It all became sooo boring… Regulation is killing all fun marketing initiatives and today’s promos look like:

“Deposit 250 (but only if you really want to), and potentially be eligible to perhaps be part of a list composed of people who who may have earned an amount which could be (or could be not) similar to 250; Terms and Conditions apply – at any point we do not promise anything to anyone, ever; Warning: researches show that people who deposit money tend to have their money deposited at some point”.

True, some still do it correctly, with as less words as possible, yet without all the BS and the apologetic tone:

But in general, it seems that what we first thought was a blessing, true Omni-Channel offering, would essentially mean that one huge Playtech operator will be merging with another one, without any differentiation in between these behemoths.

Even the DFS companies are now merging! What’s next, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue to form a coalition with Victoria’s Secret? Oh, wait – that actually might be interesting… But wait! What if they will, much like the previous examples, decide to cut on costs, switch to Playtech and feature their dealers? The horror! THE HORROR!

So, what can us CRMers do, in front of such a lack of creativity?

Well, as the medieval great poet M. Etal Lica has once said: Fight Fire with Fire.

All we need to do, is out-think people who usually end up as Heads of Responsible Gaming, and that, unlike watching the Trump inauguration and not focusing on Ivanka – shouldn’t be that hard.

A) Apply strategies from outside of our industry. When you do your weekly “let’s deposit 10 at ZooBet730 and hope that they will treat me as a VIP”, add extra few minutes to check how loyalty is being boosted at e-commerce websites and/or within casual apps.

Hell, even try looking at sharing economy websites – hipsters are known to earn less, so they must have figured out other ways to keep their users active somehow ;)

 B) Change your focus! We used to think that we should align our perspectives from Product -> Marketing -> Customer, while in fact, we needed to go from Customer -> Marketing -> Product.

Personalization is not a shiny new gimmick anymore – it’s a must, and with such a fierce competition you have to ensure your Player’s Journey is nothing but perfect.

C) Psychology voodoo (there might be a more subtle way to say it, but hey – there’s a ginger at the White House, so why bother?). Anyways, iGaming should learn how to embed psychological approaches into our ongoing CRM efforts.

It would work fantastically well with the above mentioned personalization concept, and has the potential to completely transform what we have considered as a good ROI up to now. You see, operators have nearly infinite data stored in their players’ profiles, which can be dissected in any number of perspectives; analyzing gaming activity using psychological practices, could mean exponential surge in potential profit due to the newly gained deeper behavioral understanding.

We have all talked in the past about consumers’ patterns, but now we need to learn how to up our segmentation, and offer players what they need, and not what we think they want – as we can drill down and explore what makes them tick specifically on our own website/mobile app.

So, in theory, we can let those witchcraft theories work for us :) How this could be done? Matching machine-learnt profiling with big-data capabilities is one example, but also proofed scripts for those one-on-one sessions between agents and high rollers.

D) Utilize what this new world order has force-fed us with: Credibility. Look, the Binary Options of the world didn’t collapse for no reason at all – like their “traders” monthly win, their reputation was nonexistent, and people run away from this entire industry. So even if we don’t really like it, along with taxation and segregated liquidity, in most markets you will also find iGaming operators that follow legitimate business practices.

That’s a great message to pump through your campaigns, even if you stand at the exact same spot with your competition. There’s always a way to award yourself with titles that nobody else has, such as: Most trustworthy bookie of 2017! (so far, and only after compering us with BernieMadoff.con and Tinder.)

DD) Are you still thinking of that Victoria’s Secret merger? Yeah, of course not. Everybody knows that when ordering items by an alphabetical system, at some point you end up with a Double D (.Y.)

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To conclude: a saturated eco-system such as ours, dictate a need for professionalism, and you can either gain your advantage by using resources (BI systems) or experience (senior experts). Better have both, just in case.

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PS: Hybrid Interaction Ltd., the premier iGaming consulting firm, has been shortlisted for the iCE VOX Supplier Challenge. Next Tuesday, FEB 7 @ 1600, Shahar Attias is going to speak at the Platinum Suits in the London ExCeL, and share from his vast experience. The content is promised to be fascinating, and he would really love seeing you at the audience there. Join the others who have no social life and nap in front of yet another speaker with a horrible accent at #iCE2017 ;)

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