BiS event in Brazil has changed its venue to a bigger place, and received more visitors. What was the expectation of your company before the show and what is your analysis now? Can you comment on Optimove’s experience?
Honestly, I just came to the show as the CEO of Optimove today. We have many shows every year, I think something like 50, so obviously I don’t go to all of them, and I need to choose the ones that I will attend. Firstly, I’m here because I really like Brazil, I love Brazil as a country and, of course, we have many Brazilian operators as customers, like Betano, Novibet and Betnacional, and some other leading brands all over LatAm. It’s a great business hub for us. About this event, it’s much bigger than I expected. After being here for almost two days, it reminds me of the ICE shows in London, back in 2013, 2014, when you felt like everything was bubbly in the industry, like something was happening, all the excitement. I’m happy I was able to come.
You created this company over 14 years ago. What have you learned the most and what have you taught the most during this time?
It depends when you start counting. I started the software part of Optimove in 2012, so that’s 11 years ago. But you’re right, 14 years, because we initiated the businesses like a kind of data agency. I think I’ve learned a lot since then. My experience has been that I’ve truly never worked at any other company. I went out of University pretty late because I was doing masters and stuff like that, so I went out when I was like 30, and immediately started working. Mostly, what I’ve learned are things about myself, and how to adapt my style as the company grows. In Optimove, essentially, every year or two years, I need to reinvent myself and be a different CEO. So, at the beginning, for example, there were things about myself, like being very centralized, the decision making, ideas, innovation, everything have to come from me. As the company grew, I’ve realized how to work in a team, how to rely on others, how to innovate together, and this is still contributing to my experience. I was able to allow others to shine next to me.
What being a leader means to you? What’s your leadership style and how do you share your vision with your collaborators to help them achieve the company’s goals?
My style is very much an open book, very much open door. At the company, I know a lot about every topic, so I’m kind of like the ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ of Optimove, haha. Which is a blessing and a curse, because if I hire a new tech guy and that person tells me that he wants to change the architecture, I understand the architecture, so when he comes up with an idea, the positive thing is that if that idea is good, and I can feel it immediately, I’m going to champion that thing and help that person to push it very strongly.
Do you encourage your team to share ideas or to be creative?
Yes, of course. But the downside of it is that I have an opinion about everything. Sometimes, I say: “Oh, you know, I don’t like this.” I’m sharing what I think immediately, so it’s a specific type of company and a specific type of culture. You need to learn how to deal with it. I did have some bad years where my style and my youth came in. I changed a few things in my style, and learned how to operate differently. The more the company grows and the more you get high up in the food chain, you get more and more distant from creation. I like the creation part, so that has been a challenge for me.
A recent article from Optimove said that companies are still prioritizing acquisition over retention marketing. But some months ago, we had the FIFA World Cup and the number of bettors registered on the LatAm platforms grew a lot. Therefore, the obvious thing would be to have worked this post-World Cup semester to retain these new players. How do you see this dilemma, this post-World Cup perspective?
I think that every business owner always have this inclination to bring new blood. Most of the brands here, they look for affiliates. Why? Because they want affiliates to bring them new players. So I think in the past, when I started the company, I would say that it was much worse. I had to explain to people and educate people about retention. I think it’s better today, and it’s always been a debate. There are some known statistics that say it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. I feel that companies should just balance both in a very healthy way. For example, we also grow a lot from our existing customers. So we’re balancing the two verticals. I think right now, for example, in recession times, many tech companies were focusing on their existing customers because they were afraid. They are less willing to do a change, sticking to what they got, but I would say that it’s an internal dilemma. You do need both. I’m not going to sit here and say that people should not do acquisition, they should! In retention, it’s much easier to show the return than in acquisition, because you already have established a relationship with the player. In conclusion, it’s a question of balance and measuring the return. There are always interesting, creative things you can do for your players to delight them and engage them.
During the last 14 years, you have been a witness of the evolution of iGaming regulation in LatAm, in Colombia (first) and in different countries of the region. How are you following these trends? Which products LatAm operators are demanding the most to your company specifically?
Optimove works in other industries as well, but in gaming it’s very clear to people that a good CRM marketing, which is smart, based on models and machine learning and real time data, it just makes the money. So you had companies that are very early on, they had nothing, they don’t understand the data, but they still want to start working with us, to understand their customers better and start boosting their customers’ growth. At the same time, we see some people who are very mature, they’ve tried a bunch of different technologies, etc. For example, we have just signed Betfred in the UK. We never worked with them, a very established brand, and it took us 14 years to get to them, but we finally did it. I’m not an expert in LatAm regulation or in gaming legalization. I’m an expert in data and marketing. So take all of my opinions with a grain of salt. I can share what I Know, based on my experience, I did work very extensively in Italy, and I saw that the market is extremely regulated there. Everything is extremely open, like the statistics. You know, the market share of the different operators is reported in the news in Italy. The regulation is very transparent. It’s the most open book you’ve ever seen, even more than in the UK. And it works there. Why not in LatAm? Of course, Governments should do everything they can to educate people about gambling, its risks and problems. People will always gamble. It’s our human nature. So regulation seems to me the natural decision to make.
Taking a look into the future, we always talk about CRM tools, AI, predict player behavior and how to increase loyalty. But we also know that younger generations get more distracted, jump from one company to another, and search for more interactivity. They are difficult to engage. What would be the smartest strategy to include these new generations into a gaming platform being creative and also responding to their demands?
That’s the key; I don’t think we’re traditional. Currently, the younger generation expectations of personalization are much higher. For example, if you send them a large and boring email, they’re going to discharge you and disregard you much quicker than somebody who’s like 50. It’s much more a personal experience. They expect an experience that they see in those brands and games that they play. However, their DNA is the same than ours. It’s true that they grew up a bit differently, but I think, ultimately, if you pay attention and are thoughtful, every generation is going to appreciate it. I remember when I moved to the USA from Israel. Everybody spoke about cultural differences. How do you speak to Americans being Israeli? What do they like? What do they not like? And then, after being there for a while, I learned that every culture appreciates when you know what you’re doing and you’re hard-working, and pay attention to them. So I think it’s the same with younger generations. The expectation to personalized marketing is even bigger than the one of the previous generation. So everything we do is just right there on the point. It’s all there.
Can you predict their behavior?
Of course you can! You can predict it on groups or on an individual person. You have historical data; you can run some models on it. We always discover new things in the data; a lot of the predictions are very natural, very instinctive. But the question is: how do you develop it at scale? I can look at the data or I can look at a specific trend and understand that something bad is going to happen or that something good is going to happen; it’s very intuitive. We are just predicting people, you know, people like myself, my wife, my kids, my friends. Everything is there on the data. It’s not a big mystery. You have to build a platform, teach marketers how to use it and let them do it. That takes a lot of work, yes, but it’s something we’ve learned to do over the years in a very good way.