Ahead of SBC Summit North America, Tomer Imber, Senior Director of Sales, US at Optimove, has spoken to SBC about why his company loves the event and what industry innovations he expects to happen over the next year.
What makes SBC Summit North America stand out as an event?
“We love SBC North America Summit. It’s always great to see so many like-minded top executives from major operators in one place, exchanging ideas about fresh opportunities in new states and more. Each year, we learn a lot about their pains and wins, which helps us gauge the direction in which the industry is moving.”
What would you highlight as the biggest opportunity in the US gaming industry over the next couple of years?
“The most significant opportunity in the industry right now is that the US market is expected to be the largest gaming market at maturity.
“46 states are expected to legalize sports betting by 2025, and 11 will legalize iGaming. That means players will have an incredible number of options at their fingertips and will be bombarded with marketing messages from operators.
“Providing exceptional and responsible experiences that build trust and loyalty will be a must to ensure customers continue to come back. Operators will need a CRM marketing solution that can help them retain those players consistently, which is just one of the ways we can help operators grow.”
What industry innovation will capture the most attention in the next 12 months?
“Profitability is a central focus area for the industry which translates to the ability of operators to gain and retain customers at low CAC and retention costs. As such, AI-led marketing orchestration is something many operators will be focusing on to improve players’ experience by aligning communications across all channels in the most personalized way possible.
“As the US market expands to more states, offering more players additional iGaming and sports betting options, I think responsible gambling will become a part of everything they do. Social responsibility is already left, right, and center in Europe, where the regulator will soon require operators to have predictive models in place to identify and act on at-risk players. The US market will follow suit sooner rather than later, and I expect a giant leap forward in that regard.”
What core challenges do you help solve for your customers/partners?
“We help data-rich brands across industries manage large-scale CRM marketing frameworks. By personalizing thousands of campaigns to hundreds of segments, Optimove allows brands to reach their customers with the right message on the right channel. Unlike other technologies that rely on common, rule-based orchestration, Optimove’s AI-driven solutions autonomously determine the next -best- action for each customer, eliminating marketers’ need to map every customer journey manually.
“We provide marketers with a complete solution including:
“Customer Data Platform: With a Customer Data Platform (CDP) at its core, the Optimove platform ingests, consolidates, cleanses, and shares data, in real-time, from/to dozens of different systems. We automatically model and expose every customer’s complete, 360-degree, real-time view. Advanced predictive analytics, including lifetime value, risk of churn, the likelihood of converting, and of reactivating further, enhance the marketer’s ability to gain a deep, valuable understanding of their customer base.
“AI-Based Orchestration: We provide brands with the only AI-journey mapping solution that autonomously determines the best campaign, channel, and offer, for each customer, flawlessly orchestrating customer journeys across touchpoints.
“Multichannel Engagement: Our native marketing channels deliver personalized messages across email, mobile, and web, empowering marketing leaders with complete control over marketing activities and enabling past performance analysis, current campaign monitoring, and future events planning.”
Who have you especially enjoyed working with over the past year (partner/client)?
“Every brand we work with faces a unique challenge, and we’re happy to provide a flexible enough tool that’s able to meet all of them. We love working with every one of our clients and helping them achieve their goals and meet their specific challenges.
“I think the BetMGM story is fascinating, and we are happy to see them so successful in the marketplace while keeping their spending on bonuses and acquisition lower than average. BetMGM uses Optimove to maximize customer lifetime value in many ways.
“For example, we allow them to identify what they need to do with varying cohorts of customers very early on and understand how to act throughout the various journeys to maximize players’ lifetime value.
“Another example is how we help personalize the experience for their customers and scale the different journeys they want to put in front of them, driving retention through a personalized, scalable segmented approach.”
What are you hoping to learn from the conference at SBC Summit North America?
“I’m hoping to learn how new operators are planning to approach the market considering the competitive landscape and how leading operators are planning to defend and grow their position while keeping cash burn at a minimum.”
Join Optimove for a delicious breakfast and a special announcement that will transform player engagement as you know it! See you at SBC on Wednesday, July 13, 9:00, at the main catering area by the entrance.