, starting with the way the casino lobby looks and finishing with unique marketing messages – both text and visuals – delivered on the timeline most relevant to the individual.
iGT: How important is it for operators and slots providers to strike the right balance between acquisition and retention and maintaining high standards of responsible gambling?
MH: We can think of acquisition as the beginning of a player lifetime, responsible gambling issues as a definite end of that timeline, and retention as the timeline itself. One does not work without another, and one leads to another, thus the right balance is a must. For example:
- increasing player retention could give a better result for company revenues compared to an equivalent increase in acquisition
- increasing acquisition will result in lower retention
- increasing revenue per player (retention) leads to higher a responsible gambling issues rate
We must always think about how pulling one string will affect the other complex parts of the player timeline and make sure that our decisions benefit both sides. Otherwise, a short-term improvement may result in a big long-term loss.
