US vs UK CRM KPIs

You might get the impression that I am lazy, judging by the title.

Far from it. If there’s a chore I promise to complete, you can consider it done. There’s hardly a need to remind me about it every half a year. But I do like acronyms. Working as a consultant requires me to scribble swift comments during sessions with clients, and acronyms just makes my life easier. COVID, on the other hand, didn’t.

The common conception in the iGaming industry, is that the Coronavirus did wonders to online casinos, and forced the sports betting operators to take an involuntary leave, in which they had a chance to lay back, relax, and rightfully feel sorry about working in Sports. So, not much of a change.

Banned from traveling, I had to completely change the way I work, burn midnight oil (well, whiskey) while bridging across time zones and deprive my dear CRM teams from the unmatched luxury of my striking presence. Surprisingly, that actually brought more work to me. So weird.

Anyway, so I am working from home, and got clients both in Europe, as well as in the US, so it made sense for Trafficology to ask me what kind of impact the lockdown had on online casinos from both sides of the pond. As previously mentioned, much like with any assignment, I went right at it, and 6 months later, you can find below my insights, benchmarking OCT/2019-MAR/2020 with APR/2020-SEP/2020. That’s what superheroes do - analysis, and Sailor Moon.

Terminology

Few clarifications, before diving into the reports. Clearly, I have focused just on casinos, as the “impact of COVID on Sports” is self-explanatory. Same as what’s a Deposit (DEP) and why you should never say no to another Pretzel (the trans-fat falls through the holes, so in fact they are nutritious; ask any scientist). 

Net Gaming Revenue, or NGR, is our income, and is measured differently across the world (mainly, as DEPOSITS - WITHDRAWALS in the CIS), but we will calculate it as TOTAL MONEY WAGERED - TOTAL MONEY WON BY PLAYERS - PLAYER COSTS (BONUSES, ETC.). A very important ratio is, therefore, NET/DEP; portion of the profit kept out of money injected into the system.

Moving on to Retention Rate: how many players have made a real-money activity in a month, out of the same group of players who have made such an activity in the previous month. And yes, of course there’s an acronym here as well… MoM RR. Diving deeper, if we look at all the players who have made their very first ever deposit (FTDs, 1st Time Depositors) in the previous month, and check how many of them have also made a real-money activity in the current month, we will refer to it as 1M RR.

Speaking of FTDs, shout out to our beloved audience who work in Affiliation, or, function as Account Managers for Affiliates: first, well done - you have managed to read a very long sentence (you just won yourself a Pokémon sticker!); and second, I will also benchmark Conversion - the ratio between all registrations in a month and the number of FTDs within the same period. 

Benchmark

Let’s kick in with some basic ballparks: in the past 12 months, on average (AVG), a US online casino player has deposited every month $750-$800 (~£600), and generated $150-$200 of NGR (~£130), monthly. In the UK, we are talking about much lower numbers: £250-£300 in DEP and £50-£60 NGR.

“What? How can he say that?? My casino’s numbers are so much higher/lower!!!”

Few clarifications: (A) It’s based on partial data, and I still don’t cover all operators (I’m hiring!) - so it is, by nature, biased; (B) As the great American poet, T. Alison S., once said, “Haters gonna hate”. So.

Back to KPIs, we can already learn that US players are more lucrative (NGR is about x2-x2.5 higher), and even their NGR/DEP ratio is slightly better (US: mid-20%; UK: low-20%). But what impact did the pandemic had? In the table below, you can review the changes in the KPIs between the recent 6 months, ever since the first quarantine (APR/2020-SEP/2020) and the Pre-COVID era (OCT/2019-MAR/2020):

NGR had a nearly identical impact, but while the AVG monthly DEP per player grew dramatically in the US and remained pretty much stagnant in the UK, the NGR/DEP ratio is the real story here: down 25% in the US, up 15%+ in the UK.

Why? One explanation could be the changes in mindset and cultural differences. The UK market has been working online for decades now, and is known to be infused with bonuses, as well as geared towards the non-hardcore players (stay-at-home Bingo moms: we love you exactly as you are!). As such, lack of Sports wasn’t a huge factor. On the other hand, economical uncertainty caused a slight decrease in deposits, but players weren’t cashing out; not knowing if they will have additional funds available for gaming, they have kept on playing, thus - boosting NGR.

At the same time, in the Land of the (gluten) Free, Sports used to be the major acquisition channel, and when it stopped, operators started a bonus war, trying to ensure their players aren’t going anywhere, while attempting to remain attractive to untapped traffic. 

Lack of Sports also brought Conversion rates to new heights: from ~35% to ~45% in the US, and from 40%-45% to 50%-55% in the UK. Again, the mood is probably: “there’s nothing else going on, so we might as well play the same Book of Whatever our friends are playing”.

In terms of Retention, there wasn’t much of a change - only a slight decline across both markets. US remained very high (potentially, world leaders in this aspect; maybe behind only the not-so-white-markets-that-we-never-mention-out-loud of Netherlands & Turkey), and the drop was within a very narrow gap between low-80% to mid-70%. The UK is used to different thresholds, but again, just a minor drop from high to mid-60%. Similar change in 1M RR for the UK. But not in the US… Moving from ~40% to nearly 50% is quite impressive, and I associate it, as before, to the battle over newly converted leads (also, resulting in mental CPA, Cost-per-Acquisition).

Conclusion

This industry is dynamic, and quickly evolve to overcome challenges. There’s a global catastrophe? We adopt, find solutions, adjust marketing tactics to fit the new situation, focus on segmented groups with relevant promotions and trigger campaigns to prevent churn in real-time. How do we keep that rugged, masculine look yet remain so agile & flexible? Well, good genes to begin with. Oh, there’s also a travel ban, so we currently focus more on work; at least until they air the next season of “Selling Sunset” (Go Team Chrishell!).