Challenge

Sporting events are heart-racing fun for any fan. But having something on the line can take the excitement of any match, race, or tournament to the next level. For nearly thirty years, Tabcorp through its flagship TAB brand, has helped fans get more from every game with betting, gambling, and gaming services that return billions to Australian communities.

Chris Raimondi, Tabcorp’s head of CRM and loyalty, believes that the reason why Tabcorp has remained such a staple of Australian entertainment is its culture of customer-first services.

“Many companies claim that they operate on a customer-first model, but at Tabcorp, it’s almost closer to a customer obsession,” says Raimondi. “Every employee is determined to do everything they can to get things just right for customers, whether it’s helping them bet on their favorite horse or getting them the latest updates on sports results.”

Customers interact with Tabcorp brands in multiple ways, across both digital and physical touchpoints. No matter whether customers are looking through the mobile app, getting offers through text messages, or placing bets at one of 4,400 retail locations, Tabcorp wants to deliver personalised messaging that creates valuable and memorable experiences for each customer on every channel.

For years Tabcorp has worked with Merkle, formerly known as Isobar and Accordant, on the architecture and execution of the company’s digital marketing vision and ecosystem. With help from Merkle, Tabcorp embarked on a journey to overhaul its data environment and marketing technology stack to support the delivery of exceptional customer experiences. To achieve its goals, Tabcorp chose to implement Adobe Experience Cloud, including Adobe Campaign, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Target, and most recently, Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Real-time Customer Data Platform.

“With Merkle helping us to establish best practice and smooth deployment, we’re bringing Adobe Experience Cloud online as a best-in-class implementation for seamless personalisation everywhere,” says Raimondi.

Solution

Setting the foundations for long-term digital success

Tabcorp Body Image

Early in its digital transformation journey, Tabcorp identified several key obstacles that were limiting how efficiently teams could communicate with customers. Any new customer activities didn’t get applied to customer data for up to 48 hours, making it impossible for marketers to deliver the real-time personalised offers and news that they were aiming for. Following a merger with Tatts Group, Tabcorp also found itself with two customer databases housed in two separate CRM systems. Teams had lots of customer data to work with, but no single customer view.

Tabcorp needed to address these immediate challenges while also setting the company up for success with its long-term personalisation goals. After comparing different solutions, Tabcorp determined that Adobe Experience Cloud was the best platform across all channels and in all areas of experience creation: from analysing customer behaviour and optimising messaging to creating content and targeting audiences with multi-channel campaigns.

“The ability to act and react in real time with Adobe Experience Cloud allows us to encourage more engagement with customers.” - Chris Raimondi, Head of CRM and Loyalty, Tabcorp

Bringing digital to venue experiences

While many people enjoy watching the horses at a racetrack or with their friends at a local pub, more customers are turning to digital betting over in-person bets. “Customers prefer to place bets on a device even when they consume live sport and racing, but the digital experience was disconnected from retail,” says Raimondi. “We used Adobe Experience Cloud to bridge this gap and create a seamless customer experience.”

Using geolocation targeting, Tabcorp identified customers entering a sporting venue such as a racetrack. Adobe Campaign automatically starts sending SMS or mobile push messages to these customers, encouraging them to place digital bets even as they watch the event live. Tabcorp found that many customers downloaded the mobile app, opened accounts, or started placing bets after receiving this messaging.

Adobe Analytics provides real-time insights into all customer behaviours and actions. With its new ecosystem in place, the company achieved its goal of instantly knowing when customers placed their first digital bets. Tabcorp responded with a campaign that instantly rewarded customers by pushing another message and adding a bonus bet to the customer’s account.

“The ability to act and react in real time with Adobe Experience Cloud allows us to encourage more engagement with customers,” say Raimondi. “The In-Venue campaign was a huge success, generating $50M in incremental turnover for a 2.5x return on marketing investment and 15% year-over-year customer growth for active digital in-venue customers.”

