Making the most of the mobile market
Many egaming companies are looking to exploit the mobile market, but are they missing the mark? James McNab, head of mobile at Stan James, explains how they should be thinking further than iPhone apps.
The mobile market has long been touted as a key opportunity for gambling companies to build significant additional revenue. Indeed, as far back as 2005 Jupiter Research was predicting global mobile gambling revenues as high as $20bn.
Yet to date, the mobile channel has not fulfilled its potential for gambling companies. Mobile phone capability combined with market dynamics has resulted in the separate development of mobile sportsbook solutions which enable punters to place phone based bets, and mobile gaming solutions through which casino style games can be either accessed online or downloaded to the phone.
Unsophisticated Model
But today’s offerings are still unsophisticated, limited to a subset of handsets and requiring users to log in and out of different portals to access different services. Multiple accounts and passwords further undermine the user experience, and there is no opportunity for companies to understand customer behaviour across both gaming and sportsbook services.
This divergence clearly affects the user experience and constrains market development in one of the most important revenue generating channels. Furthermore, with the majority of mobile gambling solutions actually based on the same basic technology, there is limited differentiation between services: back-end service functionality and user interfaces are virtually interchangeable.
Make it Personal
Companies must now leverage mobile technologies to deliver a single portal that enables customers to access all services in one place, with one account and one password. Adding in options for sports news feeds and other related information combines to create a mobile destination for customers to further differentiate the service and build loyalty.
Not only will this transform the user experience but the single portal model provides organisations with the chance to gain real insight into the behaviour of the mobile customer. And this is key. While online personalisation techniques are transforming the customer experience and enabling companies to deliver highly effective offers and marketing, within the mobile market there is simply no personalisation at all.
Personalisation offers gambling companies the chance to drive greater revenue from existing companies. By tracking betting and gaming habits, companies can deliver highly personalised and relevant offers and news “ such as the odds on the forthcoming football match. It also offers the chance to extend a customer’s betting habits beyond, for example, the Premiership to the Champions League. It also provides a chance to introduce non-gamers to, for example, football related poker games “ and vice versa, by offering gamers information on the odds for major events, such as the Wimbledon final or Epsom Derby.
Extending the Gambling Marketplace
This mobile channel clearly has a massive revenue potential for gambling companies. And it is poised to fulfil its expectations and provide a fantastic revenue stream for gambling companies. But this will only happen if organisations deliver services that truly reflect the needs of a highly sophisticated consumer base. Playing around with iPhone apps is not enough. Organisations have to deliver a highly intuitive interface and a single portal service to create a true mobile gambling destination.
It is with this approach that companies can both grow the mobile customer base and provide a white label solution to a raft of other businesses to, finally, deliver mobile gambling to the masses.