Camelot Lottery Solutions has a legacy of serving its lottery customers. When the firm changed its name from Camelot Global in 2019, it asserted to the industry exactly what its focus is.
“Camelot reflects our 20+ years of industry experience—we added lottery to our company name because we’re 100% focused on the lottery industry. We added solutions because we work to understand our lottery customers’ challenges and opportunities then build solutions that are the best fit for that customer to help them achieve their goals,” explained Simone Harrison, VP, North America, Camelot Lottery Solutions.
The industry has its challenges—and opportunities. Lotteries must modernize to keep up with shifting player demands and expectations. Modern lotteries need access to new channels and data insights to improve all facets of their business.
“Lotteries’ access to information is highly compartmentalized based on either their organizational structure or systems. They have to get a little bit of information from their instant games supplier, and their systems provider, or their web-hosting company or marketing company. The burden is on the lottery to try to look at all these pieces of information. It’s surprising in 2019 that many lotteries still face this challenge,” observed Harrison.
And it’s not just about the technology, but about how the platforms are managed to drive performance. “When we look at iLottery RFPs, there’s often way too much focus on the technology and hardly any focus on the mobile app experience, the web experience, the digital marketing program or use of data,” Harrison noted.
UX/UI Experiences
One of Camelot’s core competencies is around mobile app development and web UX/UI experiences. They have over 400 employees across Chicago, Dublin, London, and Athens that build data platforms, mobile apps, and websites all geared to drive lottery player engagement.
“It’s exciting because we have our data platform, Atlas, which brings together all the components of the lottery ecosystem for the first time: marketing, product, website, mobile app, and retail network data,” explained Harrison. “We’re able to build models and test what is really important.”
Camelot’s purpose-built technology powers lotteries all over the world, running digital programs for the UK National Lottery, the Irish National Lottery (Ireland), Loterie Romande (Switzerland) and now most recently for the Illinois Lottery. The U.K. alone generates 25% of its lottery sales through digital. “We have that global expertise, a proven program with great results,” said Harrison.
Camelot’s global experience has also shown big differences between Europe and the United States. “eInstants differ in U.S. vs. Europe. The whole game experience is different. iLottery games should appeal to the widest number of players and should have an entertaining experience with a chance to win a prize, just like a traditional lottery retail game,” stated Harrison.
“I think lotteries need separate contracts for their game content. Imagine if a lottery gets their games from one supplier and their players really love a few of the games. When the lottery goes back out to bid and they want to go with a different supplier, it’s hard for a lottery because they’re kind of stuck. We recommend getting platform technology and marketing services from one source, and then have the flexibility to procure the best content.”
Driving Engagement
Camelot is the integrated business manager of the Illinois Lottery and recently successfully completed the first iLottery conversion in the U.S. In the recent Powerball run, they ran segmented testing campaigns through the mobile app to those registered players around awareness and notifications for the Powerball.
“We were able to see an uplift in response and engagement of 56%. We take that learning and build automated campaigns, so the next time Powerball starts to roll, we are proactively notifying and engaging players using digital technology,” she said.
Camelot’s first goal is to increase online sales in Illinois to 10% of total sales. Currently, Illinois Lottery is only allowed to sell draw games over the internet. To increase sales by this much, Camelot’s goal is to attract about a million online lottery players.
Unlocking Insights
Promoting a data focus and driving actionable insights allows lotteries to have a deeper view into their business. And not just from a product perspective, it allows you to drive a better performance of the overall business,” she observed.
Harrison was quick to point out that this technology is also available for lotteries that can’t sell online. “That notification could be as simple as messaging players to ‘go to your local retailer, don’t forget to buy a ticket.’ Driving the performance of the business using a digital mindset is available to almost everyone,” said Harrison.
By tapping into Camelot’s wealth of expertise, lotteries can hit the ground running. “This is not something that a lottery has to learn from the ground up. Camelot can provide a fully-managed digital program,” she said.