Q&A: Itai Pazner on 888's digital marketing strategy
The head of 888's B2C division reveals the firm's marketing secrets in an extract from the debut issue of EGR Digital Marketing
Few ï¬rms have digital marketing as deeply embedded in their DNA as 888. While its TV ads may make the headlines, it owes much of its current success to the Israeli-based marketing teams that have evolved along with the online marketing sector since its inception in the late 1990s.
As the world moved from brute force SEO, affiliates and pop-up ads to PPC and sophisticated integrated campaigns, 888 moved with it. And it continues to be at the cutting edge of the sector. “We are in the forefront of everything that is happening in the digital space,” Itai Pazner, senior vice president and head of B2C at 888, says.
The evolution of its marketing model has seen 888 develop into a modern organisation using analytics, programmatic buying, mobile marketing alongside good ‘old-fashioned’ PPC and TV ads. But as Pazner says, that’s not the end of the story as the market continues to evolve and throw up new challenges. We discussed the progress it has made and the issues it faces in keeping ahead of the pack.
eGR Digital Marketing (eGR DM): How much did your approach to marketing change during 2014 and what effect did that have on the business?
Itai Pazner (IP): It was a very successful year overall for the company with B2C revenue growing 11% to $391m. We also showed an improvement in the marketing ratio where we spent 29% of NGR on marketing compared to 34% in the year before. We also had an increase in LTV in all verticals. In poker it went up by 7%, while in casino it went up 26%. Acquisition is obviously really important, but there was also a big emphasis in the business on smart CRM, where we took a very analytical and segmented approach to promotions and bonuses.
eGR DM: How is the marketing team set up at 888?
IP: My division is responsible for delivering the P&L of the B2C business through marketing, analytics, creative, web development and more. It’s not only a marketing team; it’s a team with a lot of support functions within it. It’s split by product so we have a casino team, a bingo team, a poker team and a sports team. Each one of them is managed as a P&L and they have the resources to deliver their results. We also have some service units like business analytics and brand marketing to support those divisions.
eGR DM: Do you do all of your marketing functions in-house?
IP: We also do a lot of offline marketing, for which we use external media and creative agencies, so I’m not saying all of our traffic comes from the work we do here, but PPC people are here, media buying people are here and Facebook advertising people are here. Some companies outsource those functions and we have done in the past for some of our business, but because of the competitive landscape we’ve found that managing that internally and controlling our marketing is the way to go. That’s the key to our approach.
eGR DM: How do you go about deï¬ning the channels to focus on?
IP: It depends on the market we’re targeting. In the UK we have a multichannel approach and it’s probably the most sophisticated in terms of advertising where we are active in all the possible channels. That’s partly because the legislation allows it and partly because it’s our single biggest market. We do a lot of TV advertising in the UK and we see it as part of the marketing mix.
eGR DM: What effect has mobile had on your business? How have you adapted?
IP: We managed to do it relatively quickly and it took us probably a year from the end of 2012 to the end of 2013. Last year was our ï¬rst fully mobile year and you can see from our end of year results we have some impressive numbers in mobile. We grew 35% in the most competitive market in online gambling, the UK, and that is in part due to our fast adaptation to mobile. When you adapt quickly to market changes, that gives you a real competitive advantage. This was also due to an investment in product, where we converted all of our verticals to mobile in 2014 and, unlike other ï¬rms that outsource this to third parties, we put a lot of effort into building this in-house. Mobile also had a big effect on the marketing and tracking tools we have.
You can read the full interview with Itai Pazner in the first issue of EGR Digital Marketing available to view here