An effective VIP scheme is crucial for building long-lasting relationships with high-lifetime value players and gifting is a huge part of any successful VIP scheme. However, being able to ensure a proper return on that investment is not always straightforward.

On the latest episode of iGaming Daily, Charlie Horner, SBC’s Media Manager, spoke to Marko Heino, Founder and CEO of Framme, a platform that offers automated VIP gifting schemes for the igaming industry.

On the importance of integrating the gifting process, Heino said: “The best way to systemise it is to integrate gifting directly into your CRM system. When you do that, you can automate gifting as part of the customer journey and set specific triggers so that these gifts go out automatically when these conditions are met.

“[For example], if a person hasn’t played for a while, if they reach a milestone or if they’re having a birthday or something like that. When you do these things more automatically you get rid of the mistakes and get more volume and more data.

“Automation ensures that gifts are sent out on time and they are consistent. Whenever people are doing this manually there can be mistakes. Also, it takes a lot of time sourcing gifts, packing gifts and sending them out. Those kinds of things are probably not the things that the operators want to focus on.”

Also on the podcast were Robin Becker, Head of Marketing at Hub88, and Sonja Itäinen, an igaming professional and partner of Framme.

Becker explained that when it comes to gifting “a physical gift is way more personal than a bunch of free spins or money”.

She added: “What [Hub88] try to do every time we’re coming up with client gift ideas is try to think of something we haven’t seen and we try to do it in a higher-end way.

“What we’re trying to do when we work with Framme is sit together, discuss and come up with different types of ideas. They then go out and scour everywhere and try to find us the best options, the best brands and the best quality. Then we work on how we’re going to brand it.

“The gaming industry has seen everything already at this point. Everybody’s always giving pretty much the same thing and we’re always trying to look for unique ideas and think outside the box.”

Itäinen also agreed that customisation and bespoke gifting are crucial in a “saturated” igaming market. Looking ahead to the future, she suggested that operators will need to focus on “the customer experience as a whole” as a way to differentiate themselves.

“The details are more important than ever,” Itäinen explained. “People are so aware of the quality these days and what they put their money on and if you order something very expensive, like an expensive bag or perfume, you expect it to come packaged in a certain way. You expect it to be an entire experience.

“In the future, as there’s so much innovation and choice out there, I think that the personalisation of products and smoothness of the process will be super important.”