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Whitepaper: Building and implementing a betting omni-channel strategy By Vikas Vardhan Soni, Senior Product Manager , Aditi Technologies

Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

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Page 1: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Whitepaper:

Building and implementing a betting

omni-channel strategy

By Vikas Vardhan Soni,

Senior Product Manager , Aditi Technologies

Page 2: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

About the Author

Vikas Vardhan Soni has been engaged with

gaming industry for over 4 years where he

managed online gaming products such as

PartyPoker, BwinPoker and Ace2three Rummy

targeted mainly towards European and Indian

audience. He is working as Senior Product

Manager with Aditi, focusing mainly towards

betting & gaming opportunities in Europe. Prior

to joining Aditi, Vikas held product leadership

positions with Bwin.Party, Ace2three, and

engineering roles with Cadence Design systems

& CA Inc.

Page 3: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

things bookmakers must

absolutely prioritize for their

omni-channel strategy

•Getting customers online without cannibalising your retail offering

•Internally structuring your business to best deliver retail and online sports

betting

•Streamlining your online presence for multi-channel, multi-screen betting

•Bespoke solutions such as apps for specific devices

4

Page 4: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

“John, playing on a Poker table on his laptop, lowers the lid and taps the Poker

app on his smartphone. He gets to see himself sitting on the same game in

auto-play, wherefrom he resumes the game.” This is one scenario which

gambling operators encounters all the time in an inter-connected world where

the players are connected to operators via multiple channels.

Gambling operators across the world realize the opportunities and challenges

that lies on path of adopting an omni-channel strategy. Gambling analyst

predicts that an omni-channel strategy holds the key to atleast 30% more

revenue per player (ARPU) if the operators succeeds to offer seamless

experience on all digital and retail channels.

Page 5: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Few benefits of a multi-channel convergence strategy are quoted below:

• Improved Player experience

• Double digit revenue lift

• Competitive advantage in terms of product offerings

• Single Player view leading to more knowledge about player preferences.

So, who doesn’t like a double digit revenue lift and player behavior insights? But

bringing multi-channel converge comes with challenges of its own and it needs

strong motivation and support from an Organization’s top brass to plan and

execute a comprehensive omni-channel strategy.

Page 6: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Digital gambling has seen tremendous growth in the last decade and has been an

area of primary focus for most of the gambling operators. With better computing

power and larger screen size, Smartphones have been leading the bandwagon for

online gambling. Mobile gambling market is estimated to grow multi-fold faster

than the overall gambling market. Operators realize that the strong growth on

digital space can actually cannibalize the retail gambling ecosystem, and thus are

strategizing on multi-channel convergence which not only allays the fear of

cannibalization but also helps them know the player behavior well and reap

revenue lift.

Page 7: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

So how should the omni-channel strategy look like?

Considering the fact that challenges faced by each organization are different from

other, no panacea can be advocated but following framework can be applied to

identify the organizations maturity towards adopting an omni-channel strategy and

pin the path forward.

Page 8: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Vision for multi-

channel

convergence

• Identify Goals & Objectives.

•Business Case for convergence

Convergence Marketing

• Marketing drives to bring a player on both digital and retail touch point.

Integrated Product

Offereing

• Integrate product offering across channels

Platform & Backofficeintegration

• Integrate platform & back office services to create a single player view.

BI & Analytics

•BI & Analytics systems to create reports and insights for converged player behavior.

Targeted Marketing

• Offer customized content across channels based upon player insights.

Page 9: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Vision for Omni-channel converge

Top business leaders across the organization should understand the need and

impact of omni-channel convergence. Until there is strong thrust from top

leadership, business will not be able to execute the omni-channel strategy

properly. Product management need to create business cases to show the

impact of multi-channel convergence and thus help business arrive at goals &

objectives of an omni-channel strategy. Clearly called out objectives will always

help the teams plan better and stay motivated.

Page 10: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Convergence Marketing

Marketing and Loyalty teams can be at the driving seats making sure that they

are able to engage a player at both digital and retail platforms.

In the last couple of years, few operators have started using beacons to bring

the retail customers online. Also stores also puts devices such as iPads for

customers to register online. The number of registrations/conversion on the

floor are typically low but this actually helps the operator not only to get a

potentially high value customer online at very low CPA as traffic is organic but

also ensure engagement with the customer post he leaves the store.

Page 11: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Marketers are also using cross channel promotions such as free bets

which can only be used on either of digital and retail platforms. For ex-

Operators can offer more bonus against a deposit based promotion, if the

player goes and deposits in a physical store. Such promotions will help the

operator connect the digital and retail presence of the player.

