SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
James Riley, Founder and CEO of 2mee, says that operators are struggling to connect with players, but there are technologies and solutions available that can change that…
With ever-increasing competition across all arms of an operator’s online offering, brands are finding it increasingly challenging to be heard above the noise and differentiate themselves. If there’s anything the past couple of years have shown, it’s that upgrading and innovating your digital experience is key to online gambling success.
Operators rest on their laurels at their peril. Embracing new marketing technologies can meaningfully change how you engage with players, encourages responsible gambling behaviours and delivers a sustainable return on investment from your marketing spend.
Current engagement methods are stale
In this industry, once you find something that works there’s a tendency to stick to your guns. If it keeps delivering, it makes sense to keep running with it. The unfortunate side effect is that betting has become quite conservative in its player engagement approach, if not stale.
Online engagements are very standardised, formulaic, generally outcome-driven and often box-ticking exercises. It’s usually a text-based interaction that’s either relatively hidden from the player, or functions much like the pop-ups and banners that are saturating every industry. As such, users are simply not paying attention anymore.
Not only do users have to navigate the wallpaper of ad banners, but the content that sits within them also doesn’t encourage the player to interact, delivering impersonal messages or bulletins that don’t foster a real connection between the brand and the player.
The formulaic throw mud against the wall and hope for the best era is over. New ad tech technologies are emerging that engage in a completely new way. Ultimately, there needs to be a shake-up in how operators communicate with their players, either as direct-to-audience communication or as an acquisition or brand narrative ad message.
Trialling new concepts and technology
Operators shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with new concepts and tools to drive player engagement. Technology like 2mee’s HoloAd – delivering brand ambassadors as hologram messages across affiliate and publisher websites and apps – offers you the opportunity to experiment and upgrade how you talk to your players.
Operators can deploy brand ambassadors, influencers and spokespeople directly on their digital collateral to deliver a more human message around offers, tips, responsible gambling behaviour and so much more. The sea change is in how you engage with your customer or lead.
Caution around integration and deploying new technology is natural, and certain operators have taken a segmented approach. Rather than rolling it out across an entire player base, they are deploying segmented audience messaging and driving better engagement.
This has proved to be a successful way to road-test new concepts like holograms and the results yielded are extremely strong.
Where your traditional text-based messaging has engagement rates in the low single digits, hologram influencer messaging sits between the 20 and 40 per cent mark. These much higher engagement rates are vital for driving acquisition and retention, but also importantly in today’s market, improving responsible gambling standards.
Upgrading your responsible gambling messaging
One of the biggest findings from the recent GambleAware study was that responsible gambling messaging and tools were hard to find with signposting considered poor. Compounded with already low engagement rates on what is often text-heavy content, there’s much to be done to improve responsible gambling messaging and compliance.
Holograms are a valuable asset from a responsible gambling perspective as they can be sent to individual players. With clever targeting, operators can reach out to players to check how they’re doing and to ensure they stay in control of their play. Holograms bring back that face-to-face contact that’s incredibly powerful, bringing a more conversational tone that engenders trust and transparency.
Online gambling can quite often be a solitary activity, more so for potentially at-risk players. The check-ins and conversations a player would ordinarily have with their friends or at the betting shop just aren’t there. Considering the higher engagement rates of hologram technology, operators can embrace a tool with a proven track record of higher efficacy – setting a standard for responsible gambling in the industry.
Hologram potential in web3 developments
While the Web3 space is still in its early days, hologram technology will be one to watch for organisations exploring how they can make their mark in this nascent industry.
Web3 provides a multi-faceted decentralised environment in which influencer messaging can thrive, from ensuring security and transparency around the recording of the message to additional XR delivery channels to being able to create NFTs around a hologram message – the opportunities are vast.
It’s incredibly important that as we move from the ivory tower data ownership of Web 2.0 we ensure that brands continue to benefit from the burgeoning influencer marketing economy but not at the expense of the influencer’s rights themselves.
2mee’s platform is being engineered to provide a check and balance through blockchain technology to create a robust and exciting future for this next generation of ad tech rollout. Whether it is Web 2.0 or Web3, holograms offer the next generation of communication technology in whatever environment you deploy them.
