Customer retention is key to running a successful business. Here are five ways to make sure your sports betting clients stay with your sportsbook.
A 2018 study of the UK betting market by Morgan Stanley showed that customer churn (i.e. the loss of customers) are increasing. Almost half of users with active gambling accounts indicated they were likely to close them in the next six months.
In many European countries, new gambling regulations could make customer acquisition more difficult. Acquiring new customers is already painfully expensive for many bookmakers.
Due to little innovation and differentiation in sportsbook platforms there is probably a feeling of “same sh*t, new wrapping” among sports bettors when looking at the different brands, discouraging brand loyalty and making customers leave for “greener grass” once bonuses stop showing up.
Acquiring new customers is usually much more expensive than keeping existing ones, and long-term customer relationships are usually more profitable. The easiest way to grow your customer database is not to lose the ones you have.
Here are five ways to make your sports betting clients happy (and not leave):
#1: Help the user get started
A study done by Global Reviews of the biggest Australian online sports betting providers showed overall low scores when it comes to user experience. After all the trouble and cost of acquiring a new customer, many of the bookmakers failed to get them started betting. The registration process worked, but almost 75% of the punters experienced some sort of problem trying to place bets.
The three most common complaints were:
- No instructions/help
- The betting slip is confusing
- Finding and adding a bet is difficult
The study found that as many as 18% of sports bettors left the website and looked for a competitor if they experienced problems. Humans are not patient beings.
Get the basics right. Make sure your sports betting site is easy to navigate and easy to use. Think customer experience and perform user testing on inexperienced sports bettors. Offer online support, help and FAQs and make sure your new customers get a flying start.
#2: Help the customer win some of his bets
Keeping customers happy and active is the key to keeping them, period. All bookmakers will acknowledge that every customer needs to experience victory. A long losing run can make a customer leave, especially if he feels that the bookmaker only exists to “take his money”.
Offering information such as sports betting tips, statistics and predictive analysis might be one way to increase customer satisfaction. Quality tips with explanations could help the customer feel valued and also ease losing runs, resulting in a more healthy and profitable long-term customer relationship.
One way to produce such content is through RoboWriter, a fully automated betting preview journalist that writes comprehensive betting previews with full statistics package all by itself. It even finds lineups from the previous game, injuries/suspensions and automatically fetches the official match lineups before the match begins. It has all the information a sports betting client needs. RoboWriter, can produce thousands of previews every week and is the affordable way of creating content. Integrations with CRM for emailing content, social media etc. and with betting tips is fully possible.
An advanced betting prediction bot such as RoboTip, using the learnings from a huge database of live and pre-match odds, league statistics, team stats, form, weather, motivation, odds movements and so on to create 400+ betting tips every day, could help make your sports betting site stand out from the crowd.
RoboTip is perceived as more trustworthy than a human betting expert working for a bookmaker and has a much higher work capacity.
#3: Don’t take their love for granted
So many companies in so many industries do an excellent job of making the first sale. The customer is then ignored while the company chases more new business.
Even after investing enormous amounts of time and cash to get new customers in, few businesses take the time to evaluate why so many leave them. They are trapped in an eternal cycle of replacing the customers they are losing, hindering true growth.
Instead, acknowledge that the customer journey has just begun when he/she signs up for your sports betting site. This is when the iron is hot and you should strike, creating a fantastic first, second and third impression to remove any anxieties and skepticisms your new customer might have. Confirm that they have made the right choice and show them how much you value their trust.
Customers already inactive? Wake them up. Don’t provoke a seasoned sports bettor by offering ten free spins at some fruity slot machine. Reach out to them in a genuine way. Show them you still care, offer your help and try to find out why they ignore you.
Sure, a bonus would be nice as well. Or a free-to-play sports quiz competing against their friends? Or why not offer them a free betting tournament where they can win prizes and glory with the bets they place anyway? No risk and the worst that can happen is they have fun!
#4: Introduce new tournaments, bet types and betting markets
The sports world is huge, and there are so many betting opportunities. Most sports bettors only scratch the surface. While sticking to what you know is a good rule for sports gamblers, operators should aim at introducing more bet types and markets to their users.
One secret to engaging customers could be to show them more than the classic 1×2 and goalscorer bets in the big European leagues and tournaments.
Using betting platform plugins such as RoboWriter, and/or RoboTip you can showcase the world of betting to your customers, whether it’s exotic leagues normally buried deep in your site navigation, live betting or bet types beyond 1×2 or goalscorer markets.
RoboWriter is a “robot” journalist specialized in creating sports and sports betting content. It can write anything from short tweets to long-form analysis. RoboWriter uses data and rule based algorithms to create content that is unique every time. For example, Robowriter creates about 5,000 betting previews every week on our live test site Tipsway (check it out!)
RoboTip is an advanced betting prediction bot covering “all” leagues, cups and tournaments, running fully automatic as a plug-in integrated with your existing odds platform.
#5: Make your sports betting site stand out from the crowd
The sports betting sector is fiercely competitive. It is also very uniform. Most people will struggle to differentiate the sportsbooks, even with their brand ambassadors, bonus programs, casinos and marketing campaigns. Even though the marketing tries to be unique, enter the websites advertised and it usually looks very similar to the others. Remove their logos and their colour scheme and most of the sportsbooks are nearly identical.
It’s time for sportsbooks to stand out by offering a great product and true innovation, providing value for customers. To accomplish this, you would need an understanding of your customers and a willingness to offer them a higher level of service.
The sportsbooks that will succeed are the ones who find creative and innovative ways of providing lasting value to their customers. It does not necessarily need to be expensive or technically complicated.