High-rollers: the frontier of egaming
Kaushik Banerjee, senior director Europe at HARMAN Connected Services, looks at how to attract and retain retail VIPs online
The question of how to attract high-rollers to online gaming has long been a pain-point for the major players in the industry.
Egaming is becoming desperate to tap into the VIP market that casinos have dominated with their ability to supervise and service players who often play with US$4m a hand.
Star Entertainment Group Australia, for example, recently revealed that AUS$49.5bn was bet over its high roller tables in 2015 alone.
So far, online betting has done well with appealing to a broad group by making it accessible.
Since 2009 the size of the global online gambling market has almost doubled and is now worth around $US4.5bn.
Know your customer
To create the tailored experience that it has struggled with, online outlets must create an online equivalent of the casino host. This relationship manager will need to be armed with clearly presented information and intelligence gathered from a platform to build an accurate picture of the high roller.
To achieve this comprehensive player tracking and customer engagement analytics are needed to discern things such as how much individuals are playing with and what products they are playing on.
To produce improved personal relationships the host must interact one-on-one with the player and meet their needs. This could be done by having a host greet a VIP when they login via a video chat box. They can launch desired products for the VIP and broaden the range of games that they play.
Coupled, with the use of data analytics, the host can begin to distribute tailored offerings based on historic behaviour, for example. If a host knows that a player is more active at poker on weekend nights he can look to arrange an invite-only private table with a dedicated live dealer.
These tables could be accompanied by prizes such as luxury goods, food and drink deliveries to the player’s location and via third-parties offer high-quality luxury experiences that meet the specific desires of the players.
High-rollers can also be further brought in by assuring faster payout times and delivering them instant credits based on their transaction history.
As a result, this targeted approach will have an increased positive effect on player retention.
Leveraging data
Player engagement data could also be leveraged to understand how long a high-roller usually plays and when is best to distribute incentives such as cash bonuses, free spins and discretionary bonuses to encourage longer playing sessions.
To facilitate this, gaming outlets must consider acquiring bespoke end-to-end player engagement solutions to seamlessly manage the customer relationship.
This needs to include customer-friendly apps and products with an optimised UX that can not only deliver high-quality games but also feed information into a data analytics suite.
This suite should deliver quality reporting on customer data, in real time, and be communicated into the relationship manager’s dashboard to allow betting companies to effectively manage and deliver quality experiences.
Looking ahead, we will see an integration of virtual reality and artificial intelligence into the industry and this will deliver ever more immersive experiences that will allow the industry to compete more proficiently when it comes to serving online high-rollers.
Connected devices such as Amazon Alexa could also be used to deliver greater integrated service and retail offerings.
The online betting and gaming industry has a lot to gain in widening its appeal to the most valuable customers in this space but software innovation and data analytics will be mission critical for them to succeed.