“Not only are the business results impressive, but we’ve empowered marketers to plan and run more innovative campaigns by relying on automation and strong analytic insights from Adobe Experience Cloud.” - Chris Raimondi, Head of CRM and Loyalty, Tabcorp

Personal messaging for every customer

Tabcorp has worked with Merkle to deliver over 900 campaigns that connect customers on touchpoints across channels with Adobe Campaign. Merkle aligned tracking and personalisation across mobile and web to give Tabcorp real-time insights into how customers are reacting to messaging, experiences, and marketing campaigns. Onboarding campaigns use this knowledge to deliver the right messaging at the right time and push new customers toward their first bet faster. Improving the customer journey decreased onboarding times from three weeks to just 48 hours. Next Best Offer, Retention, and Reactivation campaigns also work to keep customers engaged.

The two CRM solutions feed into Adobe Experience Platform—the first implementation of its kind outside of the United States—creating a single view of all customers. Customer behaviours are pulled together from web, mobile, and even in-store kiosks in Adobe Real-time Customer Data Platform to create a full view of customer behaviours. These real-time customer profiles help Tabcorp marketers use customer insights to serve up offers, features, and information to customers across more than 20 Tabcorp brands. The customer profiles feed into multiple channels, including website, mobile app, paid advertising, display, and social media, for more consistent personalisation experiences.

Merkle helped Tabcorp create numerous personalised experiences by targeting users based on customer attributes. By customising the NavBar on the website and mobile app and adding tiles corresponding to customers’ preferred bets, Tabcorp generated more than $8.4 million in incremental turnover. Another initiative generated targeted below-the-line offers seen by 70,000 users each week. Marketers assigned targeted offers based on customer attributes, representing a new way of presenting consistent, personalised messaging across website and mobile app to customers.

“Our partnership with TAB and subsequently, our collaborative approach to the Adobe implementation, inclusive of its design and function, has enabled the TAB team to onboard internal knowledge regarding best practice run and operate methods and requirements,” says Johan Borg, General Manager at Merkle Australia.

Marketers also work with Propensity Modeling powered by Adobe Sensei in Adobe Analytics to predict customer actions and send the right messaging at the right time. The “Saturday to Wednesday” campaign first looks at customers who are active on Saturdays, the busiest day of the week for Tabcorp. Using Look-Alike Modeling, Audience Manager identifies people who might also be likely to engage mid-week. Marketers can then send personalised messages depending on the expected level of engagement.

Previously marketers managed these types of campaigns manually. With no automated way of identifying audiences, the results were less personalised—resulting in generic offers—and more time-consuming, meaning that marketers sometimes missed their planned deadlines. Adobe Experience Cloud apps work together to deliver more accurate customer insights and automate campaigns for more timely personalisation. Over the course of a year, Tabcorp had more than 126 million customer engagements from personalised campaigns.

“Since implementing Adobe Experience Cloud apps, we’ve seen very strong year-over-year growth,” says Raimondi. “In one year, we saw more $100 million in incremental turnover, 15% digital customer growth, and more than 75% digital customer retention. Not only are the business results impressive, but we’ve empowered marketers to plan and run more innovative campaigns by relying on automation and strong analytic insights from Adobe Experience Cloud.”

“Adobe Experience Cloud is helping us measure success and better understand our customers in real time. By focusing on the customer, we’re creating more loyal fans and bringing excitement to more people across Australia.” - Chris Raimondi, Head of CRM and Loyalty, Tabcorp

Racing towards better experiences

Tabcorp is working with Merkle to continue building omnichannel experiences for customers. The company is implementing Adobe Experience Manager to support initiatives to deliver more custom content across channels. Adobe Experience Manager will allow content teams to create assets once that can be published across channels, improving consistency of messaging while eliminating time wasted creating duplicate versions of assets.

“Merkle and Tab have continued to place careful consideration to a solution design for their martech investment that is truly future proofed with integrated systems that enable both content and data to be managed in alignment with one another,” says Borg. “This empowers efficient workflows for the curation of personalised experiences that the Tab marketing team can deliver into all digital channels.”

“At the core of personalisation efforts is people—both our customers and our teams working together to create better customer experiences,” says Raimondi. “Adobe Experience Cloud is helping us measure success and better understand our customers in real time. By focusing on the customer, we’re creating more loyal fans and bringing excitement to more people across Australia.”

Results

• Delivers more than 126 million customer engagements from personalised campaigns
• Achieves more than $100 million in incremental turnover in a year with 15% digital customer growth
• In-venue digital betting campaign generates $50 million in incremental turnover for a 2.5 return on marketing investment
• Decreases new customer onboarding time from three weeks to 48 hours