The excitement is at its peak! After weeks of planning, the budget was finally approved; MarCom have worked out a brilliant concept along with mind blowing graphics. BI have just segmented the updated groups of targeted DB fresh from the oven, and you are about to deliver yet another glorified campaign to hundreds of thousands of users in dozens of different languages. You are one click away from laying back and lighting this big, fat Cohiba…

Yet, let’s be realistic: if more than 20% of these emails are ever opened, you can consider yourself one lucky CRM manager. Considering the fact that all these efforts were invested in by so many resources, it’s quite a shame.

What’s the alternative, you may ask? SMS? Well, first of all you need your players’ mobile numbers. Yeah, we know that’s a problem. Second, the content is limited and textual only. And last, it costs money per message. Combine these three and you’ve got yourself one not-so-efficient tool, which is mostly being used as a complimentary method on top of mailers.

But there’s another option, in case you already have a mobile app you’re offering. And that’s what we are here to discuss – what impact mobile has over CRM within the iGaming space.

While efforts may be quite similar when it comes to preparations, you can be quite sure that nearly all opted in players will indeed receive any “valuable” information you are going to serve them with – and many will even read it! Now, that alone can justify, much like that prison scene in “Top Secret”
, a smile that takes two hours to wipe off your face…

Have we died and went to mCRM heaven? Nearly. In such a scenario, we witness a shift of the responsibilities: if we can now be quite sure that all of our messages are going through, it is on us, the player marketing people, to scale our efforts in such a way that will not alienate our brands. Of course, none of us have ever spammed our customer base (now who would do that?) – but if any single major operator is sending dozens of millions messages per month, one might think that this is very close to it.

In fact, one way of standing apart from the competition is by making your messages count. This can be done by ensuring that you hit SEND only when the timing is appropriate, the content/offering is meaningful and the audience is segmented into relevant players who can actually see the advantage in this specific communication.

You can also use in-app messaging (as opposed to the regular Push Notifications), which gives you enhanced abilities when it comes to message length, creativity, direct features access, cross-selling. Even more important: since reading the message is done from within the app (it’s the mobile equivalent of lobby messages from the desktop world), the likelihood of the player sticking around and using the app is quite high. Done and done.

Different gambling apps have various levels of communication richness, so if your app lacks few features when it comes to player management, there is always an option to integrate with a 3^rd party company, such as Appoxee, donky, cAPPtain, Urban Airship or the likes. What these guys do is provide you with a piece of software that will be seamlessly installed on the users’ mobile device during the next update. This will allow you, through the mCRM backend, to monitor your players’ activity. This way, you can target activity which you deem as relevant; from there, effortlessly deliver instant messages (according to predesigned scenarios, in some cases).

Want to hear more about this? The next EiG event is taking place in Berlin this coming October and, as you know, this is the place where iGaming marketing knowledge is being earned. See you :)