Alex Antsyferov, Trueplay: “What the player came for is what he gets”
Alex Antsyferov, chief business officer at Trueplay, spoke to Focus Gaming News about the industry trends, customer retention and what Trueplay will showcase at ICE London 2023.
Exclusive interview.- ICE London 2023 will take place from February 7-9 at ExCeL London. To talk about Trueplay’s plans for the event and the industry trends, Focus Gaming News caught up with Alex Antsyferov, the chief business officer at Trueplay.
Do you consider that there is real awareness and interest in the customer experience? Or is it a trend?
It is a mix of both. There is certainly a growing awareness and interest in the customer experience as more and more companies are recognizing the importance of providing a positive experience for their customers.
However, it is, we at Trueplay develop our product with that in mind because the general truth is – the better customer experience a brand provides, the more users its platform will attract and retain. And retention metric is vital for the brand’s success in the highly competitive race for customers’ attention.
Repeatedly, you emphasized that retention is the main problem for casinos, rather than acquisition. How do you think casinos are acting in this context?
You’re right. The acquisition is quite easy today, as we have loads of solutions for this problem on the market. But loyalty programs that really retain users are hard to come by. In terms of retention for casinos, it is likely that they are focusing on providing personalized and engaging experiences for their customers, as well as implementing loyalty programs such as advanced cashbacks, levels systems, etc.
In the case of Trueplay, we have focused on retention based on the customer’s behaviour and his main goal of visiting the casino – to win and to earn. With Trueplay, the user gets rewarded each time he spins the wheel. Also, he can put his reward on hold, let’s say overnight, and come back in the morning to the same platform and play again.
Thus, if everything else fails, there’s always something on his balance. What’s important, it is not imaginary crystal bonuses, but the real crypto asset, equal to fiat money. What player came for is what he gets. And this scheme works on retention rate the best.
What was the acceptance of loyalty programs in 2022? How do you project the performance of these tools in 2023?
In 2022, loyalty programs have seen a steady acceptance among a big amount of customers and both offline and online businesses. For 2023, it is expected that the performance of loyalty tools will continue to be strong, as more businesses will adopt loyalty programs and technology itself continues to advance, making them more sophisticated and effective tools, basically as Trueplay does.
“For 2023, it is expected that the performance of loyalty tools will continue to be strong.”
Alex Antsyferov, chief business officer at Trueplay.
What place will these topics have at ICE London?
Crypto, customer experience, and loyalty programs will be among the key topics discussed at ICE London, as they are important considerations for any business in the iGaming industry.
What are your expectations about the expo?
ICE is a great opportunity for companies to showcase their products and services, network with industry professionals, and stay up to date on the latest trends. We’ve been watching the last couple of years how different products iterate from expo to expo. Last year we saw a lot of MVPs and proof of concepts presented at ICE as they rapidly growing with their development initiatives – this year personally I expect to watch the expo filled with a lot of products with traction among operators.
“ICE is a great opportunity for companies to showcase their products and services, network with industry professionals, and stay up to date on the latest trends.”
Alex Antsyferov, chief business officer at Trueplay.
What proposal will Trueplay take to ICE this year?
Trueplay has developed two tokenized loyalty programs for iGaming, called Play to Earn and Hold to Earn. While implementing Trueplay, we issue branded tokens, which the casino shares with customers as a percentage of its GGR. In a nutshell, Play to Earn rewards players each time they make a bet, and with Hold to Earn, a player can hold his reward for a certain time to return and see his balance has grown.
The programs back each other, creating a loyalty ecosystem player is involved whether interacting with the platform at the moment or not. This is our flagship product that has been approved for its effectiveness in terms of the casino’s KPIs increase.
During 2022 we have implemented a lot of new useful features, bringing even better experiences both for casinos and their customers. Those are the Notification Service to keep customers aware of their token balance change, and the Social Network Module, allowing operators to promote their social media inside Trueplay. We’re expanding our geography, so now Trueplay is available in 15 languages.
We have big plans for 2023, making Trueplay even more catchy and easy to use: NFT avatars and tournaments for users, integrating MetaMask log-in or other wallets, improving Token Sales mechanics, and much more.
