Just yesterday, customer activation software provider Wiraya announced a long-term partnership with customer experience marketing agency A GAME ABOVE.
Writing exclusively for SBC News, the CEOs of both businesses discuss the journey to making customers believe in their offering across all stages of the lifecycle, and how they plan to promote the value benefits for consumers, client brands and product manufacturers.
Engaging through experiences – not just expenditure
The dynamics of play over betting and gaming product, with a win/loss cycle across all, requires more care, commitment and focus in how we engage, offer and advertise our products.
Following many years of working in and for the betting and gaming industry – whether as operator, supplier or advisor – we became increasingly aware of the sustainability of the offering, in all markets, given a dominant focus upon, above all else, product.
Bringing in customers who want to back their team for sports bets, and aggressively cross-selling them to casino, slots and other products, mostly by way of purely financial incentives, that often does not work how players expect them to. It has become decreasingly effective and is increasingly subject to regulatory control and influence.
How do operators best approach the challenges of gain, retain and maintain when there are fewer marketing levers available? Especially since many incentives such as bonusing, price discounts and loyalty, are all under legal review or threat?
In an industry where, in the minds of the audience, all our products tend to be identified as commodities, we need something more to make them try, buy and establish loyalty. That something is best served by exciting, engaging, and effective player promotions.
It produces a different kind of audience engagement: healthy, mission and achievement-focused customer behaviour, with loyalty built-in, over the course of their participation with the games above.
We take players out of the bare transactions of gambling, and welcome them to a little and often revenue strategy approach. It means that their status and achievement in completing a mission, qualifying for a championship, or receiving a prize against the clock, often matters more than money.
Over the course of a player lifecycle calendar, or back to lifecycle schedule for reactivations, featuring many customer promotions (or stories, as we call them at A GAME ABOVE and Wiraya), we’ll engage and enhance the customer experience so that it drives unmatched acquisition, retention and, fundamentally, increased value, across a sustainable, career-path plan for the customer.
What happens in Vegas…
Wiraya and A GAME ABOVE first encountered one other during a public discussion around one core strategy that A GAME ABOVE innovated, which our recently agreed partnership seeks to optimise and perfect across many industries: The Las Vegas Lesson.
Betting and gaming has found a natural home in the desert city of Las Vegas, Nevada, but it is surprising to witness just how little those products are sold to consumers by any of the brands across the resort.
A clear product challenge exists in betting and gaming, driven by the very real commodity status that impacts that industry. All the games in a casino, and the sports events in a sportsbook, are, in the minds of the mass market audience, the same. Commodities, even.
So, how do Las Vegas casino brands overcome their product challenge?
They achieve, and demonstrate The Las Vegas Lesson, by never selling gambling. Las Vegas welcomes the audience to an experience forged across:
- The Lifestyle
- The Resort
- The Adult Playground – Sin City – What Happens in Vegas etc.
Betting and gaming are close by to all that Las Vegas offers, but they are not sold to you as a consumer. Las Vegas does not gain and retain by product alone. Las Vegas packages the product with the experience to affect lifestyle moments that engage, enhance lifetime value and extend lifecycle.
Once we opened discussions between A GAME ABOVE and Wiraya, we understood that The Las Vegas Lesson would work across many industries, not only betting and gaming.
Our realisation of this, and how we could work together, has had huge relevance for both our businesses, clients, teams and, ultimately, resulted in more engaged, entertained and cared-for consumers.
Customer experience. Reloaded.
We have already witnessed positive experiences from player events A GAME ABOVE has been involved with. That’s in terms of response, retention, reactivation and, most significantly, revenue.
It has shown the need for a different kind of audience engagement which builds in loyalty through participation with a customer sales promotion acting as a literal game above.
It wasn’t just about the transaction for these customers. It was also about the status and achievement in completing a mission, qualifying for a championship, or receiving a prize from an against the clock challenge. Across industries, it’s time to create stories that make customers believe. Our clients have products, services and brands that matter.
Engagement encounters are more valuable when each customer feels that they have an individual, emotional connection to a brand. Our partnership focuses upon delivering gamified communications to one customer, or a like minded group, via the right channels and messages, at the right time.
We make customers believe by creating emotional responses throughout their active engagement with our communications for your brand, product or service.
Wiraya and A GAME ABOVE are committed to making each customer’s perception and reality of their involvement with a brand, product and service more engaging, emotional, rewarding and sustainable, for the truly long-term relationship with lifecycle it creates for our clients, and the enhanced value from loyalty that creates for customers.
Welcome to a game above the transaction.