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Back in September, we brought you an episode with OptiMove's Moti Coleman and Kalev Karpuk on gamification as a zero cost retention model that can significantly reduce dependency on costly bonuses. Today, we catch up with OptiMove's Ben Tepfer, the company's director of product marketing, to discuss the OptiMove Gamify solution and to chat more widely about player retention strategies and the power that gamification offers operators. Welcome back to iGaming Daily, supported by Optimove, the creator of positionless marketing and the number one player engagement platform. Ben, thanks for coming on the show. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Charlie. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here. Brilliant. It's great to have you on. So thanks for taking the time. And as our listeners will be aware, gamification is well known for keeping players on site. But how can operators use gamification to translate longer sessions into genuine loyalty that lasts? The way we like to think about it, the way I think about it is time is the greatest commodity that a player has. Obviously, we want them to make deposits, we want them to play, we want them to engage. But spending time with us does translate more to uh revenue at the end of the day. So we see that, you know, the more time someone spends, that means that they're engaged with you. That means that they're invested in that experience. And it means that they're actually investing their most prized commodity, which is time with you at that moment. um The big thing, I think, is that time spent with a brand or with an operator translates very directly into value for that player. The longer that they spend, the more that they are willing to kind of invest. And we see that the more time somebody spends on a site, playing a game and depositing translates pretty directly into becoming a VIP or a more loyal customer. Yeah, you're right. are in this this attention economy and we're not just competing with operator X and operator Y. It's iGaming competing with streaming, e-commerce, dating apps, everything else. So, m yeah, it's really interesting that gamification is this new tool to unlock that genuine loyalty. But how can operators know what types of games or tools work best for individual players because we talk so often about personalisation. And I'm sure that gamification is no different. You can't just use a blanket strategy that might not be as effective as individual tailored plans for each player. I think it's very similar to the way you would figure out that email or in-app or in-platform performs better for you or for me. It's testing, it's experimentation. of course, we can start to understand trends. Perhaps we find that people who make frequent large deposits prefer more camps based games. We can start to recommend those more. The way I think about it is that game personalization is just like channel personalization. There's no one size fits all. You need to try and explore and kind of identify those patterns through testing. And that's one of the things that I think is really important is that, you know, one game will not fit all. You talk to somebody and they say, I'm not going to spend any time on a bubble shooter. but then you show them a chance-based or a lottery-based game or a trivia game, and they'll keep playing until they have the highest score. So it's really about figuring out that individual. And again, we find that through testing and then measuring the uplift that comes out of that. Could you take us inside that testing process? What does it look like and how long do you test different features on different players? What does that look like and how do you ensure that you get the results that you're looking for? Yeah. So at least from an off-move perspective, we have a very stringent kind of testing protocol, uh, where we build every control group as a very specific amount as it's a test, um, off of the, the condo, the total. Uh, and then once we do that, we're continuously optimizing based on that. So for instance, if you kind of see that somebody spends five minutes on a game and that's above the average, you can begin to identify that that's for them the right game. And this in the same way that you might orchestrate different channels, you might orchestrate different games. And I think that from a testing perspective, uh we want to make sure that we are delivering, you know, accurate results. And that's, think, an important piece of this is kind of giving the operator, the user of a tool like Optimove complete transparency into how are we doing that testing, who's getting included, who's not getting included, and what are we doing when somebody is not included? Because we need to, we need to do testing to prove uplift. And we do that correctly, we can still do great personalization and get real value out of those that would make me part of our control group. I'm sure that's a big part of it is that dialogue and the reporting back to the operator to go beyond just being a provider of CRM solutions and being a genuine partner of an operator for a long-term strategy rather than yet, like I say, just a provider. So how do you... go beyond that just to provide her and be a genuine strategic partner for operators. I think it really comes down to thinking about the business as a whole. Businesses will think about one goal, retention, acquisition or combination of those things. We really see it as and think about it as a holistic business practice, you know, from strategic strategizing, what are