Loyalty cards are used by many gambling operators to onboard their retail

customers to digital platforms. This has proven successful for operators

such as Gala coral (Coral Connect) & Ladbrokes (Odds On). The intention

here is to have one loyalty program across channels so that the loyalty

points from multiple channels can be accumulated at place.

Page 12: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Loyalty teams can also harness the popular retail BOPIS model (Buy

Online and Pick In Store) at online loyalty stores. Generally when a player

redeems his loyalty points or wins a game where the payout is in the form

of a gift, the delivery can take some time. Player can be given an option to

pick the item from a store of his choice which will eventually increase

footfall on the store. On similar lines, players can also collect their online

winnings at any retails store after proper verification.

As per Jeremy Thompson-Hill, Openbet CEO, year 2015 will see increased

use of GPS technology on mobile platforms to offer targeted promotions

to attract players to the nearest stores.

Page 13: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Integrated Product offering

Gambling operators also needs to make sure that the product offering

across channels should be same to give the player a seamless experience.

This becomes more critical when a player is hopping between multiple

channels in a small duration. In lack of an integrated experience, the player

will tend to engage only with the channel of his comfort. All the channels do

not offer similar flexibilities making it difficult for the operators to have

same offering across channels.

Page 14: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

For ex, in the world of Poker, operators still struggle to offer similar

offerings on Mobile and Desktop because the involvement time span on

Mobile devices is less (20-25 mins) while few Poker game types such as

tournaments takes more than an hour to finish.

Offerings on Mobile also remains a challenge because of real estate

limitation, involvement time spans and connectivity issues. Operators are

working with specialized vendors for Mobile solutions to create a perfect

experience for their players.

Virtual Reality also has huge potential to impact gambling industry where

platforms such as Oculus Rift can be used to offer a retail shop experience

to an online player.

Page 15: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Platform & Back-office integration

To achieve single player view and offer same experience to the player across

digital and retail channels, platform service such as accounts, loyalty, affiliates

etc. have to align. Data & technology across the channels have to be adapted

or changed to bring both digital and retail channels together.

Simpler said than done! Operators faces following challenges in achieving a full

scale platform and back-office integration.

• Legacy systems which are difficult to change

• Regulatory requirements which are different for retail & digital space

• Risks involved in planting a new system

Operators will need help of specialized vendors to deal with the challenges

above and taking baby steps in a phased manner to achieve a completely

integrated platform which can serve both retail & digital players alike.

Page 16: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

BI & Analytics

BI and Analytics can run over an integrated platform to help the business

owners understand the player better and create a single Player view for

business teams. Operators will be looking at lot of machine learning to

predict player behavior across multiple channels and help business teams

to take proactive action to keep a player active on the system for a larger

duration.

Page 17: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Targeted Marketing

Operators who are able to create a single-player view will be poised to

create targeted campaigns for the player based upon the time & location.

For ex: a player who entered a retail store will be offered notification about

a game or bet for an event he was engaging on online most recently.

Technology such as beacons, GPS clubbed with player insights from BI &

analytics reporting will help marketing and CRM teams to create tailor

made promotions for a player across various touch points. Mobile devices

will be instrumental in delivering all such targeted communication to the

players and thus operators will invest a lot towards creating an engaging

UI/UX.

Page 18: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

Team Structure

To deliver upon the omni-channel strategy, an organization’s product,

marketing and Loyalty teams need to work in a matrix structure to deliver

on both Game vertical’s strategy as well as overall business vision. BI &

Analytics can work as a centralized functionaries to drive decision making

for omni-channel vision of the organization.

Aditi Technologies has been working with the top notch gambling operators

across UK for their omni-channel convergence goals. Aditi has worked

towards integration of platform services, delivery of mobility, BI and

Analytics solutions and helped marketing teams with creation of targeted

content and promotions.

Page 19: Approach to Omni Channel strategy for betting and gaming industry

About Aditi Technologies:

Aditi Technologies is a Systems of

Engagement integrator. Aditi has helped over

150 companies run and transform their

business with cloud platforms like Windows

Azure, Amazon Web Services and

SalesForce.com. Leading enterprises, e-

businesses and ISV customers leverage Aditi

to help them build customer facing systems,

built using cloud infrastructure and platforms

and designed for engaging customer and

user experience. Aditi has been recognized as

one of the Top 3 Microsoft Cloud Partner for

three years in a row and voted as a Top 10 IT

Workplace by the Great Place to Work

Institute. In April 2014, Aditi Technologies was

acquired by Symphony Teleca (STC). For

additional information, please

visit www.aditi.com