Online Sportsbook Personalisation: A Retail Blueprint
Allan Stone, CEO at Intelitics, says land-based operators have cracked the code for personalised player experiences and sets out what online sportsbooks can do to emulate their success.
The casinos that sit on the Las Vegas Strip have a very clear understanding of who their customers are and this in turn allows them to provide a deeply personalised experience. Understanding the core audience is the key to delivering true personalisation and while the land-based casinos are doing this really well, their online counterparts have some catching up to do.
Why? Because most online brands are trying to be all things to all people. There is some logic to this – by going after the largest addressable market you are more likely to build the significant player base required for success. But this impacts the experience you can offer players and ultimately harms acquisition and retention.
A very small number of online sportsbooks get this and have built their brand and proposition to appeal to a niche audience. Betty comes to mind here – this is the first online sportsbook aimed purely at female bettors. This in itself is personalisation – talking directly to a niche audience segment and providing them with the specific betting experience they are seeking, which, in the Betty example, will be very different to what male bettors are looking for.
Personalisation is a very broad term and covers everything from your brand down to the marketing messages you send to players. While it’s a very complex area with huge opportunities to explore, for me, it really comes down to providing each player with the experience they are seeking based on their own preferences. Those who can provide this will strengthen brand equity and boost loyalty.
Personalisation should start during the acquisition phase – so prior to a player engaging with the online sportsbook. This part is a little more limited as the player has yet to share data and preferences with the operator. But this is where targeted marketing comes in. What do I mean by that? Sending specific messages to specific audiences on specific channels at specific times. For example, the ads pushed to a female bettor on Instagram with be very different to those to male bettors on Facebook.
Congruency is also important at this stage. If a hockey fan is targeted with a specific promotion for the next NHL game, if they click the ad but arrive at a landing page where the bonus is a football free bet then the personalised offer suddenly becomes not personalised at all. In this instance, the player is highly likely to drop off simply because the operator and its marketing team had dropped the ball on the execution of the personalisation effort.
The signup phase, and in particular the KYC aspect, is where the most friction occurs but where personalisation can have a significant impact. Players often don’t like having to provide things like their social security numbers and bank account details. Most operators actually don’t explain why they need this information, but operator Jackpocket does in a way that adds a sport of personalisation.
When players are required to provide their social security number, a message appears to say Jackpocket needs this to verify their age, not steal their identity. This is a fun, human and ultimately personalised approach to KYC and onboarding.
For me, phase two is where things get really exciting. This is once the player has signed up to the sportsbook, claimed the bonus, made a deposit and started betting. This process gives the operator tremendous insight into what the player likes. As the player continues to wager with the book, the operator receives large volumes of data that can be used to further personalise the experience they are offered.
This can be something as simple as pushing bonuses and incentives that align with the player’s behaviour. Perhaps the data shows they prefer free bets over deposit bonuses, so offer them the former and not the latter. But the sky really is the limit here and I’d love to see more operators going down the route of a personalised lobby for each player.
This means pushing odds, markets and offers based on the sports, teams and players the bettor has previously wagered on. Operators will want to ensure the lobby doesn’t become too personalised, missing out on the opportunity to cross-sell bettors to other sports and verticals. But Netflix does a really good job of promoting content based on user behaviour alongside recommendations so operators could look to the streaming giant for inspiration.
Personalisation is going to become increasingly important, especially for smaller brands looking to take share away from the established power players. These guys are far less likely to innovate around the area of personalisation, opening up a huge opportunity for those who are.
It’s up to each operator just how far they want to go with this, but the likes of Betty and Dabble – a real pioneer in this area with social interaction at the core of its offering – have taken inspiration from how retail approaches personalisation and used it to hit the ground running.
