With personalization being increasingly key to a successful engagement strategy, Sarah Hitchcock, Chief Product Officer at Bede Gaming, explains how the company’s product management team is helping partners keep ahead of evolving market trends and provide genuinely customizable experiences on a player-by-player basis.
The future of segmentation is no segmentation. It’s an odd statement to make when personalized user journeys and more relevant content offerings have now become a non-negotiable part of operators’ engagement strategies, but the reality is that these days, genuinely unique experiences need to be created on a player-by-player basis, and not by following a set of pre-determined rules or grouping of players.
Although iGaming as an industry has made giant strides forward in terms of the segmentation criteria that can be applied to different user sets, true personalization comes from treating each player as an individual and accommodating their needs accordingly.
It’s for this reason that I believe as AI and automation evolve and segments are broken down even further, operators will find themselves moving away from the blanket configurations of yesteryear to a more distinctive approach; and Bede Gaming will be here to give them the head-start they need to keep ahead of the curve.
How segmentation has shifted
Of course, any discussion concerning the future of player segmentation needs to begin with a solid definition of what it is and where it currently sits within the iGaming industry. In its current guise, player segmentation is based on the idea of grouping certain sets of users together based on the traits they have in common, before applying specific actions to these segments as a whole.
The goal is to deliver user journeys and promotions that feel more relevant and personalized to each pre-defined group and the criteria used to build those groups are already fairly extensive.
Segmentation today draws on who the player is (demographic and account details, KYC and verification status), how they behave (transactional and behavioural activity), what they’ve consented to (marketing preferences), and how the operator chooses to treat them (responsible gambling status, VIP tiers, and other custom, operator-defined rules).
Although this list alone provides operators with a wealth of possible configuration options, it is by no means exhaustive. The reality is that the diversification of player segment criteria will only continue to grow in the future, so much so that there will be a potentially infinite mix of promotional and engagement triggers in place for varying players based on their own unique account settings.
With this in mind, segmentation will continue to become increasingly granular to the point that the concept itself will shift from ‘group rules’ to a more personalized engagement strategy. This trend will be accelerated by the increased adoption of AI analytics and automation capabilities, with operators being able to dissect segments further and further until they simply cease to exist.
Expectations inform engagement
So, what does all this mean for operators? Well, with personalization these days being less of a competitive advantage and more of a minimum business requirement, we’re already seeing the impact taking a more one-size-fits-all approach can have on engagement.
Put simply, modern audiences expect products to remember preferences, recognize behaviour and surface relevant content when it matters, with generic campaigns increasingly being experienced as interruption.
To satisfy these demands, operators need to be able to build real-time audience definitions that support contextual communication and allow them to surface relevant products based on what a player did moments ago, not when their segment criteria were last reviewed.
For example, Bede’s Dynamic Segmentation tool allows them to do precisely that by incorporating automation capabilities that can quickly identify patterns in behaviour that would be otherwise undetectable to a human operator, allowing them to respond to the most recent activity and adjust user journeys on the fly.
We’ve taken this further by building intelligent automation into our Campaign Manager tool, as well as through third-party integrations with trusted partners such as Future Anthem, so that these on-the-fly adjustments can happen automatically, without needing manual operator input.
By configuring their settings and adding relevant triggers, operators can have an AI tool issue communications, suggest games, and offer relevant promotions in real-time, ensuring each player journey feels unique and genuinely responds to what’s happening, rather than relying on outdated information.
While this undoubtedly improves personalization, both in terms of the level of behavioural insight that’s provided and the speed with which it can be acted on, it’s important to remember that the goal is not to remove human input from the equation.
With Bede, each operator can still set their own specific segmentation criteria and decide what triggers are used for issuing communications or promotions; we simply remove the manual burden of doing so and make these actions instant.
Personalization where it matters
Based on what we’ve seen from the direction the iGaming industry is heading and the capabilities we’ve built into our platform tools, the writing is very much on the wall when it comes to the future of segmentation; and the truth is that very soon, there will likely be no player segmentation at all.
With both background and behavioural analysis becoming increasingly granular and the range of applicable segmentation criteria also growing at an exponential rate, it won’t be long before things have been broken down in such detail that every player will have their own unique on-site journey.
The obvious benefit of this is that an operator’s communications and promotions will be far less likely to miss their mark. This will in turn empower operators to present players with relevant communications at the exact moment they’re likely to have the biggest impact, with AI and automation helping them execute on this smoothly.
Naturally, alongside the segmentation itself, this trend towards flexibility, customization and greater personalization needs to be incorporated by operators across their entire product suite, with player account management and bonusing both playing pivotal roles in delivering powerful player experiences.
And it’s not just B2C where this approach needs to be taken either. B2B is equally important, so on the provider side, there needs to be a bespoke process in place that offers personalized technical and product solutions that cater to each operator’s specific needs.
Keeping ahead of the curve
At Bede, our approach to partnerships reflects our approach to personalization as a whole, and our team of product managers are the champions behind the curtain that make each one unique.
A group of dedicated subject matter experts who know the ins and outs of each customer operator’s requirements and usage as well as wider industry best practice, our product managers go the extra mile to provide a service that’s not only fully bespoke, but also built to adapt to the needs of our partners as they continue to grow.
Underpinned by regularly recurring one-on-one sessions that refine the product roadmap and ensure it offers the maximum added value for each partner, our product function also provides ongoing competitive research and thorough competitive gap analyzes so that they can continually strengthen their offerings, both in live markets, and as they look to broaden their horizons in the future.
On this front, we also pair each customer with a dedicated compliance manager, who’s responsible for studying and maintaining regulatory requirements no matter where they operate, as well as a dedicated client success manager, who oversees their holistic account governance.
A commitment to staying ahead of the curve across all aspects of our operations is one of the big points of difference that Bede offers; and embedding this practice of competitive and predictive expertise within our product function is precisely how we’ve been able to identify industry trends early and take a longer-term view of topics – the evolution of player segmentation being just one such example.
Whereas other platform providers tend to package this information as a one-way service that ultimately leads to dependency, at Bede we share our insights with partners collaboratively and provide them with the tools and guidance they need to act on them accordingly.
With this giving them the freedom and autonomy to develop the most effective strategies for their own specific audiences, we don’t just help operators stay on top of the present – we help them take control of the future.
