After a big night out on the town, the iGaming Super Show delegates returned to the RAI in Amsterdam for one more round of expo floor and conference sessions. The turnout today was the same as yesterday, with delegates particularly enjoying the networking space just outside as the weather was amazing.
Something all delegates enjoyed at this year’s show was the layout of the expo space and the buzz surrounding it. Organizer Alex Pratt told CalvinAyre.com he was happy with this year’s turnout, approximately 4,000 delegates coming from all parts of the world and all corners of the industry.
This year Pratt and his team added events in the evening such as the payments dinner and VIP networking sessions to extend the delegates’ experience from morning till night. Pratt also commented on the new layout of the booths within the expo hall and the change of expo hall space within the RAI itself, two improvements he was pleased with.
Yulia Salagaeva of Connective Games has been to almost all of the iGaming Super Shows and this year was her favorite experience so far. What Salagaeva enjoyed most was the new layout, she noted it was larger and more comfortable, conducive for people to meet up and communicate and provided a great atmosphere. The outside networking space was also something she enjoyed.
Super Show sponsor Connective Games, an up and coming software provider that was shortlisted for three awards at the eGR B2B Awards last week, took advantage of the event to educate delegates on their new product launch, Openfaced Chinese Poker.
Alongside of the expo hall, four conferences took place today, Player Acquisition Strategies, Amsterdam Affiliate Conference, Betting Trends and Strategies and the IMGL Masterclass.
The Player Acquisition Strategies keynote was delivered by Minter Dial of The Myndset Company. Dial’s background as an international professional speaker and consultant on branding and digital strategy became obvious as soon as he stepped on stage. Everyone truly enjoyed his well-delivered and informative presentation on branding.
Dial highlighted the importance of Customer Service within an organization and pointed out many companies choose to locate CS centers remotely and consider them an added cost. “Customer service is the new marketing”, he said.
“Check your own sites- how available and how easy is it for people to contact you? Are you happy for people to contact you, or do you hide it because its an extra cost?”
He advised companies to take a look at their org chart and figure out how to have the customer at the center. His tips were as follows:
1)Organizationlly, who defends the customer? Have someone in the C suite to do this.
2)Need single customer view
3)Listening labs- observe how customers are operating on your site and get everyone involved, not just marketing- get all managers around the table to talk about it.
“Its essential to have a good user experience for customers”, he said.
In order to make a brand bleed down through an organization, Dial said leaders have to model it in their actions, language & behaviors. It also important for branding to resonate with employees and in fact, its more important now than ever. In today’s world, if an organization does not have an interesting way to keep talent, they will just move to another company.
Its also important to note employees use social media and the brand they work for will likely be passed on to their circles, so pay attention to how you are feeding brand to employees.
Dial left the audience with his top 5 tips for busy executives on how to manage their workflow and they are as follows:
1)Get on top of notifications– be strategic about what’s happening and be careful about the notifications dropping into your life randomly. Know those five people that are important enough to be interrupting you and allow notifications for them and that’s it- make friends with your notification center no matter what device you’re using!
2)Meeting problems– we all have too many meetings, use Doodle as a tool to manage your schedule.
3)Reading– There is a massive amount of information and news available online today. To trim down all the information coming at you, try using these- flipboard, reverb, wibbitz, smartnews, feedly- they are all great new services you can read across your devices.
4)No time to read now– Use “pocket” to bookmark things you want to read later.
5)Communicating better– Try “rapportive”, its a phenomenal tool, a gmail add on, or use Vibe for other email services. These tools pull together information about the person to which you are sending the message- title, twitter, etc- its especially helpful for sales people because its easy to find some context to add to the message and will therefore stand out to someone who is consumed with communications.
This afternoon the Amsterdam Affiliate Conference featured speaker Emma Loveday, Head of Marketing for The Sun, who delivered a presentation on brand advocacy.
Loveday explained how brand advocates create content and said word of mouth recommendations are much more powerful for conversion than any other sort of reviews or advertising.
She pointed out the iGaming industry has very little product differentiation and its a “noisy industry”. Zooming in on the UK, if you also take into consideration issues with advertising on TV with the ASA, operators will look more to affiliates to spread news on offers.
To help encourage solid brand advocacy from affiliates, Loveday used an example of inviting affiliates into your office and educating them on what you are doing and why you care about it.