the right campaigns? What are the right channels? What the right pieces of content? What are the right games through the deployment of those and helping with the testing of those? I mean, I think that. You know, for many operators and for many businesses, we want to be hand in hand with them in a lot of that process, guiding and learning and kind of teaching them. We've been doing this for a very long time comparatively. And so we have a lot of experience still to share back. And so that's why we really see this as kind of an offering, but also a team that has a lot of history in strategy, a team that has history in the gaming mechanics as a whole uh that can really sit down and help build out a strategy that works for each individual player. Well, let's have a deep dive into OptiMove's gamification solution. You have over 40 different games, tools in your solution. How do you develop these games? And is it possible for operators to add their own, add their own customizations to them? Yeah, so we, as you mentioned, over 40 out-of-the-box games. You can actually go even higher than that if you want. So we have a variety of types of games. We have luck-based games. We have trivia games. We have games that are... You mentioned Dating Ups earlier that are kind of a swipe based game uh to collect preferences and information. We've got games that are just kind of fun, you know, a bubble shooter game. uh Every single one of these games, though, can be completely customized, which I think is one of the really impactful pieces of this, right? I look at two operators that I know of both using kind of a chance based spin the wheel where it's truly a randomized what you're going to get prize. And we can talk more about that, but uh you wouldn't know that it's the same platform on the backend, right? They look completely different. The visuals are different, the motion feels different, the sound feels different, m and it fits directly into those operators' player experiences. So you have that full ability to personalize anything within that game fonts, colors, uh overall messaging that matches everything else, right? And so you start to see that gamification is not this add-on but it's this complimentary piece of the player's experience. It feels consistent, right? When you get a game on the website, who knows? You don't care that that's, know, OctaMove Gamify personalizing it. You just care that it feels relevant and connected to the operator that you're playing with in that moment. And so that's one of the areas of personalization. The other area I would say is in the prizes and the rewards. So I mentioned things like a spin the wheel before. We've all experienced these sorts of things where you spin the wheel and everyone gets a, you know, deposit X, get this back. We can absolutely set those sorts of things up. We can actually go further than that as well, right? We can start to look at player data and decide what the right promotion is that's going to drive loyalty. And then the mechanism for delivering that becomes the game itself or becomes the email. So again, it's just another channel in a sense that is again, proven to have higher engagement, higher retention, more value in the long run. So you see the personalization as both what is the result of the game and then what is the customization itself. And what we've seen is that when players find and experience games that really connect with them, they spend more time, as we talked about earlier, playing those games. We have games that people will play hundreds of times just to be the top of a leaderboard. And it's amazing to see the game mechanics of things like that. uh But again, the personalization depends on that level. And in terms of other games, we are continuing to build out that library of games, as well as adding more abilities in the future to build custom games on top of that as well. I will say that with 40 plus games, I say the plus because many of those have so many variations that they're really kind of separate games within themselves. You have a ton to work off of from day one. Yeah, I certainly agree that that brand consistency and that customization and being able to skin up those games is is really important for an operator to really offer a seamless experience for those players because, yeah, if you feel like there's a breakup in the website, in the feel of the app or what you're playing, you might be less likely to stay on site. I think another thing that's really important, or you can tell me how important it is, I guess, is the ability for those tools to work in real time. What's the impact of... triggering gamification tools at the right time? Because I guess you don't really want to a player when they're really enjoying playing a certain game or betting on certain sports. So when do you know the right time to trigger a gamification tool is? Again, I I think for the way I think about it is, you you don't want to interrupt that player experience with what they're already doing. You want to compliment it if they're either on a roll on the virtual slots, you know, that's where maybe an inbox message. ah might be beneficial because it's non-destructive. You don't want to do the game pop-up. And that's where I would say, before we answer the when does the game fit in, we look back at the data and the preferences and the segmentation of the player themselves. How do they behave? When do they interact? And when do they engage? ah We know that we're not going to do a web pop-up when someone's on a hot streak. ah But at the same time, if someone is not engaging, maybe that's