The Cambridge Dictionary defines reactivation (reactivate) as “to bring or come back into action or use”. In the iGaming industry, this definition would translate to, “bring back inactive players in a responsible way”. Responsible being a key word here, especially with recent changes in data security (GDPR) and regulations (e.g. Sweden’s recent no-bonus-beyond-welcome-bonus policy).
Why reactivate your brand’s inactive customers?
No matter the industry – from financial services to eCommerce to iGaming – attracting new customers will always be a key goal, as is retention of those customers through brilliant customer support, unique and easy to use products and attractive offers.
It can cost around 7 times more to attract a new customer then to retain customers(according to Kissmetrics’ Neil Patel), however this stat applies to the eCommerce industry which doesn’t have to deal with the high customer acquisition costs (from fixed fees to high CPA) that the iGaming industry needs to deal with, so one could argue that it could cost 14 to 21 times more to attract a new customer then to retain one in the iGaming world.
Although operators’ CRM teams email and SMS their customers with daily, weekly and monthly offers plus other reasons to visit their brand, the inevitable will happen and a significant number of formerly active customers, whom may have not opted out of the operator’s communications, stop engaging with the brand and are eventually removed from the CRM programs, or at best, operators will continue to send their “churned” database an SMS and / or email with a special offer, promoting a new product or game to try to reactivate them.
“When executed well, reactivation drives massive ROI, showing that successful iGaming operators must view reactivation as an ongoing strategic function rather than a one-off activity.”
So what can you do beyond email / SMS reactivation tactics?
Call your customers and reignite that relationship over the phone by having a personal chat and understand why they haven’t engaged with your brand and what they would expect from your brand and product, beyond the usual bonus-led strategies.
These types of calls require a human touch beyond the automated phone calls. Automated calls are a great starting point, however in this age of automation and bots, I know that a human-to-human conversation can go a long way, especially when attempting to reactivate customers who were once very loyal to the brand – operators may define “very loyal” as those players who made more than 5 deposits…maybe more, maybe less and also depending on the customer’s real money deposits vs bonuses taken.
One thing is for sure, that it is definitely more rewarding to have this human-to-human call than only programming a machine to do the work. Balancing automation with human conversations is key.
Who does this human-driven (responsible) reactivation?
There are a number of companies out there, albeit not many, that offer human-driven reactivation.
Personally, I have had the pleasure of experiencing how one of these companies goes about reactivation using personalised phone calls driven by unique technology and responsible gaming practices in recent months. This company is Enteractive*. These guys are obsessed with balancing responsible reactivation of players with driving sustainable ROI through human conversations supported by their unique (Re)Activation Cloud platform. What they have built over the 10+ years they’ve been around will be quite challenging to replicate internally from an operators’ point of view, which is why some of the industry’s largest operators use and continue to use Enteractive’s reactivation services to bring their inactive loyal customers back.
*friendly disclaimer – I am an adviser at Enteractive and my team and I have recently worked with them to launch their (Re)Activation Cloud brand and design and build https://reactivationcloud.com/. My opinion on Enteractive’s reactivation performance only matches their clients’ opinions. See what Betsson, GiG and Kindred have to say about Enteractive’s (Re)Activation Cloud here:https://reactivationcloud.com/#clients. I’ll also be hanging out at their stand (N9-252) at ICE in London if you want to have a friendly chat and see what Enteractive are up to!