Background Image
Table of Contents Table of Contents
Previous Page  26 / 76 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 26 / 76 Next Page
Page Background

26

// PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL // July/August 2016

Gary Gonder:

Recent research conducted by App Boy found

that levels of customer engagement have a direct correlation

with the level of customer retention. Only 55% of individuals

who use an app in the first week after download will be retained

or will show further activity over the next three months. But

90% of the people who engage every week for the first month

will be retained. So it’s key

to have them active for those

first 30 days.

Bill Thorburn: It can be

just one key feature that

drives success for the app.

For instance, we launched a

ticket scanning element to

the app in February 2015.

There’s been a tremendous

take-up of just that one fea-

ture. A great app has to have

features that people actually

value and want to use. In the

first month that we put that

feature onto the app, we had 7% of the lottery’s app users using

the feature. Within 30 days it had gone up to 24%, and it has

become a very effective acquisition tool for our digital offer. A

lot of our retail players who haven’t registered for digital play

wanted to use the app for that one purpose of scanning their

ticket. Once they download the app, then we have the ability to

talk to them about the other features on the app which include

convenient purchasing of product. And because of our player

registration system, once they scan a ticket that’s registered then

we can actually talk to them individually because we know who

they are. That’s a pretty good example of what value can be de-

livered through an app, or even a single feature of an app.

Kevin Gass:

We are in an interesting spot because we are

always working to move forward with the application of tech-

nology to deliver more player benefits. We thought, for instance,

that it would be good to create a more horizontally integrat-

ed relationship to our player base. Create a one-stop app that

makes all of our games available to the player. We were surprised

to find that players do not necessarily want that. For instance,

our

playnow.com

digital channel included a lot of casino-style

games and sports-betting. We did some research and found that

a lot of our lottery players got turned off by that. They felt

the site was all about gambling and lottery is not really about

gambling. So we hit the pause button while we think this one

through. We redesigned our website to tone down the casino/

sports betting component. We also decided that we’re not going

to mix these all together into a single app. We will have a lottery

app designed for lottery players which will be a transactional

app as well. The main thing is that it will be totally focused

on the lottery world because we have found that while we can

fairly easily migrate casino players into lottery, it’s much more

challenging to migrate lottery players into casino. There’s some

migration, but not a lot. So

we’re starting to separate

those worlds to match up the

player with the game catego-

ries they are most interested

in.

Bill Thorburn:

Ditto! We

have had the same experience

in the southern hemisphere.

Our

tatts.com

app has sports

betting, horse wagering, and

lotteries on the one app. We

are going to break that apart

and deliver a lotteries-only

offer which is properly focused on lottery players and their in-

terests rather than attempting to cover the interests of a sub-

group who like betting on horses and sports. Lottery pleayers

will have their own dedicated app.

Gary Gonder:

We’ve heard the terms Beacon Technology,

Geo-mapping, and Geo-targeting, but have you heard of “Shop-

Kick?” It’s an app for the really cost-conscious consumer. You

go into a Wal-Mart or a Target or any of the big box stores and

you get points for just walking into the store. You get points for

scanning something. You get more points for buying something.

Those points can be turned into something that you buy at that

retail location. Where should we go with this? How can lotteries

take advantage of these kinds of proximity marketing tools, and

how can we make sure it’s not “spammy?”

Kevin Gass:

I’m a bit of a skeptic. I hear lots of anecdotes,

but I haven’t actually seen business results or data that show the

benefit and the kind of incremental sales that you might get from

employing that kind of technology. The notion of spontaneously

responding to a beep or push message just does not really com-

port with my view of the way consumers actually behave. Con-

versely, I think the point-of-sale signage in our retail networks are

very effective in promoting impulse purchases.

Bill Thorburn:

We are doing a significant level of direct mar-

keting through our established CRM programs. So, like Kevin,

Continued on page 43

We are going to break that apart

and deliver a lotteries-only offer which

is properly focused on lottery players

and their interests rather than attempting

to cover the interests of a sub-group

who like betting on horses and sports.

Lottery pleayers will have their own

dedicated app.

—Bill Thorburn