A typical day in CRM

07:15 – already dressed up, having the first coffee of the day (no need to shower—Pilates ;) and browsing quickly through the recent news. These may come in handy as leading buzzwords in our upcoming promos.

07:00 – returning home from the Gym. Sounds cool, eh? Well, actually it was just a Pilates class… but you see, that’s what us CRM people do—take a grain of truth, such as the connection between the terrible Swedish platform we use and proper 21st-century technology, and glorify it to the maximum. We also do it in front of the players, re-selling the same online casino games again and again (“An exciting NEW slot!”), often under impossible bonus budget constraints. Are You Not Entertained?  

07:15 – already dressed up, having the first coffee of the day (no need to shower—Pilates ;) and browsing quickly through the recent news. These may come in handy as leading buzzwords in our upcoming promos.

07:30 – commuting to the office. I could have said that I am cruising in my 911 GT2 RS, but do you remember the Gym/Pilates analogy from a few lines ago? Yeah—Lime scooter & public transportation, bitches.

08:15 – Yey, I haven’t died in an accident. Let’s see if I will remain that grateful after the management meeting later on today.

08:30 – grabbing another cup in the kitchen. How’s our office coffee quality, you ask? Let’s just say that maybe an accident doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Walking to my desk through the Customer Service center to say good morning. They are the face of the company, and yet they are often underpaid and unappreciated by pretty much everybody else, so I try to be nice to them. And no, it has nothing to do with the morning shift manager, of course not. Speaking about the face of the company…

08:40 – let the games begin! I like being early, so I could get a brief head start before mayhem is upon us. Optimism Rulezzz.

08:41 – WTF? How come yesterday’s results are never what you want them to be? We ran a nice cashback offering through the weekend, yet nice, unexpected weather reminded our hard-core players that there’s a world outside. You work hard, make plans, execute them perfectly—and then reality just has to ruin it for you.

09:00 – finished compiling the analysis to present during our briefing. It wasn’t that bad after all: among those who bothered with opening the emails, we had a good click rate, and our VIPs saved us once again.

09:10 – just paid the active accounts more money than I make in a year. It feels both good, as well as makes me wonder about the quality of my life & career choices. It’s probably at the same level with the office coffee… I just wish we could have worked in Real-Time and offered instant, dynamic bonuses that will be personalized according to recent activity, instead of waiting for the weekend to end before manually crediting the bonuses. Maybe we should ask our platform account manager if they can develop something like this or integrate a third-party solution. Oh, it’s early August—no one will answer in Sweden for several weeks now. Absolute Real-Time? And then some.  

09:15 – morning stand up. Enough said.

09:30 – management meeting, with our fearless CMO, Head of VIP, our analyst, and the new Marketing Execution girl (no, no—how YOU doin’?). Oh, sorry—got distracted for a second—I was there as well, as someone had to be blamed for everything. On some days it feels like being married—but only between Monday and Friday. God, I could use a large coffee with some Baileys in it right now… Here’s an even better idea—I will take it without the coffee.

My presentation went well, apart from the usual passive-aggressive “I had big hopes for this weekend, such a shame” from the Chief Moaning Officer, but any other kind of response from his side would have rushed me over to check his pulse, so it’s all good. On to the more important part: VIPs.  

Our top players actually make nearly all of our profit by themselves, so it’s crucial to pay all possible attention to their activity. At CRM we love our Account Managers, even if they are occasionally a bit too cocky (they claim that it has nothing to do with being arrogant—they are just so successful). I hate it when other people are right.

Currently, we are implementing a new way to segment these super players, based on dynamic RFM, and now we all review together the first-ever retention ratios. Considering the running 30 days were in fact during high summer time, it’s actually quite amazing that so many of them have remained so engaged. I have agreed to schedule a follow-up session with their team to help with creating personalized deals for the remaining weeks before September.  

