How Mondobets uses Apifonica to make up for the COVID-related drop in the sports betting activity

An unprecedented shutdown of sporting events caused by the coronavirus pandemic had a significant impact on the world of sports betting. Many gambling brands reported they are preparing for a big hit to earnings. The Ladbrokes betting shop chain said they expect 140-160 million euros reduction in its full-year core earnings. Paddy Power and Betfair brands are estimated to face a 100 to 120 million euros impact on full-year earnings. No wonder that bookies were expecting with great impatience for activity in sport to resume.

However, even a resumption of sports activity can hardly promise a quick remedy to bookmakers. While regular betters are returning to the game willingly, those who used to place a bet from time to time are often staying inactive. For gambling brands seeking to smooth out the effect of the recent outbreak, re-engaging these customers is of vital importance.

Mondobets, the Spanish sportsbook operator, knows firsthand of how challenging player reactivation can be. Emailing the good old promotions like deposit bonuses or free bets is just not enough, especially when dealing with the consequences of a major crisis. Mondobet’s research of alternative tools and techniques for player engagement brought them to Apifonica.

Apifonica’s Player Engagement solution allows sportsbooks operators to reach 90% of their audience (versus 20% for email) at 15-20% conversion rate (versus 3% for email). Using a smart mix of automated phone calls and SMS messages, Apifonica delivers promo offers personally to each player. The entire chain of interactions with a player is designed in a way that creates a sense of urgency and encourages them to take action right away.

The pilot campaign for Mondobets targeted the online betters that haven’t visited the website in a while. The campaign included calling over 10,000 customers and sending SMS to those who agreed to receive it. Timed to a sporting event, the campaign had to be launched in less than 24 hours. Within this timeframe, Apifonica has set up the solution that would automatically make and answer phone calls, process customer responses, and send SMS messages with trackable URLs. Also, Apifonica arranged recording of the voice messages for the campaign by a native-Spanish professional voice artist.

On the day of the launch, all the players from the calling list received a phone call. When they picked up, they heard a voice message offering a deposit bonus to those who make a deposit within 24 hours. Players who didn’t answer the call saw a local mobile number on their “Missed calls” list and may return a call. In this case, their call was automatically answered, and they heard the same voice message. If a player confirmed their interest in the offer, they would receive an SMS with a link to the webpage with the promo policies and the payment form.

Besides, players had an option to unsubscribe from receiving Mondobet’s promotions over the phone call. Unsubscriptions were recorded into the database, excluding the correspondent phone numbers from the calling list.

As a result, the campaign has reached more than 90% of contacts, of which 26% has clicked the link in the SMS. In the campaign statistics, Mondobets could see not only the total number of clicks but also who exactly clicked the link. With Apifonica’s URL shortener, each SMS is assigned a unique URL, making it easy to attribute clicks to a specific customer. This technique allows companies to accumulate data about each customer’s preferences in the CRM and use it to design personalized offers.

Currently, Mondobets keeps using Apifonica’s Player Engagement solution to retain their clients and re-engage inactive players. Recently, they began testing a solution that will reduce the number of so-called “abandoned deposits” - money stored in the inactive players’ accounts for more than six months. The company expects that reactivating players with abandoned deposits will not only improve liquidity but also return some of the long-inactive players to the game.