Trigger-based customer marketing campaigns enable businesses to deliver relevant, personalized messages when they matter most

New York, NY – January 13 –  At the National Retail Federation’s Annual Convention and EXPO today, Optimove, a provider of automated retention marketing solutions for customer-centric businesses, announced that it has added real-time marketing capabilities to its innovative retention automation platform. By automatically delivering personalized, highly-relevant messages to individual customers based on real-time activity triggers, marketers are now able to deliver the right message to the right customer at the exact moment when it has the greatest impact.

The Optimove platform already enables marketers to maximize revenue and customer lifetime value by managing and automating multi-channel customer marketing plans using proprietary predictive micro-segmentation technology. The addition of trigger-based campaigns to the Optimove platform enables marketers to respond to customer behaviors as they happen in real-time, in order to dramatically increase customer engagement and loyalty while reducing churn.

“One of the holy grails of personalization is the ability to implement real-time, data-driven customer marketing,” explained Optimove CEO, Pini Yakuel. “By building into our customer retention software a complete, end-to-end system for real-time personalized messaging, we have not only taken another great stride towards achieving the ultimate retention marketing solution, but we’ve also become the first platform to offer real-time retention marketing in such a sophisticated and easy-to-deploy manner.”

Optimove’s real-time messaging capabilities come as an integrated part of the Optimove platform. Businesses simply choose which message or offer to serve to each particular customer persona using Optimove’s proprietary customer modeling technology, and select an event or activity that will trigger the message. Messages can be personalized to individual customers based on their specific purchase history, lifecycle stage, predicted future value, risk of churn, and many other factors, such as in the following scenarios:

When a customer is about to spend more than $75 in a particular product category for the first time, the merchant can offer free shipping if the customer increases their purchase to spend $100 or more.

When a retail customer views three similar products on a merchant’s website or mobile app, but adds none to their shopping cart, the retailer can serve a message offering a discount on any product in the category.

London Affiliate Conference Acquisition Zone sponsors and speakers confirmed Now in its second year running, the Acquisition Zone has more speakers and a dedicated sponsor zone

13 January, 2015, London, UK (Press Release): Leading publishing, research and events company iGaming Business has confirmed the full schedule for the CAP Network sponsored Acquisition Zone feature at the London Affiliate Conference 2015.

The Acquisition Zone targets senior marketing executives working within both operator and affiliate brands. The zone will include a dedicated lecture theatre open to all attendees, with hand picked experts discussing topics such as:

Smart acquisition using real time context

SEO is dying: Six figure iGaming opportunities without SEO

Open mic with online acquisition experts Digital Fuel

Turn players into stayers; attract, convert & retain the right players for your business

In article #1: ‘How to be an iGaming Conference Hero’ I went over attitude and how to prep before a conference. The main take-away from that article is to be positive and bring the energy. In this article I am delving into the existence of the prevalent drinking culture and how to avoid some of poison traps which inevitably exist.

I enjoy these conferences. I think they are extremely well run and endorse people to go to them if they think they can kick some goals.

Everyone going to these iGaming conferences should always keep in mind these two goals:

Networking.

Try to be +ROI.

With that in mind, let’s look at drinking culture and poison traps.

Drinking Culture

After reviewing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s request, the board approved a motion to launch a new request for proposals for a fourth casino in the Southern Tier.

Cuomo wrote to the board on Dec. 26 and requested it grant a fourth and final upstate casino license to the Southern Tier after it was passed over for a casino in the Finger Lakes.

Board members met in New York City Tuesday night where they made the decision. In a five to zero vote, the board reversed itself and declared New York’s Southern Tier and the state ready for a fourth Las Vegas-style casino – if the right proposal comes forward.

“We are unanimous in our belief that the Capital Region will not be reopened. The Catskills Hudson Valley Region will not be reopened. Our decision in the Finger Lakes Region will not be reopened. All we are entertaining here tonight is the reopening of a new bid for that Southern Tier Region,” said Chairman Kevin Law.

The decision comes a month after the board declined to recommend fourth casino, considering the state faced better odds if it licensed three full-scale casinos instead of four, as New York voters approved in 2013. The board was able to recommend four locations in December but only casino proposals in Schenectady County, the Town of Thompson in Sullivan County, and the Finger Lakes Region, were chosen.

The decision renews hope for Jeff Gural, owner of Vernon Downs, as he announced his plans to resubmit his proposal to expand Tioga Downs near the Pennsylvania border from a racetrack and video gaming site into a casino with table games and a hotel.

But the board said that plans already submitted and rejected are very unlikely to make the cut. “Let’s see what else and who else may want to bid a casino in the region,” Law said at tonight’s meeting in New York City.

