Public Gaming International Gaming July/August 2021

35 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2021 For Jackpocket, it is a series of initiatives – digital advertising, media outreach, winner awareness – which add up to success. “We’re using all the standard channels – Apple Search, Google, Facebook, ad campaigns – and making these ads as innovative as possible,” Peter said. “We’re also starting to use mass media as we roll out certain announcements such as big wins from customers. When we launch in a new state, we take the media coverage and make it into a video. Having our story told by a news outlet makes it more credible. Even if we launch the app in a state, we get news coverage. That’s great free advertising for us.” Once the player is acquired, they need to be retained. If a player registers and doesn’t deposit money into their account or stops playing after a short period of time, the lottery has lost an opportunity to monetize that player over the long term. So how can lotteries make sure they retain their digital players? Merv, whose team at Scientific Games works closely with the Pennsylvania Lottery on its iLottery program, said lotteries should closely monitor the activities of their digital players. “When a program is growing to a point of maturity, you also have to take stock of just how many active users you are retaining from month to month,” he said. “And as the number of players that have previously left your program grows, and the longer the life of the program, the work to reactivate those lapsed players becomes increasingly important. I like to set goals for our marketing team as we look at player lifecycle migrations and measure the impact of our marketing activities. We look at it in the aggregate but also prioritize higher-value players to make sure that we’re maximizing bonus spend and revenue.” Most lotteries and vendors make their decisions based on data, and iLottery is no different, particularly with retaining players. This data helps inform the budgetary decisions to keep programs strong and growing. “Retaining players means retaining dollars,” said Peter. “So on day one when someone has registered, and even before they make a deposit, we are tracking a player with about 100 different points of data that we have honed across our different states. We’re able to quickly understand their activity on day one, day seven, day thirty, day ninety, and then place them in a user journey that ensures we’re being efficient and that we’re correct with our assumptions when we’re tagging that player. Finding the right people to analyze this data is difficult, very com- petitive, but critical as we use this data to make the correct decisions for our business.” HOW ARE OTHERS USING DATA? Merv at Scientific Games: “Predictive analytics are great for spotting high-value players as early in the player’s lifecycle as you possibly can. You can then do everything possible to retain that player and transition them from a new player to an active player to a retained player. For example, for your active players you can figure out how likely it is that the player is churning (rate of attrition) or in the process of lapsing from your program. You can then focus your marketing, bonusing and messaging to that player in an effort to retain them before they churn. Once they’ve churned, it’s so much harder to win them back.” Jessica at NeoPollard: “Data is so important and hiring the appropriate talent is expensive, and that’s where lotteries can rely on their vendor partners that do have the tools. We have a tool called NeoCube that performs the predictive analytics in terms of churn prediction, sentiment analysis, even early VIP detection. The more we know about these players, and the earlier we know it, the more we can guide them through the funnel.” Karri at IGT: “The tools we have created can use data to predict with 85% probability at day ten which players that have entered the iLottery program are most likely to become VIP players. We also use predictive tools to understand the likelihood of a player accepting an offer.” Drew shifted the conversation to strategy. How do lotteries and vendor partners use tactics like promotions and bonusing to attract and retain players? In Michigan, the iLottery team has been honing this part of its operation for a number of years. “This is a key part of our retention program,” Jessica said. “We have a regular monthly email schedule where we’re sending out offers, free games, deposit offers to our active players. Currently we are focusing mainly on our active players, our VIP players, manually looking at how these players are reacting to our offers. And we’re not just providing bonus offers but also asking players to play certain games to get entry into cash giveaways or coupon offers. Bonuses can also be triggered with the mobile app ticket scanner by scanning select retail products. So, there are a variety of ways we look at our bonus strategy. The Virginia Lottery, which launched in July 2020, has played catch up as they were given about three months to launch the iLottery program. But they are now employing segmentation strategies which look at players’ deposits and purchasing behavior. “While we look at what players do within the first seven and thirty days after deposit, our biggest focus is on the VIPs. As with all programs, VIPs are the most important segment and so they receive the most offers and we make the largest investment in this group. We look for opportunities to cross sell our base players for draw games because we started with draw games before adding eInstants. Since this is the biggest group, we send a lot of bonuses to the draw game players, such as free eInstant games, to move them between products.” With her experience with the Michigan iLottery program, Pollard’s Shannon DeHaven had a message for all lotteries – start your segmentation early. “Segmenta- tion can begin long before an iLottery program is launched,” she said. “I definitely think that there are some missed oppor- tunities within digital programs, whether it’s a loyalty program or players club. I’d suggest using the information to implement segmentation as soon as you have a customer database. For those without iLottery, when the day comes you will be ready to reach out to your player-base with offers and messaging that are customized by segment. When Michigan launched, we were already working hard to look at our different players. We had Cashword players, we had Keno players, other games, and these players were all a little different and we marketed to them differently. You can start with three or four segments and get to fifty that you are targeting in different ways. We talk about it as it applies to iLottery, but there’s so much more that all lotteries can be doing now. Karri agreed with this thinking. “The segmentation principles of ilottery are totally Player Retention from page 16 Continued on page 38