Why players are being more disloyal than ever and what you can do about it
Once upon a time, entry barriers to the industry were lower than they’d ever been. Fly-by-night operators could emerge, make a quick profit and suddenly disappear. Modern marketing technology has made it easier and cheaper than ever to talk to customers at scale, but the way brands use these resources are often stuck in the past. Many iGaming operators try to activate idle players with incentives based around bonuses and free bets, but because they’re untargeted, mass-marketing messages, they often feel like spam – even when you have the correct permissions to send them. This had led to customers become less trusting in the operators, and so have the regulators. Because of this, tighter rules are now emerging to protect players. Across Europe new regulations are coming into effect – wider regulatory changes to protect consumers, like GDPR compliance (you can check out our guide to GDPR for iGaming here).
To summarise, new regulations are fast approaching and players are being more disloyal than ever. So what can you do about it? Gaming operators need to shift focus from costly marketing campaigns to drive in newly registered players and start caring about existing customers. For many, this is easier said than done.
It’s time to rethink your Customer Experience strategy!
Customer experience (CX) used to be a secondary consideration for iGaming operators. It was a nice-to-have, but the main consideration was always acquisition and conversion. Get more people in. Keeping up with regulatory change is important, but it’s hardly a compelling reason to go beyond what’s strictly necessary. However, caring about CX should never be second to conversion rate optimisation. Good CX is conversion rate optimisation.
You might think that you’re already having everything in place, like trigger based emails to welcome players for example. But to be honest, how are those emails converting? Our experience is that you might be lucky if you manage to convert 5%, but because they’re untargeted messages they often look and feel like spam… this is the opposite of good CX. Worthwhile CX is about proactive, personalised, timely and relevant messages that are appreciated (and responded to) by customers. It’s about talking to them in a way they would like to be spoken to and interacted with.
Poor CX will hurt your business, but great CX will help it thrive:
– 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience
– Customer experience leaders achieve revenue gains of 5-10% and reduce costs by 15-25% within two or three years
