SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Operators could – and should – be putting their customer data to more effective use, believes Victor Sevciuc, Head of Sales for Sports Betting and Gaming at Xtremepush.
He was speaking to us ahead of an upcoming Xtremepush webinar which will be hosted by SBC on Thursday 29 October, entitled ‘Turning player behaviour into revenue: Building an omnichannel approach to data management and player engagement’.
It’s a topic, Sevciuc said, which now features regularly in the conversations he has with betting and gaming operators.
“More often than not, when we’re exhibiting at events and attending conferences, the conversation comes back to data,” he explained. “CRM and engagement professionals want to know how to collect more of it. And how to use it more effectively throughout the life cycle.
“We all know the industry is full of incredibly talented and ambitious professionals who are looking to drive results. And getting more value out of your customer data is the key to so many business goals; increasing wallet-share, cross-selling, retention, and the list goes on. It all stems from what you do with your data.”
Xtremepush is one of the most well-regarded software vendors in the betting and gaming industry, working with many of the top brands including Rush Street Interactive, Penn National, Fortuna Entertainment Group, Funstage, Oddschecker and SportPesa. Sevciuc thinks this gives his team a holistic view of player engagement.
“We’re uniquely positioned because we have such visibility on the campaigns being run by 300+ betting and gaming operators globally,” he continued. “We understand the challenges they face when it comes to player engagement, and we see where the opportunities to connect with players are.”
So what does Sevciuc see as the biggest differentiator for those operators getting it right?
“The word we keep coming back to at Xtremepush is ‘relevance’,” he said. “Yes, incentivising your messaging is important, whether that’s bonuses, free bets or money-back specials. But to really have an impact, you must be able to personalise it too. And not just by adding the player’s name to the copy, although that does help!
“Our most successful clients always inject some element of personalisation. It can be as simple as including an image of each player’s preferred game if it’s a casino product, or odds on their favourite team ahead of a big game.”
Put simply then, the first challenge is to collect the data, but the differentiator is then how you glean insight and bring about personal relevance from that data.
Sevciuc explained: “You can learn a lot just by listening to your players, and analysing their behaviour. Without ever needing to ask, their behaviour will tell you exactly the kinds of bets they like to place, the casino games they prefer to play, and how often, and so on. And when you have this kind of data at scale, across your entire player base, it leaves clues. So you can start to project likelihood to churn or who is at risk of burnout.
“There are operators that are swimming in this level of detailed, first-party data. If you’re working with one of the big platform providers, the likes of SG Digital or SBTech, who we have full integrations with, then you definitely have it in abundance.
“The next hurdle is actually putting the data into action. That might be using it to trigger real-time campaigns to promote in-play odds, or combining multiple player attributes to create micro-segments.”
The level of personalisation that he describes has been made possible by recent tech developments which underpin the industry.
“The advances in software in the last five years have been phenomenal,” said Sevciuc. “For me, the emergence of API-based platforms might just be the most crucial element of all. That’s what allows for the seamless passing of data from one system to another.
“It’s how a brand pushes key player data that they have, sitting in their CRM or elsewhere, to a system like ours for activation. I’m really looking forward to addressing all of this in way more detail on the webinar. And of course, I’ll be happy to answer any specific questions people have as well.”
To register for the Xtremepush webinar, click HERE.
