As sports bettors continue to become more sophisticated and have more and more player-focused resources at their disposal, the need to foster acquisition and player loyalty through seamless customer journeys and unparalleled customer service is proving paramount.
SBC’s Affiliate Leaders recently sat down with Cassie Brickman, CEO of Betting Hero, ahead of her appearance at the Canadian Gaming Summit. Discussions revolved around Betting Hero’s robust focus on customer education and service, the role of Betting Hero’s live events in streamlining customer registration challenges, and the ‘hidden power’ of the innovative Betting Hero VIP service.
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AL: Hi Cassie! Thank you for joining us today. Let’s start with Betting Hero – what factors do you think have contributed to the company’s growth from its inception to the present day?
Cassie Brickman: Hi, thanks for having me. It is a pleasure. We have a motto at Betting Hero: we always try things at least twice. This motto, along with our entrepreneurial mindset, are two things that have contributed to our growth since its inception. More importantly, however, we put a strong emphasis on education and customer service, which has helped us expand our three verticals: live activation, testing and research, and VIP, to better service consumers and operators in the iGaming and Sports Betting space. We provide insights and data to operators on customers, products, and competitors through our verticals, which have led to a unique market position and expanded growth.
AL: We’d love to hear more about Betting Hero’s live events. This is quite a unique approach for a company that works in a digital space. Could you tell us more?
CB: Our live activation team recently acquired our 500,000th customer in person. It happened during the launch of sports betting in North Carolina, and we couldn’t be prouder.
Converting customers to sports betting and iGaming apps is complex and can be confusing. Our teams work in sportsbooks, casinos, arenas, sporting events, special events, and bars across the country to help educate, provide customer service, and mitigate risk throughout the customer acquisition and retention process. We help customers avoid getting flagged (KYC – know your customer), help them understand deposit methods, answer questions about sports betting and iGaming, and educate them on responsible gaming.
With our Betting Heroes’ help in the field, 80%—90% of customers make it from registration on a product to placing their first bet, compared to an approximate 50% industry-wide average. This comes back to our education and customer service, which allow us to acquire, retain, and develop customers for iGaming and Sports Betting operators unlike anyone else in the industry.
AL: There’s another thing that caught our interest when we were browsing your site. Can you discuss the functionality and benefits of Betting Hero’s VIP service?
CB: Betting Hero VIP is our hidden superpower, one that we have been developing quietly in the background for over a year now. Informed by our millions of customer interactions and thousands of customer surveys conducted, Betting Hero VIP was built from the ground up with the end consumer in mind. Whether a bettor is seeking hard-to-find data, stats, and insights for their favorite betting markets, comparing odds or lines across multiple operators, or troubleshooting technical issues with their app of choice, their very own Betting Hero VIP Manager is there to help them enjoy their betting experience.
Although a B2C service, Betting Hero VIP has been designed to grow the industry overall by focusing on the three most complex challenges for the majority of operators: acquisition, retention, and development.
AL: You are going to be on a panel at the Canadian Gaming Summit discussing affiliate-operator partnerships. What specific metrics do you believe are crucial for measuring the success of such partnerships in a new market?
CB: Critical metrics measuring success vary per partnership, but there are some common themes relevant to a new market. From an operational perspective, there is typically value in new customer acquisition as well as customer value. Early on, it is generally important to gather as much market share as possible, leading to high-volume acquisition, so one metric that is important is the number of new players acquired.
As stated above, player value is also important. Although, as an affiliate, we don’t see lifetime value with a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) partnership, we can provide operators with metrics around initial deposit sizes. Another important metric for operators is the average first-time deposit.
Additionally, our in-person activations allow us to provide unique insights from customers in the field and provide extremely helpful product feedback as we interact with hundreds to thousands of customers using new products. We do not have specific metrics, but we generally are able to provide product teams with information about product glitches, confusing customer journeys, and geolocation issues, to name a few, which lead to product improvement and advancements for operators.
AL: As bettors become more sophisticated, can you discuss any significant shifts or changes in user behaviour that you’ve noticed lately?
CB: Sports bettors are getting more sophisticated. They are using tools like our Betting Hero Odds Shop or Betting Hero VIP to gain more insights, allowing them to spend less time researching their next move. The industry continues to advance, providing tools for bettors that keep them engaged. Many of the tools out there make it easy for consumers to compare odds across books, gain quick access to the most popular props, and really provide all relevant stats to their fingertips, making loyalty harder and harder to come by. This means exceptional products and service are critical to customer retention.
AL: What are some common challenges that Betting Hero has identified among sports bettors in terms of registration, funding, and betting processes?
CB: As mentioned earlier, onboarding to a sports betting app is complicated. Even if a product is working perfectly, customers need to do a lot of things right to get through the registration process. Recent address changes, changes to names, suffixes, etc, can all cause customers to fail KYC or get stuck at the registration stage.
We often discover product issues throughout the registration process, such as addresses auto-populating incorrectly. Once a customer fails KYC, they are typically asked to upload identification documents such as utility bills or bank statements, which can hinder them from moving forward in the process.
When it comes to funding, certain banks, credit cards, or payment methods are more likely to get declined than others, and some third-party payment solutions require some additional explanation/education to customers. Without support or guidance, customers aren’t likely to try multiple payment methods. In addition, payment options vary state by state/region by region, which can cause some confusion to customers.
One challenge around the betting process is that odds and options can often vary between digital products and brick-and-mortar sports book offerings. In addition, each app functions a bit differently and has different offerings, which can cause some confusion for customers.
At our live activation events, we encounter many issues related to connectivity, verification journeys, and bonuses or promotions that are not applied correctly. For some consumers, it can prove difficult to access or contact customer service on the operator level to resolve these issues.
Our teams in the field, in conjunction with our testing and research team, can offer incredible insights to operators/product teams to improve products and customer journeys and overcome many of these challenges.
AL: As an affiliate, what steps do you take to ensure compliance with regulations in the targeted regions?
CB: Firstly, we spend significant time understanding the compliance and regulations in each region or state. We work closely with regulators and operators to ensure we are clear on all requirements.
For example, in Canada, we worked hand in hand with the Canadian Gaming Association regarding the regulations around inducements to craft scripts for our in-person activations that could be approved by operators’ legal and compliance teams.
In addition, we have an extensive training program for all our Betting Heroes and are set up to ensure every activation has tenured and extremely experienced oversight.
AL: How do you evaluate the current prospects in Canada, both for affiliates and operators?
CB: As we all know by now, Canada is very different from the United States when it comes to online gambling regulation. For our business, the prospects are no different than many other operators and affiliates. Our general approach has been to evaluate potential opportunities with extreme caution given the rules of engagement, specifically relating to the use of inducements. Because we value our operator partnerships so highly, we are unwilling to take unnecessary risks on their behalf.
With that said, the value we have to offer is arguably more important in Canada than it is anywhere else. Customers can find it difficult to educate themselves on the legalized gambling industry because the normally heavily relied upon affiliates are less active.
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Brickman will be speaking on the ‘Building Lasting Partnerships: Affiliates and Operators’ panel alongside JD Mcnamara (Country Manager, Better Collective) and Vanda Silva (Chief Corporate Officer, Clever Advertising). The panel will be part of the ‘Affiliates & Advertising’ and will take place on Thursday, June, 20th from 1.30 pm-2:15 pm.
If you are an affiliate, you can apply for your free pass to the Canadian Gaming Summit by clicking here.