Power to the people
Nick Keating of BounceX on how people-based marketing can help egaming marketers plagued by high bets on CPAs and low returns on LTVs
Today, consumers own on average 3.64 connected devices and are increasingly using them interchangeably, with predictions the number of devices per user is only going to increase. Without the assistance of people-based marketing strategies, gaming operators will continue to see their paid spend increase, their margins decrease, and their ability to maintain a loyal customer-base challenged by competitors with better methods of identification and communication.
The truth remains that consumers are distracted. The more friction points that exist to depositing, the higher the rate at which consumers will abandon. And the higher the abandonment rate, the more money gets wasted attracting consumers to your site that don’t convert. Marketers have the opportunity to challenge this by applying people-based marketing strategies to identify consumers before they abandon, and in the process, create an additional channel to remarket to; unlocking incremental revenue.
Over the years, marketing departments have evolved to focus on channels over consumers, and this has led to sub-standard digital experiences. By putting the focus back on the consumer, operators have the ability to overcome the siloes that have strained their relationships with their audiences.
Owning your audience
The first step to establishing better, more profitable relationships with your audience is through identification. Through identification, operators are no longer confined to establishing relationships through registration conversions. As marketers leverage technologies that assist in both the collection of data, and the utilisation of this data to inform their one-to-one communications, digital experiences are evolving from single-session engagements, to long-term relationships, even prior to registration being completed or deposits being made by a visitor.
By implementing people-based marketing strategies, operators can identify previously anonymous traffic and layer that identity with micro-level interactions exhibited, to deliver super-relevant, unified user-level marketing messages across all channels, devices and sessions.
Competition for traffic is at an all-time high and therefore acquiring traffic is expensive, which leads to margins being eroded and digital experiences becoming less effective.
Let’s take a look at your marketing funnel with a people-based lens and begin to restructure the emphasis you put on channels with an emphasis put on your consumers.
Increase acquisition through identification
Your current approach
We call your current approach to acquiring visitors the 92:1 ratio. Brands are spending, on average, £92 attracting prospects to their site for every £1 converting those prospects once they get to the site.
Gaming sites, broadly speaking, are competing for the same audience with very similar products, driving costs up and margins down. Gaming operators are forced to pay a premium for PPC, Display and Affiliate campaigns to drive potential bettors to their site, and then hope that the traffic they have just paid for will deposit, or at the least make it through to registration completion.
The people-based approach
With a people-based marketing approach to acquisition, your tactics to acquiring new customers become far more strategic, and you benefit from an ability to create more impactful relationships from the first touch point that are much more profound. It becomes less about paying for traffic that in many cases is not the right traffic, and becomes more about being laser focused on the traffic that is expressing some level of intent.
When traffic arrives on your site through paid means, your core objective should be to acquire their identity and map their digital body language onto that identity. By leveraging behavioural marketing to recognise a visitor’s digital body language, operators can create multiple opportunities for the visitor to self-identify. Once identified, either through their email address, a form completion, or a deposit, you have unlocked a multitude of opportunities to reengage with this visitor with relevant messaging that is delivered in real time.
Remove friction points to drive conversion
Your current approach
You have driven traffic to your site, yet there will be friction points that prevent conversion and encourage bounces. When arriving on your site, newly acquired and paid for traffic is often presented with inconsistent messages and daunting registration forms before they have the opportunity to further engage with your brand, resulting in an approximate 50% drop-off.
With 50% of your traffic abandoning before giving you any information, 50% of your investment is already lost. When they make it through the registration form and are faced with the decision to deposit money, without assistance and continuity of marketing messaging, your potential customers are faced with another opportunity to leave your site without converting.
The people-based approach
Guide your newly acquired traffic towards their highest yielding action, even if that is just the opportunity to get their email address. Micro-conversions, mini-wins if you will, can exist any time a consumer provides you with any sort of information. These micro-conversions give you the ability to move that consumer closer to the point of conversion every time they engage with your company.
Taking the people-based approach will allow you to identify the friction points within the customer experience that you are offering your visitors, create experiences that encourage momentum throughout the customer journey, and encourage conversion. The core objective of people-based marketing is to identify anonymous visitors to your site, and create additional opportunities for you to engage, nurture, and convert across all channels, devices and sessions. People-based marketing looks at single sessions and the opportunities across those sessions to create conversion momentum across all the necessary steps from landing to betting.
Retention
Your current approach
If you are unsuccessful in getting your visitors to complete a registration form, you are essentially unable to retain those visitors and forced to pay for their traffic time and time again. You are wasting money, eroding your margins, and not able to create consistent digital experiences.
The people-based approach
By unlocking people-based marketing channels through identification, you are unlocking opportunities to communicate with your most valuable bettors and encourage them, and remind them, to continue to bet with you. Using relevant and timely messages to the level of an identity across all channels and devices, operators can create relevant, behaviourally driven communications for lasting, repeatable, and profitable relationships with your high-value customers.
The current state of the gaming industry is primed to take advantage of the technologies that are capable of identifying consumers as they engage with operators, regardless of the device, channel or browser they choose. People-based marketing will prove to be the competitive advantage that the most successful gaming operators will be leveraging in order to win.
Nick Keating, director of EMEA, BounceX
Nick Keating is the director of EMEA at BounceX – the leader in cloud-based behavioural marketing and the fastest growing software company in America. He is tasked with establishing the company’s UK headquarters and growing the BounceX business throughout EMEA. Keating has a 20 year track record in successfully growing early stage software and professional services companies in the enterprise B2B market in EMEA and was previously VP EMEA at Maxymiser.