Reactivation is becoming an increasingly crucial aspect of many organisations, with rising acquisition costs, and increasing regulation in a number of markets, seeing many turn down this avenue.
Furthermore, in light of many jurisdictions opening up to a licensed regulated environment, see Sweden’s re-regulation this year or the Netherlands announcing similar plans to come into effect during 2020’s third quarter, the need for effective reactivation methods are becoming more crucial.
One such organisation specialising within the field is Enteractive, with the Malta headquartered firm’s head of business development Andrew Foster talking to CasinoBeats about the rising importance of reactivation, in part one of a two part series: “I think reactivation has always been an important addition to any operators CRM cycle, but with rising acquisition costs and increasing regulation in some markets, which we can see now in Sweden, that we can definitely argue will become more widespread, reactivating players and building loyalty through personalised interactions will definitely be a differentiating factor, especially in the regulated markets, when you look at the way they are moving.
“The reality of it is that we see technology and the human touch both being hugely important”
“The ability to take players, that you already know the value they have created for you, even though they are dormant, and bring them back, is a huge advantage to an operator and can give you huge boosts to your bottom line profits, and in-turn growth, because naturally you will focus on the acquisitions, but if you’ve got players coming in from both sides that’s really where operators benefit the most.
“I think with the rising acquisition costs it’s just becoming more and more apparent that looking after your current client base, and the guys that you have already communicated with and have had an experience in your brand, is becoming a priority. And that’s where we come in to play with our reactivation, and bringing players back.”
One rising debate, becoming more prevalent as new developments arise in various corners of the world, is technology versus human touch.
Foster stressed a belief that despite a plethora of remarkable advances, the former will never be able to replace the latter: “The reality of it is that we see technology and the human touch both being hugely important, and we try to leverage both of them as much as possible.
“Technology is obviously changing at a rapid rate, and it’s advancing every day, so we try to combine new age technology with the human touch. Combining the two has proven to be imperative, to actually maximise return on investment for operators within a given player segment.
“Honest, personal, conversations can actually get amazing amounts of feedback”
“We believe that while technology is still huge, and AI is this new big thing in gaming, the missing ingredient is people actually having that human person to person interaction, and that’s really where we come into the fold of things.
“Everybody nowadays gets multiple SMS’, WhatsApps and emails in a day, the bottom line is that when we personally communicate with these guys, they’re almost excited about getting a phone call, because it’s not the way that people communicate nowadays.
“Take ICE as an example here, you meet people and the first thing they say is after ICE can you send me an email, barely anybody will turn round to you and say give me a phone call after ICE to catch-up.
“Tech’s great if you use it for AI and if you use it for optimising your services, targeting your segments and communicating your message, but on the other side there’s a huge loss of human interaction. Honest, personal, conversations can actually get amazing amounts of feedback and insights into your products by communicating directly with your players.
“And that is why I think technology will never be able to replace a human conversation.”