A23 Rummy's latest “Personalisation Campaign” focuses on offering players customised deals and bonuses rather than just traditional discounts. This campaign, with Shahrukh Khan, aims to enhance the gaming experience by tailoring offers to individual player preferences, ensuring a more engaging and rewarding experience with additional value and unique gaming opportunities.
Gunnidhi Singh Sareen, Vice President – Marketing at Head Digital Works says, "The primary objective of this campaign is to showcase A23's commitment to enhancing the user experience on our platform. This is through giving offers or promotions or personalised communication for a user. We believe that such an experience will enhance overall user experience on the platform." An enhanced user experience can be through an individual’s personalised homepage, offerings, communication and content relevant to an individual user. Even A23's loyalty program - Ace Club - has been revamped wherein users get a variety of benefits based on their gaming history. He adds, "The endeavour is to go to ‘n is equal to 1’ and for a user, everything should be completely different. However, when I say personalisation, it basically means what you seek from the platform at that particular stage of your gameplay lifecycle. We try and fulfil that by informing the user right there and then." Sareen explains that if a player has not enrolled to be on the leaderboard for that game, they are prompted to register when they are playing.”
Commenting on expectations from the campaign Sareen says, "The campaign should help us get more traction from a user acquisition perspective. Personalisation ensures greater customer retention and if I retain my customers, serve them better then they will be the greatest ambassadors and spread the word about our platform. We want to build brand equity and preference through this campaign."
Being a gaming platform allows A23 to leverage the data mined, specifically on the user's gameplay. Sareen says, "The biggest insight is that when we send out a communication to a user, what are the engagement rates? We learnt that users do not want communication all the time. They may want it at a particular time. The idea is to be relevant and not spam the customers with a lot of messages. Send the messages only when it's important to a customer, either to bring them back on the platform or to pick up an offer." Another important aspect is the cross-learnings from other industries, particularly the delivery apps, on how they address personalisation.
A23 brought on board Shah Rukh Khan as its brand ambassador in 2022 and has since done five to six campaigns with the actor.
Says Sareen, "The experience has been good for the brand in terms of the overall salience going up, the awareness, preference, equity, everything has gone several notches higher. Every time we do a particular campaign on gameplay, we also do a campaign on responsible gaming with him, wherein he talks about playing responsibly while playing rummy or poker online. This lends a lot of credibility due to his pan-India appeal, and professionalism and helps build trust for the brand A23 amongst the target audience."
Playing responsibility
With gaming being an immersive experience with the risk of addiction, responsible gaming is the cornerstone of A23's marketing strategy as well as the business strategy. In addition to Shah Rukh Khan being part of marketing campaigns on responsible gaming, the brand's recent “A23 Cares”, which focuses on creating a balanced and enjoyable gaming experience for everyone, had cricketer Smriti Mandana.
The campaign featured innovations, wherein the brand tied up with music apps, and the execution had a 20-second silent spot with a banner that said 'music or gaming, it's important to take a break.' Other precautions are the features on the app where gamers can set daily and monthly cash limits and also self-exclude themselves for several days, with three being the minimum.
The app also includes a test for the user to check their responsible gaming patterns, and post which recommendations are given to the users. The company also analyses the gameplay patterns of players, and if anything erratic is noted, the company reaches out to the user with a cautionary note. Sareen highlights, "90% of the users appreciate us reaching out to them, and even ask us for suggestions." He adds, "We're continuously going to work on responsible gaming features to make sure that as the industry grows, this becomes stronger and stronger as a narrative." Last quarter, the brand did a break challenge where influencers took on other influencers. Even users participated by sharing how they took a break.
TG: Male NCCS AB
A23's TG is predominantly targeted at males, NCCS AB and geographically present across the country, with significant growth seen in Tier II and Tier III towns. Currently, A23 has over 7 crore registered players.
With A23's TG found primarily on digital platforms, the media mix and is focused on OTT, YouTube, and social media. On television, the focus is on marquee properties. A23 also collaborates with local and regional influencers. Sareen says, “We look at innovative ways to reach to our consumer. Profitable growth is the mantra for us and trying to figure out how we become more efficient by the day in reaching out to our consumers.”
While A23 has been associated with cricket, Sareen believes that it is not a must in their media plan as there are ways to reach consumers effectively and efficiently. He adds, "Having said that, cricket as a property makes it easier to reach a larger mass in one go but it comes with the downside of every advertiser wanting to have that share of that pie. It gets difficult to ensure your brand stands out in the cluttered environment."
He continues, “I look to be more efficient and if I have to be present in more channels, I will. When I say efficient, I mean reaching out to the right mass, with a substantial reach, with the right impact on the brand awareness, and equity. Also, important is user acquisition, keeping profitable and sustainable growth. We're going to make sure that we become more and more efficient, by being innovative.”
India’s gaming sector is currently valued at around $3.1 billion, according to a report by Grant Thornton Bharat and the E-Gaming Federation (EGF). The sector is also expected to grow to $8.92 billion in the next five years. These numbers show the untapped potential of the online gaming industry. Says Sareen, “We see growth year-on-year and are focusing on getting a higher share of growth.”
