Casino operators can increase their profits through player segmentation using artificial intelligence, according to Brooke Fiumara, co-CEO of OPTX, the data-platform company.
“With OPTX tools, operators can really think outside of traditional player attributes and segmentation by using models that consider multiple dimensions of data and predictive player attributes to create those profit-driving segments,” Fiumara said.
Consulting giant Accenture says artificial intelligence will boost profitability by 38% and generate $14 trillion of additional revenue by 2035, and that 61% of marketers say artificial intelligence is the most important aspect of their data strategy.
“Casinos should be thinking about their fair share of that number and how they tap into where many other industries are already going,” Fiumara said.
A survey by Cognitive Technology Group cites that 83% of early AI adopters have already achieved moderate to substantial economic benefits. Outside of gaming, many industries are already there.
“One of the things that OPTX does is tap into and leverage proven types of models already being utilized throughout many other industries,” Fiumara said.
Customer segmentation in gaming, meaning finding ways to group players together, can be a challenging and time-consuming task that demands hours of manual work. Efficient customer segmentation helps reduce overinvesting in marketing campaigns that operators often set up monthly, Fiumara said.
If you know which customers are similar, you’re better positioned to aim your campaigns at the right people, she said.
“This is what most properties do today,” Fiumara said. “They look at geographic, demographic, and behavioral attributes – where their players live, how often they play, and how much they play.”
From a behavioral standpoint, traditional metrics are widely used across the industry, Fiumara said. However, there’s an opportunity to enrich as many attributes as matter.
“At OPTX, we run all those traditional attributes through specific types of AI models and this takes those samples of data thousands of times,” Fiumara said. “The models themselves select the combination of geographic, demographic, and behavioral attributes that will result in the most meaningful segments. This is why with OPTX AI, all of those manual challenges are automatically addressed.”
OPTX models process all the properties’ internal and external data to discover those recurring patterns across various attributes identifying customer segments that would be difficult to spot through intuition and the manual examination of data, Fiumara said.
“As an example, let’s say you have five players who each had one visit last month and played $500 in (average daily theoretical),” Fiumara said. “Traditional segmentation would classify them as low-frequency $500 ADT players. Utilizing AI and machine learning, we can run those same five players through various models that consider not only the traditional attributes, but all of those other measures of behavioral data around those five players.”
Fiumara said that means looking at such elements as the time of play, the day of play, their game preferences, affluency status, and any related play.
“The list goes on and on,” Fiumara said. “Those five players now can look vastly different in terms of their potential worth and lifetime value to the casino. Therefore, in an optimized campaign, they would not be treated equally.”
With OPTX, Fiumara said marketing teams “replace the meat cleaver with a scalpel and become more surgical” about whom they send offers to and why.
For operators to get started, it’s all about building the customer profile and getting all of that information about their guest into a single point. It then uses tools like OPTX to automatically run those models and produce optimization of those campaigns they are already running today, Fiumara said.
“Operators can see as much as nine times return on optimized segments when compared to a traditional campaign,” Fiumara said. These models don’t need to be applied to just gaming customers. They can be applied to all patrons in a resort, she said.
“AI in gaming is still relatively new and more and more operators are beginning to have more confidence in this modern approach to segmentation,” Fiumara said. “I don’t think a lot of operators have truly adopted this type of thinking, because it’s not easily accessible. They don’t have the team members to do it or the skillset to execute it. In order for most casinos to really achieve this level of segmentation and sophistication, it requires them to adopt a tool like OPTX. We’re an incredibly affordable solution for the next generation of casino operators. We’re affordable for properties of any size. We allow you to implement these best practices that are already being utilized in several industries outside of gaming.”
To book a demo and to see OPTX AI in action, visit the website.
