Online gambling site identifies new market targets

Competition in the online gambling industry is intense. Our client was looking at how it could grow its market share in a growing industry It was particularly interested in Spain, Germany and UK. Several strategies were being considered but the next step was going to be significant – and it needed research based evidence to show what was likely to be the most effective. The favourite at the outset was to plug the leaky bucket of existing customers leaving. However, it had not ruled out attracting new types of players.

Identify strategies to retain current customers and assess the numbers and type (high/medium/low volume players) of customers likely to be retained

Identify new audiences – profile those audiences and identify their motivations for playing and thereby the strategies likely to attract them

Make independent/ impartial recommendations on the direction the client should take

Design robust quantitative research looking separately at Spain, Germany and the UK – screening for current and potential players.

Design a questionnaire to capture (1) current and potential online gaming / gambling practices and how these fit into their wider lifestyle / interests (2) their image of current providers and how seriously they would consider each of them (3) their media consumption habits

Analyse the data in a fresh way to identify potential market segments. We recognise that people are different at different times. Our analysis therefore identified the segments people fell into at the critical times when they were likely to want to gamble online => e.g. some were gamers at work during breaks, some mid evening gamers after they had put the children to bed. Separate to that we also had to identify when our targets were going to be most open to receiving communications, their mindset at the time and therefore the type and tone of communication that would be most effective.

We convinced the client that keeping existing customers happy and thereby halting the flow to the exit door was the most productive short-term strategy

We showed them what activities would help retain their existing customers and — more than that — to be Advocates of the company

The segmentation was presented in an attractive way that showed them the value of individual new audiences

We helped then to translate this into a strategy to attract those audiences for the mid-term

The research was conducted in late 2014 – Client growth was rapid to end 2017 but has slowed in 2018 as poker / casino revenues decrease through tighter UK industry regulations. However, the mid-term strategy recommendations have enabled effective product diversification in the UK to deliver good overall performance and casino revenue elsewhere in Europe continues strong growth.