We are proud to announce that Rootz Ltd. is the winner of the 2022 SBC Award for Innovation in Casino and Gaming Entertainment as well as the Women in Gaming Award for Best Use of Technology.
The SBC summit, now in its ninth year, moved out of London for the first time and to Barcelona's spectacular Palau Nacional. The award ceremony took place on the final day of the summit and attracted a record number of entries across 45 categories, presenting quite a challenge for the independent jury of top industry experts, which this year featured our own Chief Marketing Officer, Melanie Hainzer.
In addition to winning the SBC Award for Innovation in Casino and Gaming Entertainment, we were also shortlisted for Rising Star in Casino, but missed out this time. Of course, this only makes us more excited for 2023.
The 12th annual WiG Diversity & Employee Wellbeing Awards were held at London's prestigious Savoy Hotel and celebrated both companies and individuals for their contributions to quality, diversity and inclusion within the iGaming industry. As well as putting ourselves forward for Best Use of Technology, we also submitted applications for Best Diverse Place to Work and HR Champion for our Head of HR, Christine Hili, who has been integral to building our strong and diverse team.
Our Use of Technology
We stood for these awards based on a strong belief that throughout 2022 our team made important strides in harnessing the power of big data and machine learning to create impactful innovations that will have a positive effect on several areas of our casino operations.
Hunting the Hunters
Behind the scenes we have been using the power of machine learning to hunt the "bonus hunters", that is fake, duplicate accounts set up to fraudulently claim as many bonuses as possible.
Using machine learning, we have optimized a process for identifying hallmarks of "bonus hunter" behaviour on accounts, then checking to find other accounts that share the same "signature". This has enabled us to target our investigations of suspicious activity more effectively, thereby eliminating 15,000 fake accounts, reducing our bonus costs by almost 50%, and enabling us to better focus our resources on genuine, active players.
Building Better Customer Relationships
We have also built a customer relationship management system that is tailored to handling the challenges we face as an operator handling several brands. Our new system is designed to keep track of customer's matching accounts across brands, ensuring that customers only receive targeted cross-selling messaging for those brands on which they do not already have an account. As a result, we've experienced a 10% increase in cross-brand registrations since the system's implementation.
Our customers are also experiencing innovation in the journeys we provide them. Once again, using machine learning, we have implemented non-linear customer journeys, breaking away from the routine and predictable to deliver unique rewards at key stages in the customer's relationship with our platform.
Future-proofing Our Marketing
With Google set to cut off its support of tracking cookies, a period of upheaval is on the horizon for marketing practices that are integral to the operations of online casinos.
Rootz Casinos, however, won't be caught off guard. While many marketing professionals have had to rely on tracking cookies for insights into customer behaviour for their entire careers, Rootz has the benefit of a core of more seasoned professionals, whose experience in marketing back in the days before tracking cookies is now enabling us to be better prepared for what lies ahead.
Our Greatest Innovation
Above all else, our biggest and most innovative achievement in the past year has been the launch of Spinz, our own streaming platform. Without a doubt, this is what both the industry and our customers will have noticed the most.
Having our own streaming service has enabled us to benefit from the immense power of customer engagement that casino streaming brings, as well as opportunities for fun and inventive promotions, all in a stable environment, away from the constant flux of shifting policies that characterize Twitch and other third-party streaming services.
Looking to the future, we are further developing our in-house streaming service to be a modular feature that can be used to enhance other brands through iFrames and other established technologies.
Thank You SBC and WiG
We would like to thank the organizers of both SBC and WiG for their ongoing support of our fantastic industry, for putting on such amazing events and for giving us the opportunity to showcase all the work that we are so proud of.
Congratulations to all the other companies and individuals who were nominated and who won. We look forward to competing again in 2023.