Q&A: Andy Daniels discusses the future of mobile â part three
The third and final part of eGR Mobile Intelligenceâs interview with Degree 53 managing director Andy Daniels on the future of mobile
eGR Mobile Intelligence (eGRM): Are you experimenting with or excited about anything in particular?
Andy Daniels (AD):At Degree 53 weâre always experimenting with the latest technologies and in the past few months itâs been iBeacons, smartwatches and Google Glass. The latter caused the most excitement in the office when they arrived but after a couple of days everyone had lost interest. Out of the other two technologies I think smartwatches have the potential to make the biggest impact on the online gambling industry. In the past few weeks half my development team have bought Android Wear watches and while some of the early models look like the owner is trying to ask Scotty to beam him back up to the Enterprise, some of them are quite stylish, modest and seem to have a practical purpose. The recent news that Apple have hired the former sales director of Tag Heuer adds more weight, if any was needed, to the expectation that Apple are about to enter the smartwatch market. For me the excitement around this is whether Apple can dominate this market like theyâve done with phones and tablets in the post Steve Jobs era.
eGRM: Some have said mobile is now entering the next phase, what do you think will be the next big challenge for egaming operators to overcome on mobile?
AD:For me it has to be automated personalisation. At the moment operators will do a bit of personalisation on their e-mail and SMS CRM campaigns but this is usually as simple as sending the same x thousands of customers, whoâve performed a certain action in a certain number of days. When I say automated personalisation Iâm talking about what Amazon does â every user seeing a unique, tailored view depending on their history. For example, if every Saturday morning I come on to an operatorâs app and place a both teams to score accumulator then when I open the site up the next time the first thing I see is a link to that coupon. Then the second thing I see is a promotion for the both teams to score and match result. Thatâs a simple use case but the point is knowing what your customers want, giving it to them and trying to upsell them alternatives.
eGRM: Now we have a little more understanding of the platform, just how big do you think mobile will become for gambling firms?
AD:For the last few years Iâve heard people say that the online web is a lame duck which is something I disagree with. Most operators still generate at least half of their revenue online and while mobile and tablet will continue to grow their share of the market, online will always be a large slice of the pie. Iâm confident that mobile will be the dominant channel for at least the next five years but the smart operators will adopt a holistic strategy of their different channels, products and their customerâs preferred devices.