Are your teams taking full advantage of this unique industry tool?
On the scale of useful innovations, “RMI is a breakthrough for the industry,” enthused one lottery executive with a background in consumer packaged goods. Because RMI—short for Retail Market Insights®—gives lotteries and retailers a powerful tool they never had before: one unified view of lottery performance across U.S. jurisdictions.
Representative of about 80% of the country’s population and growing, RMI data and insights can be used to boost sales with existing lottery retailers, expand lottery’s footprint, and improve the prospect list. Here’s how:
Benchmark and Drive Lottery Business
Among many uses, RMI’s monthly publications and consolidated chain reports allow a retailer with a footprint in multiple jurisdictions to compare their lottery sales “apples to apples” in all jurisdictions where they do business and where there’s an RMI-partner lottery.
Such a comparison was not previously possible, as the standard databases used by product category managers include every type of consumer packaged good except for lottery. Developed and maintained by IGT specifically to address this need, the RMI database is available to all U.S. lotteries that choose to participate.
With RMI’s single, chain-wide view, both retailer and lottery decision makers can use the data to analyze performance trends and make changes to achieve their sales goals, whether the retailer is new to lottery or a long-time partner.
A prime example is one of the leading U.S. grocery chains. Several years ago, the grocery giant engaged in a concentrated effort across regions to improve lottery sales. It was essential for them to have the comparison data from RMI to track and measure progress, and to understand patterns that cross state boundaries.
RMI data also enabled the participating lotteries to look at how their state’s stores were performing in comparison to others and close any gaps, for example in self-service deployment or from a merchandizing standards perspective. The process established benchmarks and identified which practices were most successful, allowing the grocery retailer to expand the standards in more states.
The same advantages apply to retailers that are relatively new to the category: Following the more recent rollout of lottery across the U.S. with the world’s largest retailer, RMI has given that retailer and the industry immediate insights into how the overall program is performing and how individual states are performing in comparison to others.
“With RMI’s consolidated view, the user can view performance in relation to the number of stores, and for example, the number of vending terminals per store,” notes Gina Easley, IGT Senior Manager National Chain Accounts. “In this case, some states started with one vending machine in each location. The consolidated reports have allowed users to see that when a state placed two self-service machines, their average sales per week grew to be much higher, and they might want to consider additional vending units where permitted.”
Expanding Lottery’s Footprint
RMI can also be used in the ongoing effort to recruit new retailers and maintain the number of distribution points within a state. The consolidated report is broken down by retailers and markets, better equipping lottery key account managers to talk about the performance of a chain. Rather than being limited to that jurisdiction’s part of the business, RMI can fuel well-informed conversations about a retailer’s overall performance and about one or more individual states in comparison with that broader performance.
Every participating jurisdiction also has access to two dashboards, updated monthly: one specifically for that state, showing sales and other KPIs for every single retailer; and a national scorecard, which lets lotteries see an aggregated view of lottery-retailer activity across all participating jurisdictions.
Whether ramping up with a chain retailer that’s already selling somewhere else, recruiting store-by-store at a local level, or working with a retailer to improve sales performance, RMI is an indispensable tool. Contact RMInsights@IGT.com to learn how to join.