24/7 Player Engagement Engine: Event-Driven CRM Automation for iGaming
We stepped in when strong acquisition was being undermined by weak retention and a tangle of manual emails. In just two months, we wired real-time player events into Customer.io and launched automated, personalised journeys across email, push, and SMS. The result: always-on lifecycle messaging that lifts engagement while the marketing team focuses on growth.
Background & Challenge
- Poor Day-7 / Day-30 retention despite strong acquisition.
- Low re-engagement among mid-tier players.
- Fragmented comms stack—manual emails, no push/SMS orchestration, zero personalisation.
- Need for measurable ROI without overloading the internal team.
With what we helped
1 Event schema design & instrumentation
- Defined a comprehensive lifecycle taxonomy (e.g.
signup_completed,first_deposit,last_login,bonus_claimed,churn_risk_flagged). - Streamed real-time events and traits—VIP tier, country, language, last game played—into Customer.io via Segment, with buffering and replay for missed events.
2 Automated lifecycle campaigns
- Welcome series – personalised onboarding plus deposit offers based on geolocation and device.
- Dormant-player reactivation – triggers after 7+ days of inactivity with bonuses scaled to VIP level.
- Birthday / milestone recognition – automatic celebratory offers for anniversaries or lifetime-spend thresholds.
- Win-back – push + SMS combo for players who lose > $200 within 24 hours.
3 In-message personalisation
- Leveraged Customer.io Liquid templating to embed first name, currency, balance, suggested next game, and bonus-expiry countdown timers.
4 A/B testing & reporting
- Enabled tests on subject lines, bonus CTA types (cashback vs. free spins), and send-time optimisation.
- Consolidated open, click, conversion, churn-to-return, and campaign ROI metrics in a single dashboard for continuous improvement.
Outcomes & Benefits
- Retention Uplift: Day-7 and Day-30 retention rising steadily since go-live.
- Re-engagement Increase: Automated dormant-player and win-back flows consistently return mid-tier users to active play.
- Operational Efficiency: Manual blasts replaced by 100 % automated journeys, freeing the marketing team for higher-value work.
- Personalisation at Scale: Every message tailors VIP tier, language, behaviour, and balance in real time.
- Measurable ROI: Unified dashboard tracks opens, clicks, conversions, churn-to-return delta, and campaign revenue uplift.