A strong possibility has emerged that the state of Florida would not renew a key provision in its gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe, allowing the state to finally update its outdated gaming laws and open new gambling options for other casino operators.

The Miami Herald reported that because of the positive outlook of the state’s budget, Florida’s lawmakers could use that as leverage and ultimately reject the estimated $116 million revenue pot it stands to get from the Seminole tribe as part of their 2010 agreement.

Destination resort casinos in the state have often argued that the state could gain more from expanding their businesses rather than sticking to its compact and extending the tribe’s monopoly to run blackjack tables and other banked card games.

Seminole tribe has made its argument that it can guarantee nine-figure revenues for the state, for as long as it receives exclusivity on blackjack, baccarat, and chemin de fer at five of its casinos—one of the compact provisions, with a 15-year expiration date, giving the tribe a virtual monopoly outside Miami-Dade and Broward.

But casinos in the state, specifically the eight ones in Miami-Dade and Boward counties, are pushing lawmakers to scrap the compact altogether so they can begin offering the games that have eluded them for years.

The sole authority to negotiate the compact lies in the shoulders of Florida Governor Rick Scott but he also needs legislative approval to renew, revise, or drop the compact altogether. Doing so would mean getting enough votes from the legislation, which will undoubtedly open up a lobbying free-for-all from all sorts of sectors tied to the gambling industry.

With the current compact set to expire on July 31, 2015, the next few months could turn into a bonanza of discussions regarding the future of the gaming industry in Florida. Some lawmakers, including Republican Bill Galvano, believes that “it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the governor and Legislature end up doing nothing on the compact.”

The English Premier League champions and the Spanish Liga BBVA champions have announced separate sponsorship deals with two established businesses to help expand their reach to a global audience.

First up is Manchester City, which has announced a new deal with Chinese lottery provider DJI Holdings.

Terms of this deal were not disclosed but the tie-up can be attributed to DJI leveraging its new partnership with Manchester City to offer its Chinese clientele exclusive offers to various city-related events, including flights to see the team play and private club gatherings. In addition, DJI customers will also receive the benefit of gaining access to exclusive news and information pertaining to the English football club.

“DJI (Holdings) is a pioneer in providing exclusive and unique content and games for its players in China,” Manchester City Chief Business Officer Tom Glick said in a statement. “As we expand our commercial partners across the globe, we want to work with partners, like DJI, who are established and well-connected in their market, but also looking for innovative ways to activate our partnership.”

Meanwhile, Club Atlético de Madrid, SAD, the reigning and defending Liga BBVA champions, has announced its own partnership deal with Plus500 Ltd., an online service provider of that allows customers to trade on movements in the price of shares, Forex, commodities and indices without needing to buy or sell the underlying instrument. If Plus500 was looking to strike a deal with a team that’s blossomed to become a force in Spanish football, it couldn’t have picked a better squad to do business with than Atletico Madrid.

As part of the deal, Plus500 becomes an official sponsor of Atletico Madrid for the remainder of the season with a chance to extend and expand the relationship in succeeding seasons. A big perk of this partnership for Plus500 will be seeing its logo prominently displayed on the back of the team’s home and away shirts for national matches.

In addition, Plus500 will also receive a handful of branding rights at the Vicente Calderon stadium to go with a host of other sponsorship benefits.

Philippines Commission of Audit have criticized the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) for investing in non-core assets and failed slot machine venture.

PAGCOR paid Php262.6 million to buy 66 condominium units from AMVEL Land Development Corp. In 2013, out of 66 units 54 remain unsold, leaving the the gaming agency with Php218.1 million unrealized profit.

All units were meant to be sold as “decent and affordable housing facilities” to PAGCOR officials assigned to the Casino Filipino office in Parañaque City. However, five years after the acquisition, PAGCOR has so far struggled to sell these units, leaving the company with “idle funds that could have been used for activities more beneficial in the attainment of PAGCOR’s objectives/goals.”

COA also found out that PAGCOR incurred unnecessary expenses that the developer should have paid, specifically Php2.5 million in transfer tax and registration fees for the 66 unit.

“Apparently, there was inadequate planning prior to the purchase of the units,” the report added.

The gaming agency said that “a few [staff] qualify in terms of capacity to pay the amortizations” but efforts to sell the condominiums were being pursued. PAGCOR has taken legal steps to address the issues pertaining to the transfer tax and registration fees.

Then there’s the issue of the Plaza Del Norte Slot Machine Arcade in Laoag City in the province of Ilocos Norte, almost 500 kilometers north of Manila. According to the report, PAGCOR failed to meet its projected winnings amounting to Php2.88 million per month or Php34.56 million per year since it opened on January 2, 2013.