Redefining sports betting campaigns through automation
Sergey Kobitskiy details some of the top innovations underway within real-time marketing and gamification. Founded in 2018, Smartico has built industry-leading platforms which help gaming operators globally to enhance UX, increase revenue and improve retention.
After a year of postponements and cancellations, the summer ahead includes the Euros, Olympics, Wimbledon, Copa America and various other sporting events globally, providing sportsbook operators a fresh opportunity to engage bettors.
Timing is of the essence, explains Smartico’s CEO Sergey Kobitskiy, and communicating with the right customers at the right time pre-match is what creates a stand-out campaign.
Irrelevant pop-ups run the risk of being seen as spam, discouraging players from engaging in future.
A strong marketing campaign is dependent on content that is not only high-quality, but tailored to those consuming it, encouraging decisive action.
“When creating promotional campaigns in the run-up to sporting events, it’s a huge challenge to segment the users and send the right content to the right people. This is why we developed a way to automate this,” says Kobitskiy.
“One of the main advantages we have as a boutique software company is the close relationships we have with our clients. We listen closely to their needs and develop our features based on these insights, along with our technology visions and capabilities.”
Through these discussions, the marketing specialist identified one of the biggest challenges for operators as being around maximising engagement from promotional campaigns.
These discussions informed the development of Smartico’s sports content engine which leverages real-time insights from its BI module to make truly informed decisions around the promotion of marketing materials, tailoring them to the right groups at the right time pre-match.
Automating the laborious aspects of manually arranging campaigns, will give operators more time to focus on innovation, increased ROI and a better experience for players.
Power through personalisation
A personalised approach is what differentiates an average user experience from a good one, and a good one from a great one.
“When customers receive notifications around games and teams that they’re interested in just before kick-off, the-end result is much more likely to be that they engage with that material and place a bet,” Kobitsky explains.
There are several groups of users that operators must take into account with promotional campaigns such as regular, intermittent, dormant and new customers. These groups will respond better to different kinds of messaging.
“We have developed a feature that’s connected to real sport data feed, where you create one email template, SMS, or any asset, with special dynamic tags that will show the right sport match information to the right players,” he adds.
A system using real-time data ensures that messaging is not only tailored but hits at just the right moment. Smartico’s content engine uses AI to analyse past player activity, identifying the most relevant times to send pop-ups to players and maximising engagement as a result.
Picking up the pace
This could potentially be a highly time consuming process. In the development of promotional campaigns, manually setting up unique templates for email, SMS, and social media notifications is not an easy task. Efforts to create this promotional material can be strenuous and time-consuming for marketing teams, Kobitskiy points out.
Developing the right message, accompanying creatives, and appropriate scheduling time are all crucial in driving optimal engagement amongst bettors.
With this in mind, Smartico built the campaign flow builder as part of its content engine. This takes care of the different media forms a campaign will cover, as well as ensuring that the content is a suitable fit for each of these. Smartico’s campaign flow feature lets operators create the flow and order for their campaign across various forms of communication, whether it’s via SMS, social media or in-app notifications.
“The information such as the teams/league/time of match will be populated replacing the dynamic tags in creatives. The header image can be replaced based on the league, sport or the teams playing, the bonus offer can be changed based on user VIP, country, or any other attribute.”
“We found this feature to save a significant amount of time to operators, and it clears entire days off their schedule,” Kobitskiy says. “Reduction of pressure on in-house teams leaves operators to do what they do best and think of strategic ways to innovate, increase ROI, and continue enhancing their customers’ journeys.”
Automating campaigns provides a more positive and engaging experience for punters, and empowers operators to strengthen their brand and reap the results of their marketing efforts – with a little bit of help from tech.