When marketers are charged with improving customer acquisition and conversion through social media campaigns, but have limited access to data and budget, the task can be impossible.
In this blog post, learn how Optimove’s CRM Marketing Platform helps lotteries to accomplish the task and secure stellar results across important marketing KPIs, including reach, conversion, and costs.
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The Big Picture:
The goal: optimizing lotteries’ online marketing campaigns The growth marketing team at Scientific Games was looking to help the government sponsored lotteries they support with effective social media programs.
The challenges: data access, budget limitations, technology resistance The team was faced with some key challenges, including multiple siloed systems that were limiting access to data, and that online engagements were not prioritized for budget nor for new technology adoption.
A collaborative learning academy removes the barrier to technology adoption Scientific Games established a Digital Academy with Optimove and Meta to provide a forum for lotteries to explore new technologies and share insights.
Optimove’s CRM Marketing Platform delivered powerful results With Optimove and Meta integration, Scientific Games created innovative segments that fueled targeted advertising precision, customized messages that resonated with players, and impressive campaign results.
Innovative segmentation with Optimove’s CRM Marketing Platform empowered Scientific Games to overcome the challenges to meeting their online campaign goals.
The digital marketing growth team at Scientific Games needed to help the government-sponsored lotteries they support optimize online programs and campaigns.
But these lotteries didn’t have visibility into their customer base (players), the systems that contain data were siloed, and marketing budgets for online programs and campaigns were very limited.
Powered by Optimove, Scientific Games ran campaigns with Meta to overcome these hurdles and generated outstanding results. This will be the foundation for continued rollout of these programs to drive lottery player response and increased revenue.
About Scientific Games
Scientific Games is a global leader in retail and digital products, technology, and services that drive profits for government-sponsored lottery and sports betting programs. The company has launched over 900 websites and is behind 15 million mobile app installations for 32 lottery programs around the world. Founded in 1973, Scientific Games is an industry pioneer in data analytics, retail solutions, and iLottery.
Among the products offered by Scientific Games are print and digital games, engagement programs, and web and mobile products.
“We offer a wide range of expertise, from product development to analytics and research to marketing and loyalty program support, where $9.3 billion in tickets have been entered into these loyalty programs to date,” Jessica Fritz, Sr. Manager, Digital Growth Marketing at Scientific Games.
When the marketing odds are stacked against you
The growth marketing team at Scientific Games faced three major challenges in their effort to help the lotteries they support optimize their businesses and programs online:
Data management, where lotteries typically have many disconnected siloed systems, making access to player data required for personalized marketing nearly impossible.
Modest marketing and advertising budgets typify government-sponsored lotteries and limit their ability to engage fully with players.
Resistance to new technology is also prevalent, even if it promises to help improve player engagements. Historically, this has been the case for lotteries since the lion’s share of the business has been driven by purchases at brick-and-mortar retail outlets. The result is that digital customer engagement management and the technology systems that enable it to have not been a priority.
But players are also playing and engaging with lotteries online, and cashless payments are proliferating. Online lotteries in the US are projected to grow from $5.74 billion in 2024 to $7.41 billion by 2029, according to Statista, where online review was $2.52 billion in 2017.
Lotteries now realize they need a complete 360-degree view of their players, both online and offline to maximize acquisition and conversion.
Taking a gamble on a digital academy
In the effort to help lottery partners optimize their marketing programs, Scientific Games established a Digital Academy with Optimove and Meta. Through this Academy, lotteries are provided with a forum to test drive new technologies and learn from each other.
The first initiative backed by the Academy was a six-month media buying project for five US state lotteries. The goal was to take paid social media campaigns to the next level and turn them into long-term, impactful marketing programs.
A customized data-driven strategy was recognized as the key to the success of this project, with the Optimove CRM Marketing Platform and its integration with Meta, as the enabler.
The three phases of a winning initiative
Each state lottery had a unique digital strategy, product offering, and budget. This made for a daunting challenge with numerous variables to manage and much to achieve, all within a very short timeframe.
To ensure focus, accuracy, and efficiency, the Scientific Games team divided the initiative into three phases:
Development: the team set up event tracking with the Meta Ads Manager and Google Tag Manager, for each lottery. Scientific Games then ensured that Meta was integrated with Optimove for the five lotteries.
Planning: Scientific Games held a discovery workshop with each lottery to analyze the market and player data to identify testing and promotional opportunities. The findings were used as the basis for establishing and training on best practices for creative ad placement on social media.
Execution: The teams decided which segments to build with Optimove, they built them, and then created the plan for campaign execution.
Hitting the jackpot with Optimove‘s CRM Marketing Platform
“We were all very excited every time that an ad set or test was completed. This is because there was a constant loop of just great results coming in from different lotteries.”
The project’s objective was to optimize ad targeting, decrease cost per action, and improve tracking overall. And with the Optimove, this was made possible.
Optimove enabled the team to easily create all the player segments needed, including automatic daily updates.
Optimove’s CRM Marketing Platform also ensured that players were seeing the advertising that best resonates with each player, regardless of where they were in the lifecycle.
And the results have been powerful:
20% increase in reach
31% increase in registrations
60% decrease in cost per result
In Summary
Scientific Games faced challenges in optimizing online marketing for lotteries, including data silos, limited budgets, and resistance to new technology. By partnering with Optimove and Meta, they established a Digital Academy to test and implement new strategies.
Using Optimove’s CRM Marketing Platform, they achieved innovative segmentation, precise ad targeting, and real-time data updates. This resulted in a 20% increase in reach, 31% more registrations, and a 60% decrease in cost per result, demonstrating the effectiveness of advanced CRM tools and collaborative efforts in improving marketing outcomes.
For more insights on how you can benefit from Optimove’s CRM Marketing Platform and schedule a demo, request a demo.
Optimove will attend and exhibit at the World Lottery Summit 2024 in Paris, France, from October 21 to 24, 2024, at booth #08.
Jeff Laniado has led iGaming sales for Optimove in the US and Canada for over four years, working with top operators in sports betting, iCasino, DFS, sweepstakes, and lottery. He is responsible for managing many of the US-focused iLottery partnerships. Jeff has more than a decade of experience in sports, gaming, and promotional marketing strategy and sales.
