Data Visualisation, Betfair Style

From Research-Live.com comes this contribution from Betfair - the link has other examples from Ford and Absolut. Note that this article should not be interpreted as a subliminal endorsement to drink and bet, or drive and drink, or drive and bet. The first can be dangerous to your wealth, while the others can be just dangerous.

Data visualisations are a great way of driving marketing efforts, which enable customers to get the best out of their relationship with Betfair. In the bookmaker’s environment we are able to use complex event processing (CEP) technology to monitor and react to customer behaviour about major events on our website and on social media sites.

As our odds change, we use graphs to show the peaks and troughs of the day and explain all the significant happenings that are changing the value of a bet. We are able to visualise this by using the CEP to analyse events (fixtures information and user events such as bet placement and funds withdrawal) to detect patterns and extract data from them. We can then translate this into an illustration which is clear and simple. It works for us because it highlights our differences from our competitors, particularly in the value proposition. These visualisations directly play into our USP - namely that Betfair is one of the few companies to allow gamblers to bet at odds set by other users rather than by the bookmaker.

This is about bringing in the right customer who will be valuable for the long term. We’re not looking for one-off punters, but if we get people in at the start of the tournament they are more likely to stay with us longer. They enjoy these real-time visualisations, because they are empowering them to be in control and understand when is the right time to have a flutter.

It also enables us to spot any detail that would otherwise go missing such as the hottest parts of the website including banners and offers with high degrees of traction.

The ability to create, identify and curate content that is going to be interesting and carry across multiple channels is quite useful. As the internet and web-based content continue to grow at such a rapid pace, numeracy and the ability for a marketer to deal with huge amounts of data are vital. The ability to sort through all that and find the one thing that is going to make the difference, the one small change you make that could have a massive effect on the bottom line, is crucial.