Visiting a land-based casino is an experience. When you enter the premises, you are captivated by flashing lights and thrilled by the ringing bells of winners, and exciting jingles from rows of slot machines. The entertainment factor is high and, struck with the anticipation of winning big, you are there to have a good time. Visiting a casino is also a social experience where friendly staff welcome and guide players through a vibrant atmosphere, surrounded by other customers enjoying themselves.
Online casinos are not short of excitement, but they offer a very different experience to that which you find in person. A major distinction is that iGaming is almost always a solitary experience without human interaction, forcing the industry to think of other ways to engage players and enhance the experience. This is where new technology comes in.
Over the last few years, we have seen an increase in the number of engagement tools launched by suppliers and operators to take online gaming to the next level. They often aim to make the experience more social with initiatives, such as offering the chance to compete and interact via tournaments. Other popular features include quests and jackpots that are also proven to significantly boost engagement levels.
What has revolutionised the engagement tools offering is the use of real-time data. It’s an asset that helps operators communicate with players while they are active in a casino or a particular game. For example, a player can be greeted when logging in, rewarded for achievements, or offered incentives when needed the most – all in real-time. Players can also directly be offered games they haven’t tried before based on their preferences, which further improves retention and lifetime value.
Features like this offer instant gratification and help players feel looked after, enhancing their experience and creating a more social and unique approach. This can be compared with a hostess in a land-based casino, armed with all the data collected on the player – such as their behaviour and preferences– to help them navigate through the casino floor and offer incentives when needed.
Analysing and interpreting real-time customer data gives suppliers and operators an understanding of player behavior patterns, and how to immediately improve the user experience. Constantly striving to offer players what they want by fully engaging them instils a feeling of importance and will ensure they come back for more. For operators, this also leads to maximized player value, improved KPIs and better financial results.
Real-time data enriches your toolbox with plenty of possibilities to engage with players and to offer a better experience. Products leveraging this make it possible for operators to use gamification principles in their online casinos, make the experience more social via direct relevant communication and enable automation of the user journey.
Using tournaments as an example, we have seen fantastic results among our clients. Tournament tools have been proven immensely effective in growing the participation in casino games with operators seeing bets, rounding the number of players up to almost 300% in some cases. Combined with free incentives, the numbers rise even higher to an over 300% increase in bets, more than a 400% spike in the number of players.
This is a significant and invaluable achievement at a time where more operators and suppliers than ever before are fighting for the attention of players across regulated markets. Therefore, data is becoming an increasingly important tool in an operator’s arsenal and, if utilised correctly, it can hugely benefit all stakeholders with the players seeing the biggest advantage.
Player demographics are different in each market and being able to offer localised, and targeted promotions, to individual players in real-time is the next step in ensuring the industry delivers entertaining, engaging and relevant gameplay to today’s online casino players.
