The future of AI in retention marketing: part 1

A guest column by Farhad Gasimov, CEO & Founder of GNB Agency. Part one of a series on how AI will change retention marketing in iGaming.

After going through the analytical reports by SOFTSWISS, I decided to lay out in detail what awaits retention marketing in iGaming now that AI has arrived. The report comes in several parts.

Let me say up front: what we see today (all those AI models and CRM features, player scoring and so on) is nowhere near the final version of what is coming. Right now we are on the threshold of the industrial phase of AI in iGaming. Where companies used to just play around and burn investor money on an overhyped topic, everyone is now moving full speed to precise measurement of results.

Entering the AI-Natural Environment

We are entering the so-called AI-Natural Environment, where many retention functions come built into AI tools by default. Of course, we are not there yet, but the trajectory is clear, and the market will definitely not turn away from it.

The CRM manager becomes an AI operator

We are losing part of the expertise of CRM specialists. In essence, the CRM manager role itself will turn into a specialised AI operator. It matters to be precise here: specialised in CRM, not just someone who knows how to use AI. That raises a problem: how do you train such people when there are so many tools (even if many of them will not survive the competition and will be acquired or shut down in the near future)?

This means that at this stage (call it the middle of the industrial phase of AI) the sheer number of tools will make a good CRM specialist even harder to find: you will need someone who has worked with your exact system. Just like choosing an ESP today: if you run, say, Fast Track, someone who has only worked with Customer.io will not fit. Only this time the knowledge gap between platforms will be many times wider.

An autonomous AI agent on the platform side

Ultimately, in the final phase of AI industrialisation, we will arrive at the only logical outcome the market allows: a fully autonomous retention specialist on the side of the platform that provides the solution. It will not be a person but an AI agent that the platform sells or rents out for a monthly fee. That, in turn, will make operators even more dependent on the platform they run on.

This is part one of the series. The next part is coming soon.

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