10 November, 2021

Not Just A Dream

Part two of Alex Czajkowski’s column discusses personalised, scalable and automated content

Player communications, regardless of platform, have to have three essential qualities: timeliness, relevancy and authenticity.

Yours don’t. Neither do mine, yet: close but no cigar.

Because, like you, we are held back by the reams of data, the lack of personalization tools, the time, the staff, the resources, the translations...

So we show welcome offers to players who are already members. Football specials to players who only bet on horses, or sports the player never bets on (and no it’s not cross-selling, it’s an irrelevant waste of space, time and opportunity – players bet on what they think they 'know'). Banners for matches after the event has completed – or way too long before the match kicks off. And all of that is across platforms: the site/app, your social channels, affiliates, emails, etc.

It’s understandable; we’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of matches and bet types; of course the marketing guys put up what they think will be the most popular matches of the day. We do have tech that allows to automatically update the listed prices, but does it put them in the bet slip?

Typically, no, it’s up to the punter to click their way through and build their own accumulator. Of course, if you’re in multiple geos (as you must be), you may need multiple language versions of everything. Here, new technology comes in to help save the day.

Stewart Vassie is probably best known for being Co-founder of Oddschecker, one of the best and most useful sites for sports punters, and as an affiliate. He sold that off to Sky and then started Botsphere to automate sports betting trading desks. He then sold that, so he nows his way around sportsbooks...

His new venture, co-founded with Oddschecker alum Lee Pickrell, NowBetNow, looks to automate much of the sportsbook marketing function and address the concerns iGaming firms face listed above: providing personalization at scale. When I saw his firm push out 70,000 comms on the first Premier League weekend, I was impressed and wanted to know more.

A couple of convos later, I can’t wait to get my hands on it for my next sportsbook client. NowBetNow identifies players’ preferences, down to their most bet team. It not only produces the relevant content to put in front of that Leeds fan, but actually can build bets around their preferences – and drop them on to the bet slip with a single click or two. Faster, easier, more relevant and more personalised. At scale.

“Information drives sports betting,” Vassie says (and casino play I add, as he nods approvingly).“But the difference between comms and compelling comms, making the comms part of a conversation that changes their behaviour, only works when the player feels they are getting real value.”

NowBetNow can present the real-time prices as simple as “here are the prices for the first goal scorer in the Leeds match,” but that’s relatively old hat (presenting it to a known Leeds bettor is new hat).

NowBetNow not only presents live real-time data but knows that the player bets on Leeds, Manchester United and Wolves (for whatever reason!) and can build those accumulators right in the banner.

One click – from the operator’s website, app or affiliate site – enter the amount they want to bet and it’s done.

“This is easily scalable across languages, we’re already in seven,” Vassie said. “The trick is what do they call Tottenham Hotspur in their market and sportsbook back-end? Tottenham Hot Spurs, Hot Spurs, Spurs, Tottenham? Have those variables place – which we do by working closely with our customers – and we can template the offer in any language and feed in the data for the teams.”Real-time, relevant, accurate offers to players are vital to provide the three essential qualities of player comms: timeliness, relevancy and authenticity. NowBetNow seems to have solved a lot of marcomms problems with this new solution.