Public Gaming Magazine July/August 2020

35 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2020 to drive tra c back to retail stores. I think retailers are slowly but surely recognizing that iLottery delivers far more bene ts than disad- vantages and does not cannibalize their sales; on the contrary it can become an additional revenue stream to them through relevant commission schemes. How can we get more consumers to register? F. Konstantellos: Consumers want to register when they recognize the convenience of be- ing able to purchase digitally and the bene ts of online marketing o erings. at brings us back to the starting point of storytelling. Digital transformation involves change. e only way to accelerate that rate of change is to get people to feel comfortable with change, to feel con dent that it is something they can do, that it won’t be hard, and the rewards make it all worthwhile. We need to appeal not just to the brain but to the emo- tions, the feelings that actually drive most of our decisions and actions. A bullet-point advertisement does not always connect with us emotionally. We need a story, an image, a narrative that humanizes the value proposi- tion, that makes us feel as well as think. We realize now more than ever that the lot- tery games themselves are great. People love to play the lottery. I do not think we need to worry about lottery gaming becoming irrelevant. But we might get so immersed in the deployment of the digital tools that enable the consumer to interact with us that we sometimes forget to engage people on the levels that matter most. We need them to like us, to have genuinely warm positive feel- ings when they think about us and the games we provide. at marketing communica- tions and brand imaging needs to feel like a story to connect with the emotional world that our players live in. e other opportunity to improve is enhanc- ing the overall player experience. is too has less to do with the games themselves as with all the elements around the games. We need to make everything not just convenient, but fun. Look for opportunity to gamify everything. Make the whole process of registering and executing digital transactions and checking your online o ers and enter- ing second chance draws … make all these things easy and fun to do. at is done by enhancing the integration of tools and digital touchpoints such that everything is seen as one piece, all bundled into one holistic, organic experience that delights the player. Another part of this picture is customer care. e real key to success in this time of digital transformation is customer retention. e make-or-break moment happens when the customer has a problem. How do we handle it when the player can’t see that her bonus has been properly posted? Or when something doesn’t happen the way the player expects it to happen? Hopefully, we make it super easy for the player to resolve the issue quickly because that is the moment when we may well win a customer for life or lose them forever. Doesn’t it cost less to make sure we do everything right to retain the customer than to acquire a new customer? F. Konstantellos: Of course. at is why we need to invest in retention strategies such as bonuses and promotions, loyalty programs and players clubs, and fast and e ective response to player requests. We take for granted that we don’t own the customer and the customer owes nothing to us. We prefer to think of it as a mission to earn and keep the players’ trust and loyalty with superior service every single moment of every single day. And bundling. Bundling is a remarkably ef- fective way to drive sales, and it’s a special art and science to do it well. It requires a deep understanding of the gaming culture and marketplace to select the speci c assortment of product and experiential attributes to appeal to the audience. And “best-practice” templates for bundling do not always translate well as consumer tastes vary across regional and even local markets. Some at- tributes seem to be universal. We are nding that players across the world are responding to faster and faster games. And they all re- spond to the ability to get something for free which is what bundling typically promises. What does ‘bundling’ mean as applied to our industry? F. Konstantellos: Let’s separate this into two categories. One category is to bundle an incentive to visit a di erent channel with the purchase of a lottery ticket at retail. For example, include online promotions, like a bonus-play or second-chance draw or online bene t of some kind, at the in-store POS or on the lottery ticket. Of course, the player has to register to bene t from the online promotion. e other category would be bundling with non-lottery products or services. Like a pro- motion at the pump that gives a free quick pick with the purchase of $6 of fresh food. Or appeal to the impulse player by including an in-lane bundled promotion. Retailers and consumers are both driving the trend towards self-service vending kiosks. F. Konstantellos: I believe that self-service technologies and processes are nearing the tipping point where they will become ubiq- uitous, especially in non-dedicated points of sale. More than ever, retailers appreciate the e ciency of o -loading the transaction to an automated process, and the players enjoy the freedom to avoid lines at check- out and take their time and select and play the games. e goal is to integrate product transfor- mation with customer experience and the digitization of the in-store player and shop- ping experience – to make the transitions easy and pro table for the retailers and easy and intuitive for the players. We call this equilibrium the universal player experience. Our “product” is now about the overall player experience more than it is about the games themselves. Most important in the goal of optimiz- ing the universal player experience is the development of partnerships that ensure the consumer and the supply-chain partners are always enjoying the bene t of the very best practices in every single category. INTRALOT in-house solutions are the best in many categories, but when we consider that the customer is better served by loop- ing in a trusted third-party partner, that is what we do. A mature industry like lottery is best served by genuinely open-minded and industry-wide collaboration. Even the biggest companies in the world, companies like P&G, Vodaphone, Microsoft, Apple, and others work hard to create partnership networks that ensure best practices and products are deployed in every category. And that is the strategy applied also by IN- TRALOT, as a true industry leader. n “The only way to accelerate that rate of change is to get people to feel comfortable with change, to feel confident that it is something they can do, that it won’t be hard, and the rewards make it all worthwhile.” “We need to make every- thing not just convenient, but fun.”