Alterian’s campaign management and analytics products became a division of SDL in 2012

How Customer Engagement Drives Player Retention

Delivering Player Engagement

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The internet and social media have forever changed the way we engage with our customers. Having the right information at their fingertips, in their own language, regardless of device or media, is critical for enriching the customer experience and driving global revenues and brand equity.

Improve Global Customer Engagement

• Listen to, understand and predict behavior• Target customers with relevant campaigns at the relevant time• Give them the information they need in the language and

media of their choice

SDL OVERVIEW

Global Information Management Drives the Customer Experience

Analysis & Intelligence

Content Creation & Management

Language Management Campaign

Multi-Channel Engagement

Customer Experience Optimization

Social Media Monitoring & Analysis

Web Content Management

Structured Content Management

Global Authoring

Automated Translation

Translation Management

Language Services

Campaign Management Solutions

Cross-channel Engagement Solutions

eCommerce Solutions

Media Management

SDL Solutions

Analysis & Intelligence

Content Creation & Management

Campaign Management

Multi-Channel Engagement

LanguageManagement

CustomerExperienceOptimisation

CONSUMER

CH

AN

NEL

CONTENT &

LA

NG

UA

GE

Delivering Player Engagement

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We are in the midst of a major change in the way people listen to and engage with brands; consumers are evolving and now use near limitless ways to communicate with each other and with brands. They’re also demanding a different type of relationship. Brands must now understand their individual needs and cater to them in a two-way dialogue, as opposed to indiscriminately broadcasting their message to the masses. The landscape has changed from traditional ‘push’ Campaign Management to interactive Player Engagement.

In pursuit of Player Engagement, marketing is being reinvented. 68% of e-business managers say that their company desires a vision for a consistent, non-fragmented, cross-channel experience, but only 29% feel they have the ability to follow through.1 Why is this?

In this eBook, we aim to remedy this situation. Our objective is to help you find new and effective ways to increase conversions, ensure repeat sales, retain valued players and, ultimately, achieve brand loyalty through Player Engagement. We will explore the concept of Player Engagement - its driving factors, business benefits, and underlying mechanisms – so you will have a comprehensive understanding of why Player Engagement is important to your business.

DRIVING PLAYER ENGAGEMENT THROUGH CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT AND ANALYTICS

Delivering Player Engagement

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Delivering Player Engagement

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Page 5 .................... Executive Summary

Page 7 .................... The Emergence of a New and Empowered Player

Page 9 .................... The Components of Multichannel Player Engagement

– What is Player Engagement

– Powering Player Engagement

– The Benefits of Player Engagement

Page 15 .................. Achieving Player Engagement: Marketing Maturity Model

Page 17 .................. What’s Next?

Page 18 .................. About SDL

Page 19 .................. Endnotes and Contact Details

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Mass marketing is dead. Enabled bytechnology, players now ruthlessly filter out traditional one-way marketing messages and demand to be active participants in a two-way conversation. The death of mass marketing is telling, with campaigns achieving less than a 2% response rate that continues to decline.2

To connect with consumers, brands are pursuing Player Engagement, which promises an orchestrated, multichannel, two-way dialogue with each individual. However, for many gaming brands, a lack of understanding around Player Engagement and what it entails has led to struggling projects and half realized strategies. In a recent survey, 78% of companies did not have a framework for analyzing multichannel customer journeys.3

To help you develop a successful Player Engagement strategy, this eBook - the first in the Delivering Player Engagement series – fully defines the concept of Player Engagement. It also examines the changes in our social world, which have forced this fundamental shift in marketing, and explores the benefits Player Engagement can deliver to your organization. From this, you will be able to understand and diagnose how your business is being affected by these forces.

This eBook also touches upon the challenges brands face when implementing Player Engagement, so you can identify any potential obstacles. Finally, this eBook also introduces Alterian’s Marketing Maturity model, which will help you assess your organization’s marketing maturity and the level of Player Engagement that best suits your organization.

“Mass marketing is no longer a long-term strategy. Mass marketing campaigns have a 2% response rate and are on the decline.”

– Gartner: “Digital Marketing: The Critical Trek for Multichannel Campaign Management”, G00210964 by Adam Sarner

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Social networking accounts for nearly a

quarter (23%) of all time spent on the internet.

– Nielsen, 2010

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We are in an era of unprecedented social change. The proliferation of digital channels and the ubiquitous use of socialmedia and mobile devices have created a new world of communications. According to an international survey of 13,000 consumers by e-Dialog,4 96% of consumers have a personal email account, while 49% and 56% have social media accounts within the US and UK, respectively. Furthermore, smartphone ownership continues to skyrocket: 27% of Americans and 31% of all Europeans own a smartphone5 and the adoption rate accelerates every year.

