Rebecca Liggero talks to Global CEO of M&C Saatchi Mobile James Hilton. He provided expert insight on player re-engagement and re-targeting. 

James Hilton, Global CEO of M&C Saatchi Mobile provided expert insight on player re-engagement and re-targeting.  Hilton explained why the industry moved from player acquisition to player re-targeting and why this shift had been seen recently.

“Basically the cost of acquisition has gone up tremendously over the years. The wholesale media cost has gone up,” Hilton said.

Hilton described re-targeting as “what it’s really all about” because it’s more expensive to acquire players these days and operators must achieve a higher lifetime value to justify the cost.

Before triggering messages, Hilton advised operators to segment their audience: find out who they are, then retarget and hit them with a relevant message.  Within that message, deep-link them back to where they were, for example back to the bingo game or the casino game they were playing rather than to the homepage.  “Contextual deep linking”, he called it.

Hilton also emphasized the importance of collecting metadata at a granular level and emphasized “you have to tag everything”.  “It’s turning into a data game- who has the best data and more importantly, who can use this data”, he said.