Who Are You? The Gambling Industry and Big Data
Who are you? Or how the online gambling industry can utilize the potential of big data to understand their customers better.
I was sitting in a restaurant at a seaside resort this summer. The resort had live music and a swimming pool with tables around it. I happened to glance at the table next to ours where a Romanian fellow tourist, male and probably in his late 30s, much to my surprise was gambling on his cell phone while enjoying the peaceful summer scenery.
It turns out that one of the top locations where online gambling is indeed enjoyed is pubs or clubs according to an annual report published by the UK Gambling Commission in February 2018. Furthermore, the report states that a pub is one of the most popular locations to play slots. According to the same report, the highest growth in online gambling concerns the usage of mobile devices with 51% of gamblers using a phone or a tablet to gamble online. Online gambling is still predominantly done from home in 97% of the cases. Despite that fact, online gamblers can also be found gambling on their commute to work and even while at work. Out of all online gamblers, 13% have played while on the clock.
There’s a lot of data available in the casino industry nowadays. More often than not, the data which casinos can benefit from pre-exists and does not have to be collected via primary studies such as telephone interviews or online surveys. With the availability of data produced online during the actual gambling and the existing advanced analytical techniques, a lot of information can be derived by casino players’ accounts and behavior without conducting additional research.
Big data has transformed the business world making it possible for industries to gain unmatched insights into their customers’ profiles. The ability to record, gather, and process vast amounts of information have enabled businesses to customize their products and services and greatly improve customers’ experience. A successful business intelligence or BI system collects data from multiple sources – in-game data, social media platforms, clickstreams, payments, marketing and advertisements, and more.
Over the last few years, casinos have increased their use of big data to improve outcomes for casinos. Similar to other industries, the casino industry has realized the importance of big data, and many casinos have hired teams of big data technicians to analyze user data. The surge of the online gambling industry has enabled casino providers to process information about who its players are, what games they play, how long they play them, and where they come from, among others. By identifying gamblers’ preferences, the casino industry can tailor the games to the players’ preferences and provide them with a better experience.
Demographics
Let’s follow an online gambler through their customer journey. Back when the patron registered with any given casino, they provided their personal information, including name, date of birth, phone number, and address. From a marketing segmentation point of view, the casino has already collected the basic demographic information including gender, age, and geographical location. Casinos much like other businesses can segment their customers in different groups based on all variations of demographics but also based on behavior and budgets/ deposits the customers make. What any given casino should be able to predict is how a player behavior changes based on their demographics, based on their budget, based on the products/ services they are using, and based on the scenario if the player is winning or losing. Casinos should be able to customize individual players experience and offer products/ games to play online that are identified as more enjoyable for that client personally based on past gaming behavior.
In addition, there is a lot of internal online data that casinos can collect about each user account. While an online casino can tell a lot about their customers based on their online behavior that happens during the casino player’s logins to the account, a lot is unknown about the behavior of the same players on competing for online casino platforms. According to the report published by the UK Gambling Commission, each player has an average of 4 accounts. Therefore, we can conclude that competing casinos most likely share customers.
Big Data Creates Numerous Marketing Opportunities
Online casinos and gambling providers use big data to improve their marketing campaigns and create more personalized advertisements to target individual customers. Simply highlighting a product’s benefits is no longer an effective strategy to attract and retain customers. The gambling industry has integrated cookies that provide online casinos with information about their customers’ preferences, what games they play and how they play them. It can help gambling providers identify demographics and provide marketers with information on which age groups and new geographical markets they can invest their efforts. Big data helps operators design effective campaigns that will get the right message to the right customer at the right time. Customizing players’ experience keeps customers coming back to the same platform and strengthens consumer loyalty and creates a smoother customer journey.
Player Retention – a Huge Benefit of Big Data
Big data helps casinos and gambling operators increase their retention rates and customer loyalty levels. With the use of big data analysis, operators can design loyalty programs which are tailored to individual players’ preferences. Loyalty models allow operators to track customers’ purchases and behavior and offer them additional points that they can redeem in the form of product purchases. By analyzing individual customers’ gaming history, gambling providers can determine which products are most likely to be bought by players and customize the redemption points. Big data can also help gambling operators determine which strategies are effective in attracting customers and focus on those techniques which work.
The use of Predictive Analytics (PA) allows casinos to identify more profitable customers and target them with incentives, such as free betting vouchers, free spins, more bonuses, etc. PA can also help gambling operators identify the sequence of games customers usually play throughout their gambling experience and use the patterns to offer players the most suitable next product for each player.
Better Customer Service
The use of big data and AI provide casino operators with the opportunity to make customer service more automated. The industry has started to introduce advanced bots which can analyze information customers’ specific playing habits. This allows them to deliver quicker and more relevant answers to players’ questions and needs. A lot of casinos have already implemented or plan to implement AI and virtual reality to offer better service to their customers.
Payments and Revenue
From a financial point of view, casinos can identify incoming revenues and profits, knowing a player’s behavior such as the deposits a player usually makes per month, the amount they spend, their budget, the player’s financial results with the casino. Whether players are willing to spend more and how much if the right incentives such as bonuses are offered, what is the player’s reaction once they win? With the help of predictive analytics, casinos should be able to project under what circumstances players play more, deposit more or withdraw. Additionally, casinos should be able to identify and have capabilities for early recognition of risk gamblers based on payment methods used and withdrawals. When playing online, most customers conduct
credit card payments, and new users are often provided with free credit as an incentive to continue playing. This practice creates an opportunity for some players to create fake accounts and defraud the company which is known as ‘bonus abuse’ as well as steal credit card details and legitimate accounts. Big data can help gambling providers prevent this practice by integrating predictive analytics to track account activity and report any suspicious actions. An additional way in which casinos can incorporate big data is to create automated detection software. This type of software can increase the detection rates of suspicious activity and reduce the time for investigation.
The Knowns, Unknowns, and the Potential For Big Data
The Digital Marketing Funnel
It is possible to track how a casino player ended up creating an account with a particular casino. In other words, casinos have means to monitor how you became aware of their brand and how you were referred to open an account with their casino. What would be of particular interest for casinos and holds great potential for big data is to be able to determine what other brands casino players are aware of, have created accounts with and are actively using.
Big data has become a great part of the casino and gambling industry, and its impact will only continue to grow. It is hard to predict the future impact of big data on online gambling. However, two technologies are going to play a vital role in data collection over the next few years – blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). These technologies are still in the development stage and need to be enhanced before their potential can be fully realized.
SOURCES
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Gamblingcommissiongovuk. (2018). Gamblingcommissiongovuk. Retrieved from https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/PDF/ survey-data/Gambling-participation-in-2017- behaviour-awareness-and-attitudes.pdf
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