The iGaming industry generates dynamic, often unpredictable data that casinos can parlay to retain players, get them to spend more, and facilitate communications. Casino CRM systems are essential for anyone wanting to understand their platform’s audience and satisfy their players’ needs, sometimes proactively.
But not all CRM systems are up to the task; their effectiveness depends on accuracy, the capacity to analyse diverse datasets, and whether they integrate with your existing digital infrastructure.
An emerging AI technology called adaptive learning can enhance CRM capabilities. This article explains how the technology processes online casino gaming data to enhance retention, player spending, and security.
With the wealth of expertise in iGaming, we at VeliTech will introduce you to use cases of CRM systems for iGaming platforms, the advantages of adaptive learning models for player engagement, and the criteria for selecting a reliable CRM.
What is casino CRM system?
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems allow businesses, including online casinos, to collect, analyse, and leverage user data. This lets you learn customer preferences, tailor offerings, help troubleshoot customer service issues, and enhance the gaming experience.
Benefits of CRM systems
CRM systems distil insights from users’ gaming habits, transactions, customer support interactions, social media feedback, and other third-party sources. Here are the key benefits a robust CRM can provide:
Personalised gaming recommendations
CRMs go beyond demographics — your platform can recommend games that resonate with individual play styles, which increases customers’ spending on your iGaming platform.
Rewards that prompt increased play
CRMs provide insights that help you devise loyalty programmes and bonuses to incentivise players. By aligning rewards with customer behaviour, you can enhance player engagement and lifetime value.
Optimised communication
By consolidating customer information in a CRM system, you empower support agents to help players more efficiently. Additionally, integrating self-service tools into your CRM platform can remove barriers to help when players need it.
Enhanced player loyalty
Effective CRM increases user loyalty and positive feedback on review sites and social media. Positive word-of-mouth about the quality of your communication and customer service helps bring new users to your platform.
Sharper marketing tactics
CRM systems dissect player data to help you refine marketing strategies so you can launch and modify campaigns with precision. The insights from CRM systems lead to more targeted advertising and cross-selling opportunities.
Churn prevention
Using historical and real-time information, an AI CRM can predict churn so that casinos can focus on retaining customers before they abandon your platform.
For example, VeliHorizon, in combination with VeliEDGE, gives you a 360-degree view of your players and easily configurable marketing tools. Deployed simultaneously, these systems can help casinos improve personalisation and drive player retention.
CRM benefits are indispensable for online casinos and betting platforms seeking to beat the competition. Next, we’ll delve into CRM features that help achieve these benefits.
Features of top CRM casino systems
Online casinos should look for CRMs that help your team manage all facets of customer interaction. Based on our experience, we believe your system should include the following features:
Data analysis and business intelligence
CRM system analyses player data from multiple sources to provide insights into player behaviours, such as gaming preferences and spending habits. These insights can pinpoint engagement opportunities and potential issues (like gambling addiction or system abuse).
Customer profile management
CRM systems maintain intricate customer profiles, cataloguing personal details, gaming history, and loyalty levels. With this data, you can segment players based on specific criteria and target your marketing strategies to resonate with different types of players.
Targeted messaging
CRMs should have communication features that empower online casino operators to reach out to players with personalised content across multiple channels. The ability to customise offerings based on historical data can boost play frequency and loyalty among your players.
Gaming segmentation
Segmentation tools craft cohorts of players based on RFM (purchase recency, frequency, and monetary value), gambling activity, and demographic nuances. This allows for tailored engagement strategies for groups such as casual, regular, or VIP players.
VeliEDGE enhances player segmentation and engagement strategies. Our AI-based analytics and automation lets you categorise gamblers across essential variables like geographical location, game preferences, and frequency of deposits.
Comprehensive support
A CRM suite should include live chat, email, and self-service support. In addition, the suite should integrate automated AI chatbots to reduce strain on your support agents and let them dedicate their expertise to more complex customer queries.
Bonus point management
A bonus system helps engage players by rewarding them for wagering activities, deposits, brand loyalty, etc. The rewards may come in the form of free spins and bets, status promotions, monetary compensation, etc. With any bonus program, it’s important to have mechanisms that detect and prevent abuse of the reward system. After all, you should prioritise your interests.
Updates and notifications
Online casinos utilise CRM platforms to keep players in the loop with the latest updates. A comprehensive CRM tool should send timely emails, pop-ups, and alerts to inform players about new games, features, policy changes, and upcoming events.
These are just some of the core features. Successful casinos stay ahead by making sense of data on the fly — that’s something adaptive machine learning can help with.
Adaptive learning in CRM systems
User activity patterns are complex in noncontractual B2C sectors, like online gambling. Unlike massive multiplayer games or streaming services, your users probably don’t pay monthly fees that incentivise using the platform’s premium services. Advanced AI and machine learning (ML) technologies are essential to decipher this diverse gaming, spending, and communication activity dataset into actionable insights.
Adaptive machine learning (or adaptive learning, for short) is a type of ML that simultaneously collects and analyses data, learning from input and output values. It outperforms traditional ML (which relies on manual training and historical information) on gambling platforms, where data is more frequently updated and less predictable.
