SBC News ICE 2014 Interview - Maxymiser's Tim Axon on Real Time Player Identification

ICE 2014 Interview – Maxymiser’s Tim Axon on Real Time Player Identification

tim axon (2)Ahead of ICE 2014 – SBC catches Tim Axon Principal Consultant igaming Maxymiser  to discuss player identification and key measurements for igaming operators.

Tim Axon has 13+ years’ experience in the customer and ROI led marketing, he is passionate about helping brands build profitable relationships that last. Tim has worked as Principle Consultant for Gaming at Maxymiser since May 2012, specializing in testing, personalisation and cross-channel optimisation for the gaming industry. Tim Axon will be presenting a Maxymiser case on real time player identification.

 

SBC: Hi Tim great to catch up again, can you summarise for our readers how your igaming clients have changed their retention and marketing set-ups using Maxymiser technologies and services?

Tim: For a lot of our clients it is all about working out where optimisation fits within the organization. Typically we would work alongside an acquisition marketing team but because of the way optimisation is evolving we are now beginning to work with CRM teams and multiple stakeholders who tend to want different road maps. As a result, many of our clients have started to re structure their teams into customer experience teams and we create roadmaps for the different stakeholders to compliment acquisition, retention, cross- and up-sell, different regions, etc.

SBC: Maxymiser has a strong focus on real time data delivery. How can operators use this data to gain new customers for their products?

Tim: Maxymiser can and does collect real time “big data” and use it immediately to personalise a customer journey or experience. Data such as traffic source (PPC, Display, Affiliate, SEO Organic etc), keyword search, offer clicked on, device, how someone is connected to the internet, what the customer was looking at previously etc allows an operator to be able to create a continuous narrative for a customer with their website. It also throws up different strategic treatments; for instance customers arriving via an affiliate might respond better to a more no nonsense approach.

SBC: Data Collection plays an important part in optimising CRM.  In your opinion what should operators focus on when retrieving information from their products and how can they make this data effective for their operations?

Tim: One of things I would say to gaming organisations is, keep it simple. You can collect huge amounts of data but you only need the right few variables in order to make something very actionable.

One example of some campaigns we have recently been doing with a number of our clients focuses on extending a customer’s session. We have been capturing a customer’s average bet and what their existing balance is in real time. We can then prompt the customer to deposit again when the player reaches the appropriate and relevant point. This has been very effective and is a great way to use the real time data that we have available to enhance the customer experience.

SBC: We are witnessing Operators beginning to use refined quantative data modelling to identify and segment their player base. However there are qualitative factors as to why customers may choose a gaming product (brand, luck, look and feel etc..), are these  factors being lost by too quantitative data driven retention systems.

Tim: Becoming too data driven can of course be a problem for all organisations, not just the gaming industry and it is a constant battle between creativity and science.

Optimisation combines the use of science with the creative and uses this to compliment decision making. We know that good creative can often overcome bad data driven decision making, but bad creative can also destroy very good data driven decision making. A good execution of a bad idea can happen and this is why it is important to test the variants and in some cases, test them again.

Ultimately it is important for gaming operators to remember why their customers come to their site and that is for entertainment. So they need to use the data available to make sure they are optimising the experience for their customers in the best possible way, whilst still being creative about how they display their services.

SBC: At Maxymiser your team works within different industries. What marketing/retention trends and competencies could igaming learn from these different sectors?

Tim: Creating a continuous journey across different devices is one of the most important trends that we see across all sectors. Responsive design is also being worked into gaming but its steady progress rather than explosive. Becoming more customer centric although clichéd is still a work in progress in gaming whereas other industries such as telecom organisations are way ahead.

SBC: You are presenting at ICE 2014 – what do you want delegates to take away from your session

Tim: I want people to walk away from my session with practical learnings. I am going to offer some concrete ideas and examples as well as high level thinking in my presentation, ‘Egaming operators build products and experiences that customers love – or do they?’

I was recently in a pitch when the prospect turned round and said to me, “Yes Tim I am very glad that you can tell me how to optimise my existing pages, but if you were going to start a registration page from scratch, what would you do?”

This was an interesting one for me and it struck me that a lot of operators are not only keen to optimise their existing pages but they want to ensure they have the right foundations in the first place. This is what I am going to expand on in my presentation and listeners will walk away with some really concrete examples rather than just high level ideas with little detail.

___________________________

Tim Axon – Principal Gaming Consultant – Maxymiser

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