Jenny Lu, General Manager for the Americas, at marketing solutions firm OtherLevels, spoke with SBC Americas this week about the firm’s activities stateside and how the success of its platform in the UK and Australia can be mirrored in the US sports wagering sector.
For those of our readers less familiar with the OtherLevels brand, can you tell us more about the company and its core offer?
OtherLevels offers digital marketing solutions for the sports, sports betting, igaming and lottery industries, with our two core offerings being:
- Sports Engagement Platform, a real-time sports-powered Customer Engagement Platform using game state, live odds and player behavior, creates incredibly sophisticated outbound messaging autonomously and 24×7.
- Intelligent Messaging, a complete real-time multi-channel messaging platform built on a 360-degree data layer and live event attribution foundation.
Your Sports Engagement Platform is already established in the UK and Australia – how do you envisage it working in the US market, and are there any elements of the platform that will need to be tailored specifically for American sports fans?
Over the last two years, we have developed the platform to specifically tailor it to the American audience and support American sports, focusing on fan engagement. Our platform supports all American sports as well as American odds.
There isn’t one or two types of sports that may be popular in the US, but generally, the American sports fan watches many sports (NFL, college football, NBA, college basketball, NHL, MLB, tennis, boxing, Nascar, F1, UFC, golf, etc).
In addition, there may be multiple popular sports games that are playing simultaneously – understanding the fan’s behavior and what they are interested in allows the operator to become more relevant to those players. Popular American sports, compared with European sports, also have more “moments” that we capture and transform into sports-powered engagement opportunities.
By combining real-time sports statistics, player betting history, up-to-the-moment odds, game state insights, and the best props, we can serve up the right proposition to the right player at the right time to drive fans to reconnect with the sportsbook in-app and on-site.
You refer to monetizing the game play window before, during and after the game – how does this work in practice?
Our Sports Engagement Platform allows us to message to the player before, during and after the game – whether it’s pre-match stats or odds, or the most thrilling moments during the game and changes to odds, or significant outcomes after the fact (streaks, surprising outcome, etc.) that continues to engage the player.
There are so many use cases – taking the out-of-session player back into session, encourage players to bet on their favorite team, remind them when they have forgotten to bet, encourage them to bet on types of games or bets they haven’t tried before (recommendations), inform them when there may be a winning streak, cross-sell them into a different type of sports or game type (sports to casino), – all of these messages are not only engaging but create monetizable opportunities.
Tell us more about the Intelligent Message feature of the platform and how it’s used to engage players on a more personal level.
Intelligent Messaging is a real-time multi-channel messaging platform built to maximize reach and engagement. It allows the ingestion of real-time events and data (both data that can be collected on-site or in-app or through third parties) to dynamically target audiences and optimize campaigns.
It creates personalized real-time customer journeys integrated with live experiences so that you can deliver owned media at scale to both known and anonymous customers using a mix of opted-in and no opt-in messaging types.
Our messaging types include opt-in messaging types (email, SMS, app and web push) and no opt-in messaging types that can reach 100% of your users (interstitials, inbox/message center). Other features include location messaging (to target users at a particular location, eg, targeting players at a football stadium or a specific bar/restaurant) and event messaging (real-time message triggers by a specific action, either from an external source, eg, abandoned cart for ticketing, sale open, flight delayed, or particular to the user/operator, eg, odds changed, failed registration, bet on a specific game).
The Intelligent Messaging Platform can also automatically anticipate the best delivery options based on audience behavior, predicting which strategies will be most effective for each individual customer.
Some players engage most effectively with app push and SMS; some may prefer push and email, while others engage more with inbox and interstitials. Intelligent Messaging takes away the complexity with automated channel selection and delivery for maximum engagement.
You’re currently working alongside the likes of Genius Sports and SG Digital – can you add some detail around those relationships and what they bring to the market?
They are both leaders in their fields. Our partnership with Genius Sports is strategic as they have over 150 clients across sports betting and igaming. That is creating fantastic opportunities for both Intelligent Messaging and Sports Engagement, as US sports demand 360-degree fan engagement across multiple media formats and with the sophistication that the US fan expects. Genius is redefining fan engagement, and we are very pleased to be a part of their solution for operators, sports leagues, team owners and sports publishers.
SG Digital has arguably the world’s most sophisticated sportsbook with OpenBet. OtherLevels Sports Engagement brings a similar level of sports-powered sophistication to an operator’s outbound media channels which is an area that has typically had to rely on generic CRM solutions. Working with SG, we can take the richness and capabilities of OpenBet and deliver those propositions autonomously, 24×7 to the out-of-session fan anywhere in the world, and get them back into session.
This article has been reposted from SBC Americas.
