For online gambling operators looking to increase revenue, marketing to new players is instinctual. Fighting to keep existing players, and reviving lost customers, might be a more profitable tactic though. At the ASEAN Gaming Summit 2019, Alex Czajkowski, chief marketing officer for RTG Asia, and Yair Gal Ezer, head of operations for the GVC group, led a roundtable discussing how automation of customer relationship management (CRM) can fight this battle.

The first key step is to understand how churn works. The term means when existing customers begin to lose interest in a site, and ultimately stop playing. A player goes through four phases of churn: active, deciding, declining and dead.

Each stage of the lifecycle has tell-tale signs and potential pitfalls, and the two speakers had dozens of tips of how to capitalize on each. Active players could potentially become deciding players due to several headaches, like running out of funds, quick bust outs, poor experiences, and difficulties with the website.

These can be addressed by some common sense, but not always simple, solutions. Automation can help with proactive chat bots that key in on potentially negative experiences, like quick bust outs and forgotten passwords. Things as simple as a “low fuel” indicator, that provides easy deposit options when a player is low on funds, could remove the negative experience of busting out for a player.