Next, we have (tried) prioritizing the monthly tasks of our internal Marketing Communication resources. You will be shocked: the (objectively sexy) people from Acquisition think that it’s not fair that they can use only 130% of the designers’ and content writers’ time, and in general—they fail to understand why anything that happens after the first deposit has any importance. In their eyes, the priority ranking of CRM requests should be as nonexistent as the social lives of people who aren’t attractive enough to work with Affiliates (strong argument, will give them that).  

The new Marketing Execution girl is doing a great job so far, but these guys are sharks, so she could use some back up from a senior executive. I know, it’s not a pleasant job, but somebody has to do it, so I have ended up volunteering to work more closely with her, helping to shake them off. MarCom in distress and all.

10:30 – after being so productive, I just had to crawl outside to buy a decent double espresso. Just to clarify—I am not addicted. None of us in this business are, to anything. In fact, I don’t even enjoy drinking coffee, and can stop at any point. Here’s my resolution: I am indeed going to stop, as soon as the workload is reduced to a level that makes at least some sense, or I get a pay raise. The sooner of the two fictional targets works just fine.

10:45 – welcome to the factory. For the next 2 hours, I will be pulling reports, segmenting targeted groups, creating bonuses, uploading translated texts, scheduling campaigns, and in a nutshell: wonder again if there are any cons with getting hit by a car.

13:00 – lunch! My body is a temple, and I worship it with Beetroot & Kale—I call it BK. Which is the single part of the sentence that’s somewhat correct, as I am having daily Double Whoppers at Burger King.

13:30 – WTF?? Emails for the mid-week campaigns are about to be sent, but the regulator has decided that ever since this morning, online casinos aren’t allowed to earn money or something along these lines. Einstein once said: “You cannot beat a Roulette table unless you steal money from it.” Well, they are following this to the dot, as they keep changing the rules, to a point in which we are guilty unless proved otherwise. Enter crisis mode—everything must be rewritten, redesigned, retranslated, and go through compliance (lovely people—they will tell you the craziest stories, over a pint of Heroin) TODAY. But it’s OK, I am a man and I have already had a Pilates class this morning, so this day can’t get any worse. BRING IT ON!  

15:30 – done with the quick fixes, and managed to do it with only another cup of office coffee (I suspect that a higher dosage would have killed me); off to the “strategic planning” part of the day—sitting with my hommies at BI & VIP (not together—they don’t speak the same language, as usually the VIP Account Managers can handle normal communication with other people; BI Analysts just make you want to adopt the Trump immigration laws). We work out the parameters to define any new micro-segments with BI, agree on group-relevant Bonus/NGR ratios with the VIP AMs, and upload the briefs to MarCom. #easy.

17:00 – WTF??? I was about to go back home already (not really, but by now you have probably already established the fact that I lie all the time—maybe I should be a consultant?), when the CEO decided to step into our department and really care about what we do and if there are any operational issues we are facing—as he would love to help us sorting these out. As in, solve them right now. Since we are very important people. Get it? Because we work with VIPs. When did people from the mid-70s become so white?

Dude, you have small kids at home—stop trying to avoid getting back in time for showers and dinner.

18:00 – finally we have disappointed him enough (maybe this job is EXACTLY like being married!), so he left trying to find another excuse for his long working hours. Last coffee of the day (with some ice cubes and bleach, to mask the taste), as all that is left to do is ensuring the front-end is fresh with all the big winners, tournaments’ leaderboards are set, and just a final quick look at today’s results so far and how the month-to-date KPIs benchmark with those of August last year.

19:00 – calling it a day. Which in CRMish means that I am taking the laptop with me to do some work from home, and feeling super cool about it. A thought comes to my mind: the only way this could be even cooler, is if I take advantage of the Happy Hour’s last order and work next to a nice, freezing beer. As I enter the pub across the street, the entire Acquisition team is already on their way out (how can they all be so blonde??), after having a few too many and leaving me only with the bartender and people who haven’t showered in 2019.

After all said and drunk, I wouldn’t replace iGaming CRM with anything else, as we are the Rock Stars of the industry. Bow to us, or stick to your lousy 15% natural conversion. Tomorrow is another, identical day.