It’s been a fantastic second season for Footprints in the Market | Influencing iGaming. We’ve heard from some incredible speakers across the past eight episodes, and for the final release of this season, we’ve taken a look back at some of our favourite moments.
Episode 5: Josh Gamble, Managing Director & Partner, ActiveWin
Responsible gambling is something all iGaming brands need to carefully consider and, as regulations continue to tighten, ensuring that responsible gambling standards are being met will only become more important. This poses a challenge when it comes to marketing. How can brands approach creative, engaging campaigns while making sure responsible gambling messaging is being effectively delivered?
“We’ve been really fortunate to work with compliance teams who understand it. Not only from a compliance perspective but also tying the commerciality into there. We want to be making sure that we’ve got those key bits across within the messaging. Obviously, integrating that safer gambling messaging, highlighting the game features and the bonuses, the community aspects, than emphasising the free bets or the free spins or the big wins.”
Working with experts who understand the compliance process is often the best approach. It can avoid any nasty surprises later down the line. When it comes to approaching campaigns, ensuring there is a balance between compliance and commerciality is key.
Episode 3: JJ Williams, Founder, Devilfish Poker
Navigating iGaming regulations can be a headache. When you’re looking to expand globally, it becomes even more complicated. As JJ Williams explained, leveraging a free to play model is one way of circumventing international compliance roadblocks and growing your player base rapidly.
“Our team comes from the traditional gambling space, and we know how much it can slow you down. It’s expensive, if you want to cover all the markets, you have to pick which licenses you want, etc. But with free to play, you’re global straight away. It’s a really easy way of growing your customers faster.
“Everyone loves free games. Everyone loves winning a bit of money for free. It’s a really attractive model. And we can scale it up. We’re already global, but we’re obviously not that big right now. But as we get bigger, we’re sucking in players from all over the world.”
Episode 8: Catie Di Stefano, Marketing Director, Vegas Kings
Marketing is constantly evolving. What works once might not again in the future, and marketers need to be ready to adapt approaches and techniques to meet shifting behaviour and preferences. Nowhere is this more apparent than in marketing for iGaming.
Catie explains key iGaming marketing strategies and how these can be situation-dependent:
“Visual storytelling is really important, but it depends on the goal. If it’s a branding campaign, then yes, visual storytelling is key. If you want to create something that is eye-catching but still recognisable, you also need to create trust.
“For acquisition, it’s all about conversion. I think messaging needs to be short, sharp, and laser-focused on the CTA, because I believe that clarity is more important than creativity when clicks and sign-ups are the goals, because you need to simplify everything. People today aren’t going to go through a hundred million steps just to get to the goal. It needs to be as simple as possible.”
Versatility is a key attribute for marketers. It’s particularly important in the iGaming world, where new trends come and go all the time and a shifting regulatory landscape requires vigilance.
Episode 1: Emma-Elizabeth Byrne, Director of Publishing, Gentoo Media
User testing is nothing new in our digital age, but it’s something that can offer real value for developers and providers. Direct feedback from users can help identify issues and highlight areas of opportunity. Crucially, user testing can offer a different perspective when compared to in-house testing.
“Your in-house testers are going to look at your product differently than how average Joe Blogs is going to look at it, because they’re not going to be as tech savvy or as tech smart. You’re testing it, knowing where everything is and knowing how the functionality should work. A user testing it, they’re just going to click every button, they’re going to type everything, they’re going to do things that you don’t expect, and that’s what you want and that’s what you’re going to get useful information out of.”
Developers should see user testing as an opportunity, not simply a box-ticking exercise. By opening up testing to actual users, rather than limiting it to an in-house team, you can glean invaluable insights that can be used to further improve your product.
Episode 4: Kate Marsden, CMO, Yaspa
In the crowded iGaming market landscape, it can be difficult for newer or smaller brands to stand out from the crowd. One potential solution to this can be through awards; an opportunity which Kate and Yaspa have taken full advantage of:
“When we first started we had a negligible marketing budget and we had very few customers, but it turned out that we were very good at award submissions and award wins, even when we had very few active customers on the ground. We made a deliberate effort to look as big as we could and to shout about our successes as loudly as we could.”
It can be easy to feel a bit of ‘awards fatigue’ in iGaming. It seems like there’s a new awards ceremony every other week. However, these can be extremely valuable opportunities, especially for smaller brands that are trying to cut through the noise and establish themselves in an increasingly competitive market.
Episode 7: Michael Filletti, Co-Founder, Routy
When it comes to B2B products and services, referrals and word of mouth are still some of the most effective marketing tools. While social campaigns and mailshots are undoubtedly key strategies, ensuring that referrals and word of mouth recommendations are ticking over is critical, especially for B2B brands.
“Referral marketing is unbelievable. For us, it’s a game changer. A good percentage of the clients we get come through referrals. We’ll have one client who’s happy, they tell another client, they tell another client and so on. Having this kind of network really, really helps.
“Affiliates are very protective of their data. If I go up to an affiliate and start selling to them, they’re unlikely to budge, because they don’t know me. But if someone I know knows an affiliate and tells me they need help with something, it jumps over a tonne of hurdles. It’s the element of trust.”
Networking and building relationships is key to success in iGaming, especially for B2B brands. This is where conferences show their value; they provide fantastic opportunities to meet, connect and forge new partnerships.
Episode 2: Mark McGuinness, Web3 & iGaming Strategist
Both iGaming and marketing are driven by technology. However, few new tech developments have caused as much of a stir as AI. It’s completely transforming the industry, from content creation to compliance, and these changes will only accelerate as the technology continues to improve. As Mark McGuinness explained, AI can be used in conjunction with blockchain technology to improve transparency during affiliate negotiations.
“A lot of the pre-negotiations that actually go on in the affiliate marketing world are done in messaging applications that sit outside of a secure environment of the operator systems. If they aren’t monitored by both parties, that’s where distrust potentially comes in, potentially accusations around fraud or misappropriation.
“If you build an AI compliance agent that looks and assesses the pre-negotiations in terms of conversations before they go to the contract, before they go to sign up and the terms and conditions, I think that would smooth out a lot of these issues. I think AI can help us be a bit more transparent and I think if certain businesses maybe move those pre-negotiations on to something like a smart contract on the blockchain, then it’s open for everybody to actually have a look at.”
Episode 6: Harry Lang, Founder & CMO, Brand Architects
We can all be guilty of chasing perfection, whether that’s in the campaigns we run or the designs we create. However, unlike other disciplines, marketing is rarely, if ever, perfect. It’s a fluid, ever-changing practice that requires adaptability, versatility and the ability to accept that not everything is going to work as you might expect it.
“Marketing is imperfect. It’s never, ever going to be perfect. Finance teams can be perfect. But marketing is never perfect, and every day is different. Product needs change, audiences change, regulations change, legislative requirements change, licensing laws change. And then the world changes with economic shifts. And as a marketer in gaming, you need to be trying your best to be at the front of all these changes.”
We’d like to extend a huge thanks to all of our guests for taking part. See you soon for season three of Footprints in the Market | Influencing iGaming!