when we send them the game. So... Real time is an interesting topic because while we operate in real time, as I think what I'm, what I'm taking from the question is it's also about the right time as well. It's about knowing that maybe in the moment, a game is actually not the right time for that. We think about it as kind of like, what is the moment of need that we as an operator can intervene and experience and kind of innovate in? So, you know, when we see real time. If somebody is making a deposit and we want to double that deposit, that's the time, that very moment is the time to do a pop-up game that gives them a chance to double that deposit or anything around those lines. The time for that is not, you know, an hour later, unless, of course, we look at the data and we identify that it is. So I think that in terms of real-time triggers, when players get things in real time that fit into the experiences that they're expecting, there's massive value, those interactions feel very earned. by the player and it just directly impacts their behaviour. Yeah, that's right. It seems like it has to complement what the player is doing rather than impede on what they're doing. Right, absolutely. Excellent. Well, Ben, we'll take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll continue this discussion and talk a little bit more about the impact of these gamification tools. Welcome back to iGaming Daily today. I'm joined by Optimoo's Director of Product Marketing, Ben Tepfer. Ben, em how can... Gamification help operators wider marketing and CRM strategies because this is just one part of a wider ecosystem, right? Can the data provided by gamification be used to inform strategies throughout other aspects of the user journey? Yeah, I think the first area is that CRM-based messaging should be consistent across every touch point, which includes gamified experiences, in-game moments. We can... Definitely we, what we do is we take the insights that we might learn from a game and push those back into a centralized player profile. For instance, if we take kind of a, a game that's based around preferences, do you prefer A or B? Do you prefer this prize or that prize? Those little swipes or those little tidbits of information tied directly back to my player profile. And that player profile is central to the holistic CRM experience. So we can then say, you know, based on the preferences that we learned. we're now going to send a certain type of email or because we know that somebody is more likely to deposit because they told us that and that's the kind of the zero party retention that you mentioned earlier. Because we know that now, we're going to use that insight when we send them a message somewhere else. So, gamification becomes part of that. The other piece of that is that we get new elements for segmentation. So, we are capturing missions, loyalty, badges, uh all of these kind of core elements of gamification. that a player looks for, and we're using those and we can use those for segmentation. We can now segment those who are a certain number of loyalty coins away from the next level. And based on that, we can send them a certain game that's going to push them over the edge. We can start to create challenges that are based on all the player data. If we look at a challenge that is make three deposits in the next week of let's say $10 each, we can pick that value based on their average deposit value. So then you're taking a game, You're taking, you're creating a mission and you're connecting CRM data in this one really targeted personalized moment that we know is going to resonate and drive value for that player over and over again. So really gamification and for us, gamify shows up throughout that player journey at every single touch point. And it's only, um, it only gets better. The more data that you're able to use by directly from it to inform what is the game, what is the promotion in the game? And then back. What is the information that we gain based on that player's behavior to use across our broader CRM strategy? Exactly right. It sounds like gamification is like a circular economy in some ways because you're using the data, you're leveraging the data to create the gamified experiences. But while that also drives loyalty, you're getting more data from the player which can then reinforce the cycle. it's, guess in that regard, it's ever improving, right? Right. Absolutely. m I guess, is the value of gamification not just within the games themselves and the tools themselves, but it's also that data that the operator is creating out of those gamified experiences? Could you just tell us a little bit about how operators use that data? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's, you know, one of the reasons that gamification as a concept is so incredibly powerful is that players, you know, anyone, you don't have to be a player, any consumer, any individual loves For the most part, a game interaction, a chance, a distraction from the everyday life, if you will. So there's an immediate good reaction on that side from the data perspective, there's a ton of insights, right? So as Cira marketers right now, we're probably looking at signals like, um, days since last deposit, average deposit value, um, these things that kind of, say trigger an interaction. When we add games into that mix. We have new moments, have new triggers, new signals, if you will, to use for personalization. For instance, somebody spends a lot of time on a certain game. Maybe we want to test out a new game for them, or maybe it's when we say that we actually send