These changes not only enable gaming companies to talk more directly to players, but they also allow players to talk to one another and to address gaming brands. This interaction is growing, with nearly a quarter of all time spent online being spent on social networking sites. Now, more than ever, your players expect to be active participants in any message they receive.

THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW AND EMPOWERED CONSUMER

Smartphone ownership as percentage of population

Europe

0%

30%

US

Comscore, Mobilens, Dec 2010. Europeans based on EU5 (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and UK).

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This social change is transforming marketing, as the perception of a company or its offerings is now driven by social media and the web. Great marketing garners instant interaction and results. On the flip side, if brand messaging is inconsistent or irrelevant across any channel, it causes negative sentiment that players spread across the internet.

For gaming brands to survive, relevant messaging is essential. According to The Relevancy Group, 79% of consumers delete marketing offers they opted into because they were not relevant.6

Relevant messaging, however, is only the first step to gaining players’ attention. Players now actively select what, where, and how they receive information. Communication is on their terms, or not at all. To earn their attention, players not only require relevant messaging, they also demand that gaming brands understand their individual needs and respond to their actions. They demand a two-way dialogue.

They demand Player Engagement. In a move towards Player Engagement, importance of online channels, including social media, and their ability to instantly deliver timely interactions and providemeasurable ROI, particularly compared to traditional marketing channels. However, while gaming brands are now engaging players online, few are able to use the collected data to inform their overall strategy. To date, only 14% of marketers feel that their data analytics are effectively integrated across channels.7

To succeed, gaming brands clearly need better capabilities around all touch-points to truly learn what the player needs. More importantly, gaming brands need to understand how to use the collected information to find the best way to communicate to their market. Gaming brands need inbound and outbound crosschannel collaboration.

They need to create conversations. They need to advance toward true Player Engagement.

ONLY

14%of marketers feel their data analytics are effectively integrated across channels– DMA, Rowing as One, April 2011

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This graphic illustrates the differences in approach to Mass Marketing versus Engagement Marketing and the fundamental shift in marketing that brands need to understand

Traditional: Days

“Let me find the best group of players for this offer”

Engagement: Real-time

“Let me find the best offer for this player”

WHAT IS PLAYER ENGAGEMENT?

Player Engagement is growing in popularityas a marketing ‘buzz word’, but what does it actually mean?

Player Engagement is about building a strong attachment and interaction between an individual and a gaming brand. This is achieved by taking an individual’s expressed or implied preferences, desires and current brand interest to generate a relevant, consistent, multichannel dialogue with each individual player – the end result being long term brand loyalty and advocacy.

This is a fundamental shift for most marketing departments. It is a move away from mass marketing, where marketers proactively target large segments of players with a single offer. Instead, Player Engagement focuses on the individual player, where offers cater to the needs of each person in your market. Here, every interaction between a player and your organisation presents an opportunity to start a dialogue.

THE COMPONENTS OF MULTICHANNEL PLAYER ENGAGEMENT

I h

ave an offer...

>

I have a player...

>

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At its heart, unlike traditional marketing with its linear one-way communication, Player Engagement acknowledges that a consumer’s brand journey is iterative and that they are in full control. This is best portrayed as a Player Engagement Life Cycle, outlined in Diagram 1 below

Diagram 1: The Player Engagement Life Cycle

A player’s life cycle typically includes five steps of engagement. Initially they will interact with your gaming brand, either online or offline and then become aware of the games you offer, possibly through web personalisation based on previous site visits, for eNewsletter subscribers and inactive accounts created but not used or where no credits have yet to be purchased (Acquire). Gaining an understanding of early adopter player behaviour will enable you to improve personalisation of communications, establish contact preferences to drive repeat business (Learn). Identifying opportunities for cross-sell / up-sell and tailoring offers based on both known gaming behaviour from learnings gained early in their lifecycle. Use this known information to highly personalize relevant communications across all channels, including social media, to establish loyalty and promote introduce a friend campaigns to establish advocacy and long term loyalty (Player). Defining triggers to identify deviation in play to pre-determine signs of churn and tailoring offers to reduce the risk of defection will be key in customer retention. The cost of acquisition is often greater than the cost of retaining existing customers. At this point you have a richer source of information on the player than any of your competitors, giving

you a distinct advantage of retaining them and increasing your share of wallet (Retain). Where players have periods of inactivity indicating that they have churned, leverage your deep understanding of their content interests, gaming behaviour and spending habits / levels to make offers to rejuvenate their interest in your brand and reactivate their game play (Re-ignite).

