“ICE is a great place to meet prospects and future clients”

The leading Customer Marketing Cloud had a fantastic 2015 in terms of growth and 2016 looks as promising.

Pini Yakuel, founder and CEO of Optimove, shared his impressions in an exclusive interview with Focus Gaming News.

ICE was a complete and utter success. What is your take on the show?

ICE is a great opportunity to touch base with our many gaming clients, and to learn what everyone else is up to and to showcase Optimove and our technology. The people running this industry are professionals whose dialogue is always extremely valuable to us. And although we’re in touch year round, there is a unique value to this personal, analog, no-screens-attached get together. Of course ICE is also a great place to meet prospects and future clients. Some of our most valuable and successful clients can be traced back to previous ICE exhibitions.

The company introduced new products during the show. Which are the advantages for the casino and the player?

We have just launched Optimove’s new Strategic Services division, headed by Shauli Rozen. Combining high-end marketing skills with cutting-edge data science, our new team is already working with some of our prominent gaming clients. In these cases, both the casino and the players will enjoy a greater value exchange: a more robust and rigorous marketing strategy on the house’s side, and unique contextual interactions on the players’ side. The announcement of Optimove’s Strategic Services follows closely the release of Optimove’s 2015 year in review, summing up a year of tremendous growth.

Which are this year’s plans? Which markets are you focusing on?

In 2016 we’re planning to focus considerable energy on the North American market, and our New York office will grow substantially to support our growing US client base. We are also strengthening our European commitment through our growing London headquarters. Our strategic services will support our clients across all markets. Our territorial expansion goes hand in hand with further product developments, which will offer operators cutting-edge capabilities to interact with players on an on-going basis and in real-time, based on highly segmented, multi-variable player personas.

How do you see the gaming industry today? Which are the challenges for this year for the worldwide industry?

The industry’s challenges have not changed greatly over the past year, but they have become more acute: they are still making best use of data, and rising above the noise. In the era of marketing clutter, every operator must build a robust, scalable pathway to customers’ hearts. This pathway must be based on intelligent, predictive data analysis, which can pinpoint the needs and wants of customers. Data informed, multi-channel, emotionally intelligent, real time interactions are an imperative for the operators of the gaming industry worldwide. It’s what customers expect, and they will get it from the operators who can deliver.