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NEWS IN BRIEF
Ongame enters casino market
Operators on the Ongame network will now be able to offer their customers the chance to play casino side games without leaving the poker client. The poker network has teamed up with WMS-owned developer and publisher Jadestone to offer the products, and has signed up Finnish monopoly Paf as the first customer with a poker offering on the network to implement casino games, including blackjack and roulette. Bwin.party-owned Ongame briefly offered a variety of inhouse developed casino games to its clients in 2005.
TIME TO “GET CLEVER” WITH MARKETING, FINDS SDL PANEL
Industry should develop and prioritise marketing ahead of product
The online gaming industry has matured to such a point in the last decade that it should put aside focusing on product in favour of developing intelligent solutions for operators to better acquire and retain customers, an exclusive senior marketing roundtable event hosted by SDL has concluded. At the roundtable discussion, entitled ‘Technology and a more sophisticated approach to marketing – what more can we do to maximise revenues?’ hosted by customer experience management ?rm SDL in association with eGaming Review, some of the industry’s most senior marketers debated how the industry should move forward in its marketing approach.
Rebecca Liebling, VP of sales, SDL campaign management and analytics, agreed, adding that it was crucial for operators to focus on not only content creation and constantly improving product, but also prioritising analysis and intelligence, multi-channel engagement and customer experience optimisation. Lance Spurgeon, email marketing manager at Gamesys, which operates leading bingo site Jackpot Joy, also agreed but added that despite new technologies, email marketing remained an effective tool particularly in bingo. “It needs to be aligned, as everything does, with KPI measurement, but we are also looking at mobile again after two years of not investing in it. Infrastructure issues The group agreed that mobile was relatively new to gaming marketers, but that more had to be done in order to exploit growing player demand and the access operators can gain to players via mobile, and equally social media. Chris Harrison, head of UK acquisition at Betfair, and Oliver Watkins, head of CRM at Rank Interactive, both said that the betting industry had experimented with mobile marketing but had yet to make a signi?cant breakthrough. “We’ve talked about doing deals with carriers but the infrastructure is a big problem,” said Harrison. “At Blue Square we held a trial at Wembley Stadium during an England match with just under 90,000 people and 82 people received the message. Betting relationships in stadia have yet to take off and become as effective as they could be,” Watkins added. “Mobile apps will move to the mobile web and HTML 5 in the future,” Lovell said. “But we need to rede?ne the de?nition of mobile from channel-based to a more ethnographic approach. Real-time is crucial in our industry and mobile makes it even more important,” he concluded.
Bet Butler agrees partnership with InplayMatrix
Betting concierge service Bet Butler has chosen sportsbook platform provider InplayMatrix to launch its first offering to the Asian market. Bet Butler, which launched in August last year, allows customers to access bets from more than 60 bookmakers from a single account. InplayMatrix was shortlisted for Innovation in Sports Betting Software at this year’s eGR B2B Awards. Bet Butler spokesman Chris Bell said: “There’s an insatiable hunger for sports betting in Asia, which made it an obvious target for Bet Butler.”
Mobile apps will move to the mobile web and HTML5 in the future
Special guest Stephen Lovell, head of digital innovation at Paddy Power, which has seen online gaming growth increase 40% year-on-year across its key markets in the UK and Ireland and Australia, including more recently in mobile sportsbook and increasingly games, explained to peers that the industry needs to refocus its marketing priorities. “We have an innovation roadmap but too many operators take commonly used ideas and replicate them. We need to realise that product stream has stabilised in recent years. The last 10 years has been all about product. Now we need to get clever about how we market, acquire and retain,” he said. “What we will see in the coming years is personalisation, one-to-one or one-to-few communication. The best starting point is to see this is working in other industries such as retail,” he added.
Betable launches real-money “add-on” for app developers
US company Betable has launched a platform offering app developers a real-money gaming solution on any platform or device. Companies are able to add the solution to new and existing freemium or social games to permit the inclusion of real-money gambling features, without the need for virtual credits. Developers can also forgo applying for an operating licence, with the product regulated via Betable’s UK Gambling Commission licence. The platform will not be available in the US until legislation has been approved.
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