Throughout each player’s life time, brands must recognise that individuals may journey through each stage of the Player Engagement Cycle several times. A player may need additional engagement to move onto the next stage, or their circumstances may change suchthat they need to go through the whole cycle again. Based on content, execution and analytics, the Player Engagement Cycle illustrates that, at each stage, brands must:

• Capture the reaction to messages• Analyze behavioral data to gain insights• Adjust the content requirements for

individual customers and prospects• Optimize their message before delivering

further communications Each encounter is an opportunity to learn more about the customer or prospect, to use that insight to engage at a deeper level, and finally move them along the Player Engagement Life Cycle towards advocacy.

PLAYER ENGAGEMENT LIFE CYCLE

RE-IGNITERETAINPLAYERLEARNACQUIRE

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POWERING PLAYER ENGAGEMENT

To power Player Engagement, marketers must use a player’s individual contextual and historical data to select the offer or message that has the greatest chance of eliciting a response. Once an individual receives the offer or message, a full closedloop feedback mechanism should measure the offer’s effectiveness, so that the next communication can be selected based on the last individual’s response.

In addition, because individuals engage with gaming brands across multiple channels, all data pertaining to player/ brand interactions must be consolidated into a single view of the player. This enables the marketer to coordinate all marketing activities based on a full understanding of the player. Without a single view, marketers risk providing disjointed brand experiences and missing opportunities for increased brand loyalty and sales.

Player Intelligence is at the heart of many engagement processes. By applying

advanced analytics and predictive modelling to real time data, marketers can start a dialogue with both known players and unknown prospective players based on their previous history and current behaviour. Typical inputs are:

• preferred types of content• channel preferences• channel responsiveness• previous purchase history• profiling to identify and/or predict

each players propensity to play specific games or gaming categories

More importantly, the entire process – data collection, consolidation, analysis and response – must be done in real-time. This ensures that you engage with consumers at the point where you have the most influence over their behavior.

Today, over 85% of marketers are integrating player and prospective player data across channels, with varying degrees of success, to chase the benefits of Player Engagement.

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“Today’s empowered consumers hold a deep rooted cynicism towards companies: 60% of respondents felt that ‘companies are only interested in selling products and services to me, not necessarily the product or service that is right for me’.

Individuals are becoming increasingly used to interacting with content, rather than passively receiving messages. Businesses now must listen, learn, understand and speak with their customers on an individual level.”

– Brands at Risk Study published by Alterian 2010-

“Today’s empowered consumers hold a deep rooted cynicism towards companies: 60% of respondents felt that ‘companies are only interested in selling products and services to me, not necessarily the product or service that is right for me’.

Individuals are becoming increasingly used to interacting with content, rather than passively receiving messages. Businesses now must listen, learn, understand and speak with their customers on an individual level.”

– Brands at Risk Study published by Alterian 2010-

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WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF PLAYER ENGAGEMENT?

Before pursuing Player Engagement, it’s important to have a solid understanding of its tangible benefits, so your organization can benchmark its development. To outline the benefits of Player Engagement, let’s compare it to traditional marketing:

Traditional Marketing Player Engagement

Business Focus Short Term Sale Repeat Sales and Life Time Value

Communication Style Undifferentiated promotion sent in high volume. Low cost promotion, but misses opportunities to extend relationship

Best offer for each individual, maximizing sales across customer and prospect base

Insight Partial view of consumer, patched together from multiple sources

Single comprehensive view

Responsiveness Days or Weeks Real-time

Channel Strategy Multichannel with limited or no coordination. Duplication of effort

Integrated cross-channel. Maximized ROI from creative assets

Execution Multiple platforms. Heavy reliance on IT Single platform. Coordination with IT

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As can be seen, Player Engagementestablishes a long-term mutuallybeneficial relationship. If you listen to,understand and learn from your playersand prospective players, while using theappropriate channels to communicate, you will:

• encourage brand loyalty and advocacy through a two-way conversation

• nurture the relationship between an individual and your brand by continuously gaining deeper insight into individual preferences

• increase their lifetime value by using this insight to provide suitable offerings

SDL PUTS TOTESPORT AHEAD OF THE GAME

Understanding their customers’ behaviour and reacting on this knowledge is seen as a key element of success. The solution allows for daily updates on over tens of millions of transactions and has created a platform for intelligent marketing.

The tote is one of the principal betting organisations in the United Kingdom, with more than 4,000 employees, over 540 shops, a major presence on all racecourses in Britain and both internet and telephone betting facilities. The tote’s flagship brand “totesport” refers to their fixed odds racing and sports betting services via shops, racecourses, telephone and internet.

Neil Baker, CRM and Insight Manager of totesport comments

“The database was used mainly for management information, our

challenge was extending its uses to maximise the benefit and efficiency of our CRM programme.”

