iGB North America magazine IGBNA Aug/Sep | Page 27
Feature
“We only require the last four numbers of the
social security number. That is a factor that has
worked for us, as people are more comfortable
providing that versus the whole number.”
been to encourage more of our 650,000
Players Club members to upgrade their
accounts, so they’re able to play the online
games. Our digital team regularly sends out
15,000-20,000 targeted emails to those folks
who haven’t upgraded their account so they
can play online, and they get various offers.
One of these offers is, “if you upgrade your
account today, you will get 15 points.”
They don’t have to upgrade if they don’t
wish to. However, if they want to use the
online games option, they have to provide us
with the last four digits of their Social Security
number. People tend to be very cautious about
what personal information they disclose
online, particularly when you say, “We need
all or part of your social security number”.
For our system we only require the last four
numbers of the social security number. That
is a factor that has worked for us, as people
are more comfortable providing that versus
the whole number.
We also use a vendor to verify their age and
identity. After their age and identity has been
verified, they are required to set up a “virtual
wallet” for their play. Each player (who must
be resident of Michigan) may have only one
account and only one virtual wallet. Players
may use Online Game Cards, credit cards, or
money from financial institution accounts
to make deposits. We also use geo-location
technology because all online play must take
place within the state of Michigan.
We know that there are some players who
will look at that, and say, “I don’t care to do
that. I will just play by traditional means.” But
for the folks who register and we upgrade
their account, but haven’t yet deposited, we
also run promotions, such as: “For your first
deposit, we will give you more points”, or
offering them $5 or $10 of free play, so the
focus is on trying to come up with promotions
that are very specifically targeted.
We also have billboards up now. We also
have a lot of information on our website about
the online games, we are running banners,
players can play demo versions of the games.
The folks who are going to be most interested
in this are those that are very comfortable with
digital channels in general, so that is where we
have been focusing our efforts.
So, how many players have now
registered online and how much
activity and revenue are you now
seeing from iLottery?
Now we’ve got 150,000 registered, and on
a given week, 5% of those folks will play
online games. Wagers so far for this fiscal
year (since 1 October 2014) are $101.3m, and
then we’ve had about $88m in prizes won
by players, so the net win, which is the total
wagers minus the total winnings, currently
stands at $13m.
So, what share of the total lottery
audience in Michigan does the online
portion represent?
A fraction of 1%, as the latest research we
have got is 73% of the adults in Michigan
buy at least one lottery ticket a year, and
there are roughly eight million adults in the
state. We consider that our pool of potential
customers. But we’ve only just started.
“The first $1 million winner of our online games
actually only played with amounts she had
deposited from Online Game Cards.”
iGamingBusiness North America | Issue 20 | August/September 2015 | 27