Offers and promotions are used throughout the gaming industry to improve customer acquisition and retention however firms can be guilty of overspending and being over-generous.

Shai Frank, SVP Product & General Manager Americas at Optimove, helped to produce a four-part blog series on the matter and he joined James Ross, SBC’s Multimedia Editor, on the iGaming Daily podcast, supported by Optimove, to discuss the topic. 

He starts by providing his key takeaways from the blogs which are that operators are “bonus happy” and therefore there is an opportunity to optimise promotional spending to “improve player experience” and “significantly improve profit margins”.

Shai also talks about the benefits of using predictive models to target customers more effectively.

He said: “When you have a lot of data about your customers and you can gauge what they’re doing and what customers like them have been doing in the past, you can deduce a lot of concussions from that.

“Predictive models can help you anticipate what might happen if you do something. So you can look at the segment of customers and anticipate their future lifetime value based on their characteristics and based on their engagement so far. It really helps you anticipate their future value and then also deploy the right CRM strategy for each of those segments.”

The continuous nature of AI and predictive models can also allow operators to deploy a strategy of “continuous optimisation” rather than a “test and learn strategy”. This means that the AI can pivot and adapt strategies to overcome seasonality and changes in player preferences.

Shai uses the example of how a firm could use AI to more efficiently target fans during and after the NFL season.

“During NFL season, AI will choose a less generous offer to them. But as soon as NFL season ends and their engagement levels start to drop, AI will automatically adjust and divert those customers to the more generous journeys compared to before,” he explained. 

“As long as NFL season was happening they were very highly active and as soon as the NFL season ends, all of a sudden, they need more incentive to stay engaged. You don’t want to wait until next September to acquire them again, to reacquire your existing players, which is a disease we see with a lot of brands and operators. They keep acquiring their customers again and the cost of acquisition is obviously enormous.”

AI is also able to “self-optimise” customer journeys based on what it thinks will maximise a customer’s lifetime value by choosing the most relevant messages and promotions for customers when they are eligible for more than one.

Overall Shai says that modern technology such as AI and machine learning offers operators the chance to “optimise levels of generosity in a way that can produce huge profits to brands while also improving their customer experience”.

He concluded: “[Using] the right tools and with the technology today it’s very easy to do that with a few clicks and a few mindsets to make those clicks. You can save millions and depending on your size could be even billions of dollars on over-generosity that you don’t have to spend. 

“Focusing those savings on crafting greater customer experiences and innovative solutions to your customers in a way that will help you differentiate from your competition on your product, on your content and on your offers rather than overspending on acquiring players again or overspending.”