them a new slots game that we also created. So tying those pieces together are traditionally or historically separate data systems. Now they're, now they're becoming one and kind of a uh unified data platform, if you will, that connects these different pieces. So you can look at the signals that you get. from a game and use them in different places. For instance, I mentioned a moment ago, the idea of having customer preferences be able to inform what the next marketing campaign might look like. Another example is having a trivia based game and having the top individuals that become VIPs. Now we put them into a VIP segment. Maybe we don't treat them the same way that we treat our VIPs that we define by deposit value. But we now have a new segment, right? We always are thinking about data first segmentation. The more specific we can be with a player, the more engaged that they're going to be. We mentioned it in the first half as well about being, having an open dialogue and being a strategic partner with operators. But I'd love to take a deep dive into the reporting capabilities that OptiMove provides to measure how impactful these campaigns are, because you mentioned that it's all about segmenting players and creating. more efficient processes, but I'd love to go under the hood a little bit and see how those reporting capabilities work. Definitely. So reporting and attribution is obviously so critical to any business's success, especially in the marketing department where we need to be able to prove the value of what we're doing. The way we think about reporting at Optmove is at every level, right? So if you are kind of a CRM director, You might be able to go in and look at reports that are based on uplift. And we can talk more about that in a second, uplift and incrementality. But if your job is a day-to-day CRM marketer, you've got reporting based on email performance and so forth. When it comes to games, we have that same level of performance metrics. How long do people spend on it? How many times did the same player play the game? What were the prizes that were given? So all of the metrics about that game tie back into the universal reporting. So what I'm getting at here is that you can track at the granular kind of game or message level, but then you can also attribute that backup to higher value, uh like uplift and kind of downstream retention. We implement multi-touch attribution for most of our customers, which means that we're looking at the different touch points that lead to a deposit uh to determine, you know, what is that value? And again, we talked a little bit earlier about testing and how important that is. And again, we believe very strong in a control group methodology where we can actually isolate the true incremental value rather than just looking at clicks or opens. So we give you both, right? We give you that ability to see, did this marketing campaign perform and how well, and then how well did this single game perform and then tie those two together, depending on who you are. So you get a holistic view of performance. And that feeds into future strategies, you develop. Yeah. We are coming towards the end of the time, Ben, but just before we do finish off, um what do you think the biggest considerations are for operators when it comes to gamification, but also wider player retention strategies? Because we are coming towards the end of one year and into the next, and we always like to reflect on what the next big trend will be. What do you think is going to be the biggest one for operators? You know, I think that there is a large trend of Business is using AI. And the reason I want to start with that is because I actually think that it means that every website that you visit is going to start to feel more tailored to you. No matter who you are, whether it's a gaming site or an e-commerce site or whatever, you're going to start to see more personalization everywhere, which means, you know, great for us as consumers, hard for the operator. So I want to actually start off with going back to where we began this session, which was around time. Time is going to become a bigger commodity. in the next year because of the way technology is evolving. So when we think about retaining a player, we need to think really fast. We have one second to engage with them. Is that a pop-up of a game? Is that a form to fill out to capture more information about them? Is that the request to make a deposit? We need to decide that in absolute milliseconds and then to deliver it really quickly. So what we're going to see is a more impactful impact on real time and greater importance on personalization, but not just personalization for the sake of it. personalization that drives value. And the last thing that I'll say here really quickly is that gamification fitting into the holistic process. We talked obviously about gamification today, but we really talked about how data impacts the player experience. And that's where we're going to continue to see gamification is not this other thing that's nice to have, or this other portal that the player uses. No, it's a holistic part of how a player interacts with an operator. Willem. even more personalisation, hyper-personalisation on the plate for 2026. Well, Ben, thank you very much for joining us on the show today. I've really enjoyed spending time with you and I've learnt a lot about gamification, so thank you very much for your insights. And thank you to our listeners for tuning into today's episode of iGaming Daily and join us tomorrow to keep up to date with all the latest global gambling news.