EveryMatrix: reward and retain with EngageSuite
EveryMatrix recently launched EngageSuite, an all-in-one loyalty and gamification solution designed to revolutionise how operators engage their players across verticals. Stian Enger, Casino CEO, discusses how the unified engagement tools boost loyalty, fighting bonus abuse with AI, and expanding in the US via creative assets.
Why unify all the components? How complex was the process?
The process wasn’t complex at all. This might be fortunate, but all six elements were all in the same ecosystem to start with. These components all have APIs so the key was ensuring each component can send a request.
For instance, if you spin the wheel on a lottery game the result is that you receive some coins. It’s fairly easy to tell the loyalty engine to grab those coins and reward them to the player. It’s advantageous that it’s part of the same ecosystem because it makes these triggers much easier to manage.
Regarding why we saw the need, I felt before we developed EngageSuite that these components were very scattered with jackpots in one place and bonuses in another. I’m a gamer myself and have always been a fan of social games and videogames. Those industries are way ahead of the casino industry, so I always look to them.
When you played Farmville back in the early days of Facebook you had progress meters and interconnected rewards systems that we’re only seeing now in iGaming. Another, more practical reason for unifying these components is that they all fall under the category of engagement. These are the building blocks that form EngageSuite.
What are the key bonus types and features offered by BonusEngine?
There are bonus types within BonusEngine that are product specific. Free spins fall under casino and free bets for sports. All the others, unless it’s obvious that they are product-specific, are cross vertical. Outside of BonusEngine, other tools such as tournaments and challenges work across lottery, live casino and RNG, as well as sports.
How does LoyaltyEngine strengthen brand-customer relations?
What we previously lacked was a programme a customer could enter from day one through to the end of their lifecycle. Campaigns come and go, tournaments start and end, but LoyaltyEngine serves as the centrepiece that is supported by all the other features. It’s not a CRM and builds a much stronger connection to the brand than a bonus.
What’s the difference from a CRM?
A CRM decides when a player moves from one segment to another. When you level-up in a loyalty programme you know exactly why. With CRM a player might from VIP to recreational without knowing it, impacting the rewards they receive and how the operator communicates with you, whereas LoyaltyEngine is player facing.
BonusGuardian. Could you tell us more about this tool?
Sure. I have a background in B2C, so I learned about bonus abuse the hard way. It remains the biggest cost that nobody knows about, and many operators simply close their eyes to it. Traffic, sign-ups and first-time deposits can be very seductive, but there are some players you don’t want. Once you are aware of it [bonus abuse], the problem still isn’t solved.
It’s difficult to detect a bonus abuser until their behaviour has reached a certain degree of severity. With BonusGuardian, we fingerprint the player – where does the player originate from, age group, etc. – and combine this information with the games the player is playing, their betting patterns (are they switching from one game to another and back again?). These are patterns that skilled operational staff can detect but it’s reactive. At that point the damage is already done.
BonusGuardian tags players as suspect abusers at a much earlier stage so operators can take early action. You want to be better than your competitors because bonus abusers look for the easy prey. It is still early days in bonus abuse prevention, but I think we have chosen the right approach with BonusGuardian which is purely AI and machine learning automation.
Roughly 20 per cent of slots being released have abusable features so no matter how good you are or the number of staff you have it’s very difficult to tag everything as it happens. You need AI to follow betting patterns easier and quicker.
Is the industry doing enough about fraud?
I think bonus abuse is probably the most under-communicated challenge. For some reason it always flies under the radar. Bonus abuse is always lurking in the background, costing something in the region of €15bn. It deserves much more attention than it gets. One person committing this abuse doesn’t do too much damage, but there are syndicates and groups working together multi-accounting with a business-like approach. That’s when things get costly.
How is EveryMatrix positioning itself to capitalise in the US?
We don’t think we’re late to the party, but we’ve entered at a later stage and we’re thankful we didn’t jump on the bandwagon back in 2015. We feel we’ve come in at the right time. We now have a presence in all the regulated states and when the next state is regulated, we’re not going to wait.
We have deals with the “Big Five” – Rush Street, DraftKings, Caesars, FanDuel and BetMGM – so when the next state opens, we’re exposed to 90 per cent of that market immediately. In a sense our client acquisition in the US is done. Chasing the last 10 per cent might not necessarily be worth the effort as it’s very granular.
We’ve got what we need so now our priority is making doors open with our games which is where Fantasma comes in. They have a much bigger traction in the US than EveryMatrix’s titles. In Canada we offer our platform and are close to going live with Pinnacle in Ontario. We see Canada as a turnkey casino platform market for us in addition to aggregation whereas in the US we’re going to do aggregation only – not our PAM or casino platform.
Where’s the scope for improvement in EveryMatrix’s casino offering?
There is room for improvement in terms of our pure aggregation offering. I think it’s key for us to lead with something exclusive which is where Fantasma and Armadillo, as well as other third parties on our RGS, are a USP.
We have almost everything now with a live studio, an RGS, games, a casino platform – there are so many synergies and POCs between them which we can later expand on. For example, when a game is released very few providers have an API which allows them to automatically register that on an aggregation platform.
We can build that API between our RGS and platform which means games can be registered within five seconds without human errors and rolled out a few hours faster than competitors. Another goal of mine is to go deeper into the game rounds because every symbol in a game can logged and parsed to offer deep gamification.
