Casino Beats 2024 Marketing Chips and Tips

Another year and another SBC Summit Malta summit completed. It is always great to get down to Malta and see new faces as well as catch up with regular customers and partners. I get a particular kick out of the smaller scale events because it means that I can attend plenty of the talk tracks and get a real vibe for what topics are resonating with operators and marketers in the iGaming space. It is the benefit of being ‘boothless’ as a sales person at an event like this. As usual the evening events around things like Casino Beats, indeed any of SBC ’s events are where most of that connecting and meeting happens. As usual the venues did not disappoint and mighty craic was had by all. But onto the serious stuff of what is hot and some of the things I found interesting this year from a marketing perspective The VIP session treatment.

I’ll start with what I thought was my favourite and most valuable talk/presentation of the whole week. Gali Hartuv from WarriorLab who did an intimate breakout session on all things VIP is the standout. His approach to thinking about Casino VIP is thorough and I won’t share all the secrets here but building on the pillars of being data driven while maintaining human personalisation resonated with me. We see too many corners cut at a VIP level and indeed at the whole marketing approach by not putting in solid technical foundations that do the following: 1. Speak to each other 2. Are flexible 3. Meet the needs of the customer. The learning here for me this week was thinking about how we apply Gali’s push and pull of marketer and player want versus player expectation at scale in CRM. It is a core fundamental that I think teams need to be thinking about more closely. Being data driven, human and authentic in our brand voice is so important in VIP. As a disclaimer I had not met Gali before the event and there is no backhander here but do follow him and get in contact with Warrior lab if you want some serious expertise on VIP (though if anyone comes knocking for CRM I am sure he knows where to send them now…)?

Buzzwords!

The next panel that dovetailed nicely with VIP was ‘Loyalty or personalisation? The key to customer retention!’ A super panel all round but some of the key drivers here was thinking about how many buzzwords are proliferating at the moment. How do operators get a handle on AI when every tech partner is talking about it (SELF PLUG as this is linkedin after all…. for the marketers out there have a look at our own Adam Palmerini who joined me to talk all about this the other week https://omny.fm/shows/experts-in-the-room/all-things-ai-in-igaming-with-adam-palmerini ) Dmitry Belianin summed it when he said that AI will be an enhancement but will not replace core functions of what retention teams need to be doing with data. That is looking at trends but not getting lost in the sea of data that we have as brands. We can over analyse and get lost if we are not bringing things back to core metrics like ROI, LTV etc. I also liked that Maxim Verplanken highlighted that there is a need for operators to be weary of third party black boxes and how if all brands are doing the same thing, how do we know if we are doing the right things? It is something we are pushing hard as a brand narrative here at Xtremepush and it is nice to see it validated by some top class thinkers in the space.?

Future Proofing (It's all in the testing)

Jelena Tomi? , Cecilia López and Christine Debono had the best panel topic and one I had highlighted pre event as a must attend. I’ll start at the end where each put their chips on the table (pun intended) on core takeaways for marketing teams on the theme of future proofing. Firstly,? learn how to read data; secondly, put the player at the core of your marketing; and finally, test and test properly with budget. Coming back to buzzwords and trends the big point here was that if we test on channels it needs to fit our performance models. Does it deliver results that matter and how do we recognise that as a marketing team? One of the big challenges for operators that I commonly come across is how to get these channel touch points (new, emerging or old) consistent at scale and in real time. It is not an easy challenge to solve but I love point number two (from Cecilia), that by being player focused, we can nail down those metrics that matter, highlight the channels that work for us and get marketing to work at scale. A great panel and it really highlighted some of the challenges with regulation, multiple channels and opaque reporting that can affect operators and affiliates alike.

The cool things

I love meeting new people, and seeing cool products. Uri Poliavich and his presentation on MEGA hit the mark here for me. At Xtremepush we are unifying gamification with CRM and Soft2Bet are doing the same within the PAM environment and it looks very cool as an offering. Tiny Roman soldiers battering each other? Yes please. Richard Acosta and the team at V?r Interactive are well worth a look at as well. A very slick product that will offer operators some highly intelligent products to diversify their offerings. Drop them a line as I was super impressed by it. Quote of the week goes to the Sean Bianco of Gain Changer when it comes to monetising traffic for affiliates all we need to do is ‘send out the fishing boats'. I’ve not seen a good fishing analogy so well played out in the affiliate and iGaming space and he was bang on. Find audiences that matter tied to the metrics that matter (CPA in this instance for traffic), test and then move on once that audience is exhausted. never stop iterating. Retention and CRM can apply this rigour too. Cover and complete your tried and tested use cases but make sure you are testing new approaches to get ahead of the game to really start to affect core metrics like churn, CLTV and GGR.

The end

Our own Ross O'Connor had the best wrap of the week with his post here talking about synergy in integration, customised approaches, the need for real time and the importance of gamification for operators to differentiate their offering. I would agree with all of that and add that brands need to keep thinking about their positioning and what they offer to their players as a core way to retention mecca. To do that they have to start in the data (given or implied) from their players. That's a wrap and some great food and drink was had by all. Good to meet Rebecca Attard and the team at Gaming Innovation Group for one of the best steaks I have ever had https://www.sciaccamalta.com/ it is a must if you are down there!) See you all in Lisbon! #crm #retention #igaming #malta #marketing