Advantages of adaptive learning tools for CRM
Let’s look at how a CRM system with adaptive learning tools improves player engagement.
Relevant data for targeted customer engagement. Rather than statistical data, adaptive learning uses pertinent data to segment players, enabling more accurate personalised services.
Adapts to changing data sets. A CRM with adaptive learning can process real-time information faster as it continuously learns and improves prediction accuracy on incoming data.
Trend analysis using anonymised data. Adaptive learning can use anonymised data to analyse player behaviour and market trends, offering crucial insights with few to no privacy risks.
Adaptive learning to improve your teams’ skills. Adaptive learning platforms can help users learn new concepts with tailored methods. In practice, you can use this technology to enhance the skills of your CRM professionals or help players master new games on your platform.
Enhanced fraud detection and prevention. With adaptive learning, your platform can scrutinise gambling activities, login attempts, and transactions for abnormal patterns to detect fraud, cheating, or money laundering operations.
Improved marketing analysis to optimise ROI. CRM systems track marketing metrics (like open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and revenue) to help you evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns, loyalty programmes, and bonus distributions.
Support for safe gambling initiatives. By monitoring and evaluating customer behaviour, such as gaming frequency, duration, intensity, and losses, adaptive learning can identify signs of problem gambling. You can set your CRM to deliver timely warnings or self-exclusion options.
To fully leverage insights derived from your CRM system’s analytics, you should ensure your adaptive learning model is trained on clear, organised, and unbiased data. This requires meticulous supervision from a data scientist. An alternative would be to find a reputable iGambling provider.
Irakli Kakhidze, Head of VeliHorizon
Our iGaming CRM system is more than a platform; it is the mastermind behind forging a profound relationship between the casino and its users. Through the harmonious interplay of data and emotions, we curate an enthralling experience that transcends mere transactions. Our immersive solutions cultivate an enduring bond between your casino and its community, weaving a narrative of loyalty and engagement.
How to select a CRM provider for your online casino
Believe it or not, a CRM system can harm your casino. Ill-suited systems may fail to predict what your players want, causing you to push offers that miss the mark and waste money on ineffective marketing campaigns.
Some CRM systems might lack sophisticated functionality and security mechanisms or not work with your existing tools. Or, they can be cumbersome for your team, basically complicating their work.
So, we’ve compiled a list of extra considerations to help you select a casino CRM system that meets your needs.
Scalability. Your CRM system’s performance should not be negatively affected by a growing player base or increasing transactions. Opt for a platform with a microservices architecture that allows for scaling individual system components.
Upgradability. Naturally, you’ll need to update your system with new functionalities or games at some point. Platforms like VeliHorizon offer a loosely coupled and containerised environment, allowing you to update components without system-wide interruptions.
Integration support. Your CRM system should be compatible with third-party apps and services. For example, VeliHorizon integrates with payment gateways, ERP systems, analytics tools, and gambling providers.
Centralised dashboard. A comprehensive dashboard centralises all customer interactions, allowing for efficient segmentation, personalised marketing, streamlining campaign management, and customer support.
Multicurrency support. Casinos catering to an international audience should choose a CRM system that supports multiple currencies and exchanges.
Security and compliance. Although there’s an industry standard for casino CRMs, double-check that the CRM complies with security standards and regulations (like GDPR, PCI DSS, and KYC) to prevent fraud and avoid legal issues.
Intuitiveness. Your system should be user-friendly for your team (e.g., automated marketing, segmentation, and customer support workflows) and players (e.g., self-service features). The CRM might even include a learning module to help your team master its functionality.
Adaptive learning capabilities. A CRM system that leverages adaptive machine learning can deliver more relevant offers that resonate with players. Additionally, you’ll need an experienced provider to supervise the adaptive learning model, ensuring it learns to make correct predictions based on relevant datasets.
Given the investment required to integrate a CRM system with your online gaming platform, the system must deliver a solid value. Encourage stakeholders to vet each candidate provider, evaluating the features and capabilities offered against the financial benefits for your platform.
iGaming platform vs a dedicated CRM: What’s best?
You have two options for your online casino: an iGaming platform with CRM features or a separate system. The choice boils down to how customised and straightforward you want things to be.
Opting for dedicated casino CRM systems grants granular control over player segmentation with more targeted communication options. However, your systems will likely have higher maintenance and integration costs.
On the other hand, iGaming platforms combine all essential casino management features in a single package. Typically, the provider helps with integration, covers the maintenance, and delivers regular updates. This is an excellent option for smaller-scale gambling businesses or startups just launching their platforms.
Elevate your online casino with a powerful CRM platform
If you want to enhance or launch your online casino, AI-powered CRM systems provide an indispensable foundation. They make it easy to maximise the ROI of marketing efforts and incentivise your players to spend more and try new games. Comprehensive platforms like VeliHorizon offer scalable, all-in-one CRM functionality with adaptive learning models wrapped in a straightforward interface. If you have any questions or want to see how our product can transform your casino, please contact VeliTech.
