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July/August 2016 // PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL //
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we are very careful that we don’t just spray out messages that
people don’t want to hear. We do not want our actions to be
viewed as an uninvited intrusion. And getting beeped to be told
of a lottery promotion as you walk along the street might annoy
some people, unless the message is relevant to them in that place
at that time. We are trying to move to a one-to-one relationship
in which the messages we send are as personalized and relevant
as possible. We want our marketing efforts to be so personalized
that they are seen as a service by the players.
David Barden:
I get probably six freedom of information re-
quests a month for everything from give me your entire player
base to all kinds of information that should not be made public.
Is that an issue for you?
Kevin Gass:
We are building our CRM strategy with a lot
of legal input. We’ve included all the protection that we can to
comply with the laws that exist to protect that information. But
confidentiality and security are absolutely critical points.
Gary Gonder:
I read a study with some very interesting statistics
about loyalty programs. 45% of loyalty program members limit
their purchases to specific brand stores for the express purpose of
earning rewards; 17% of loyalty program members join because
they love the product or the brand identity; 43% of consumers in
loyalty programs want to earn rewards tied to the specific brand,
but 60% of such consumers viewed the brand as offering loyalty
programs only as a way to spur more sales instead of cultivating a
connection with their customers. So how can we engage our cus-
tomers and how can we use that to drive people back to retail?
Kevin Gass:
We’re undertaking a broad and comprehensive
CRM strategy. We want to create an ecosystem for our market
where you can access any of our products through any of our
channels with a single identifier. A mobile phone probably will
be used most often, and through that, customers can accumu-
late rewards, build loyalty points, receive promotional informa-
tion, etc. But we must be very mindful about not spamming our
customers. Instead, we want to be much more sophisticated in
terms of building that true one-on-one relationship. It’s not just
a sales promotion, a “make the numbers today” thing. It’s a long
term view of cultivating that relationship, focusing on what is
relevant to the individual player, and defining success in terms
of lifetime value of a customer. We believe a sophisticated CRM
strategy has to be a major piece of the lottery operator platform.
Bill Thorburn:
I agree. The CRM program is an essential ele-
ment to building loyalty and engagement. So even if you can’t
have a full-fledged registration system, there will be occasions
when players are willing to share information with you, and you
can then build a better understanding of their behaviors, and then
you can start doing more personalized marketing. Our way of
using it is to progressively develop it through permission points.
This is not an overnight proposition. We’ve been building our
CRM program over three decades and we continue to invest in
it. It takes a lot of work, but once you’ve got it established, the
benefits and ROI become abundantly clear, and the process of
building on it becomes extremely cost-effective. The power of a
very high-value app is going to be a great tool for lotteries to in-
vite players to connect and start providing information that can
be used to develop personal relationships with them.
Kevin Gass:
To Bill’s point, CRM is not an overnight propo-
sition. We’ve had it as part of our business for ten years. It’s one
of those things where you have to crawl, walk, run. There are a
lot of organizations that come with a prepackaged solution, but
they often don’t deliver the results that are best for your particular
objectives. I think it’s something you’ve got to learn as you go,
building up your systems over time as opposed to trying to go for
the quick win.
■
45% of loyalty program members
limit their purchases to specific brand
stores for the express purpose of
earning rewards.
—Gary Gonder
Retail Optimization:
The Outside-the-Store Consumer Experience…
continued from page 26
The CRM program is an essential
element to building loyalty and
engagement. So even if you can’t have a
full-fledged registration system, there will
be occasions when players are willing to
share information with you, and you can
then build a better understanding of their
behaviors, and then you can start doing
more personalized marketing.
—Bill Thorburn