To achieve these objectives totesport selected SDL Campaign Management & Analytics to deliver the required data visualisation, customer analysis, campaign management and campaign effectiveness analysis. The solution was delivered to totesport through a hosted service, deployed via a web browser.

Baker continues “We are now able to segment our customer base effectively by both value and interests. SDL Campaign Management & Analytics delivers a robust system that allows us to take a more scientific approach to our marketing, which is beginning to show a real return on our investment.”

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As discussed, to drive increased revenue and brand loyalty in today’s environment, brands must move towards Player Engagement, which requires:

• consistent, coordinated, and relevant messaging across all channels

• the ability to deliver a two-way dialogue with the consumer, based on insight and delivered in real-time

• institutional memory of each consumer, delivered in a single view

When outlined like this, Player Engagement looks simple. Then why are only 14% of marketers happy with their efforts?9

As with any initiative, different brands are at different levels of development. Identifying your gaming brand’s current level is critical to creating a successful strategy that delivers the level of engagement that best suits your organisation.

To do this, an honest assessment of your brand in the context of your industry will help your company develop a competitive advantage. This involves a critical evaluation of your people’s skills and You must also understand how your current technology can facilitate a single player view and enable two-way dialogue, and address any gaps. The number one cause of frustration in moving towards Player Engagement is organisational issues, followed by artificial limits caused by inappropriate technology.

However, identifying exactly what you need to do is easier said than done. To help brands gauge where they stand, Alterian has developed the Marketing Maturit model. The model is a helpful tool to evaluate your current marketing capabilities and determine the next steps required to reach the best level of engagement for your organisation.

A peak at the Marketing Maturity modelcan be seen on the next page.

ACHIEVING PLAYER ENGAGEMENT: MARKETING MATURITY MODEL

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MassMarketing

Segmentation

MARKET CONSUMER INDIVIDUALPRODUCT

Personalization

Engagement

2

3

1

4

Business Strategy & Maturity Level

Valu

e to

the

busi

ness

($)

This graph illustrates how moving along each of the four marketing maturity levels increases the overall value to your business as the focus

shifts from the product you are selling to the consumer you want to engage.

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At SDL, we appreciate how challenging it is to transform a brand’s marketing strategy and processes. Often, it is internal roadblocks or organizational silos that impede growth and obstruct resource optimization. However, even in the face of these challenges, it is essential for every company to work towards Player Engagement as the key driver of business goals and growth objectives. The purpose of this eBook is to provide you with step-by-step guidance to optimize your marketing efforts and achieve true Player Engagement.

SDL believes that engaged individuals are the ones who explicitly and implicitly express a preference for your brand. They trust your brand. They are the most likely to continuously purchase and to recommend them to their peers. In short, they are your most valuable asset. Give SDL a call or drop us an email if you’d like more information on how true Player Engagement can help you unleash this potential.

Want a head start on Player Engagement?

Contact us using the details on the back page of this eBook.

WHAT’S NEXT?

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ABOUT SDL

SDL enables global businesses to engage with their customers in the language, the media and at the moment they choose. We help businesses manage their brands, drive global revenues, accelerate speed to market and enrich their customers’ experience.

SDL’s enterprise-ready innovative technology and service solutions span the entire customer journey and include social listening and marketing analytics, campaign management, language management and services, video and written content creation, web content management, dynamic technical documentation publication and eCommerce.

SDL solutions drive global reach across multiple languages, cultures, channels and media. SDL has over 1,500 enterprise customers, 400 partners and a global infrastructure of 70 offices in 38 countries. For more information, visit www.sdl.com.

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North America+1 661 367 9965

UK+44 (0) 117 970 3200

Europe+31 (0) 35 625 7890

Asia-Pacific+61 (2) 9968 2449

www.sdl.com/alterian

© SDL. All trademarks belong to their respective owners

END NOTES1. Forrester – Using Digital Channels to Create Breakthrough Multichannel Relationships, Feb 2010

2. Gartner: “Digital Marketing: The Critical Trek for Multichannel Campaign Management”, G00210964 by Adam Sarner

3. Econsultancy, Online Measurement and Strategy Report, June 2011

4. E-Dialog, Global Perspectives’ report, 2010

5. Comscore, Mobilens, Dec 2010. Europeans based on EU5 (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and UK).

6. The Relevancy Group, The Social Inbox, Jan 2011

7. Direct Marketing Association, Rowing as One: Integrated Marketing Today, Apr 2011

8. Direct Marketing Association, Rowing as One: Integrated Marketing Today, Apr 2011

9. Direct Marketing Association, Rowing as One: Integrated Marketing Today, Apr 2011