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