iGaming Expansion: Up Your Ante With a Multilingual Player Experience

How Language is at the Heart of Expansion in iGaming

iGaming is experiencing a phase of extraordinary change. Between the emergence of eSports, the acceleration of new markets in the US and APAC, ongoing changes in EU legislation, the growth of 5G and mobile infrastructure, behavioral shifts brought on by Covid-19, and the rise of technologies such as Augmented Reality, Voice, and the Metaverse, the iGaming industry has never been so ripe with opportunities.

These unprecedented levels of disruption, however, come with evolved player expectations and mounting competitive pressure — to the point that, in most cases, expansion isn’t just an option: It’s an imperative. 

To seize the momentum, companies must create a customer experience that will engage players, build trust, and differentiate their offerings. And at the heart of it all is language.

Unbabel’s Director of Product Marketing, Phill Brougham, gave a talk at SBC Summit Barcelona 2022, where he shared the secret to crafting an expansion strategy that leverages language and localization to attract, convert, and retain players globally. We’ve broken down the key elements of turning language from a barrier to a competitive edge.

Language: Obstacle or oxygen?

With players’ expectations soaring, only companies that can deliver a safe, enjoyable experience across all stages of the customer journey stand a chance of succeeding. Adding language to the mix only raises the stakes, but much like facing the final boss at the end of a game, it’s not a step that can be easily skipped. After all, 72% of the world doesn’t speak English. Businesses that want to capture global players must invest in localization as part of their expansion strategy.

What’s more, language isn’t trivial: It matters deeply to customers. According to Unbabel’s Global Multilingual CX Report, 57% of consumers consider companies that don’t offer end-to-end multilingual experiences not just less appealing, but biased. An additional 44% feel that a business speaking their language helps them relate to the brand.

Language creates trust by offering consumers a common reference point and fostering empathy. It increases customer stickiness — 74% of customers would switch to a different brand if it spoke their language — and raises the likelihood that players will spend more on your product — 64% said they’d pay more for products and services that came with a fully localized customer experience.

However, beware of blunders: Localization is a delicate process, and when poorly implemented, it can immortalize your brand in the minds of your players for all the wrong reasons. 

This is why expanding without a language strategy is like climbing Everest without oxygen: Expansion isn’t straightforward, and achieving consistency, accessibility, and quality across markets without factoring in language or mapping out a clear plan is a nearly impossible feat. 

The three challenges that hold back multilingual expansion

Beyond amusing localization faux-pas, there are three challenges that hold back multilingual expansion:

1. Traditional approaches don’t work

When it comes to global growth, utilizing the more traditional approaches to translating marketing content and touchpoints isn’t viable: They yield inconsistent quality, require significant effort, and most importantly, affect turnaround times.

 

 

Something similar can be said for support: Hiring agents or BPOs solely depending on which languages they speak prevents companies from recruiting for talent and knowledge of the iGaming industry — such as specific rules of online betting and online casino games, fraud policies, security issues, and local markets. It can also create bottlenecks — as when agents leave, the remaining support team isn’t always able to cover every language, making the handling of spikes in demand, like the World Cup, costly and inefficient.

---

2. Achieving consistency across the whole customer journey

SEO, social media, payments, terms and conditions, in-app and in-game content, support articles, emails, chats, and more: Players expect their whole journey to be translated and localized. If the language isn’t up to par across every level of the funnel, it can create a customer cold streak for your iGaming business: Unbabel’s survey revealed that for 62% of customers, poor quality support in their native language impacts their trust and loyalty towards a brand “a lot” or “a great deal”, and 89% would stop buying from a particular brand after between one and three negative multilingual experiences.

SEO has been a critical growth driver for iGaming companies, connecting players to top online casinos or sports betting websites among countless other offers, and in turn, helping online gaming providers establish competitive differentiation. But translating SEO keywords isn’t simple: Search habits are often different across cultures, and the keywords your international gaming customers use may not be direct translations of your English keywords, like ‘online gaming’, ‘online gambling’, or ‘casino games’.

 

 

Equally, payment processes and currencies must be localized to inspire confidence and promote transparency. There are many other opportunities for iGaming businesses to create trust, for example through the translation of responsible gaming touchpoints, help articles, and questions surrounding addiction. But it all comes down to quality and consistency.

---

3. Translating experiences at scale, again and again

Unfortunately, many organizations have tendencies to work in ‘siloed’ teams; they rarely build processes that incorporate translation and localization cross-functionally, and because of it, any extra work or sudden change can derail progress.

 

 

Often, there’s also a lack of clear ownership: A company may have a localization team, but no established department or person that’s accountable for language delivery or quality of translations. This affects the organization’s ability to scale its localization efforts as it expands across markets and into new languages.

---

To solve these challenges, some businesses have tried to adopt solutions that are time-efficient but cheap, relying on pure Machine Translation, or higher quality but slow, counting solely on human translators. In isolation, however, neither option has proven to be the winning bet.

How to bridge the language gap with LangOps

Businesses that have aced their localization efforts have sharpened their approach with a Language Operations (LangOps) strategy. LangOps removes the slow, start-from-scratch approach to language and translation, in favor of a holistic, centralized system. It leverages machine technology to accelerate and advance translations, and employs quality tools to determine when to loop in human editors for revision. It’s also supported by extensive reporting to create clarity and accountability in the operation, which allows companies to pinpoint where to make improvements.

Through LangOps, companies can reach greater operational efficiency by:

• Launching content and information faster and more consistently
• Removing the need to hire locally or based on language skills
• Leveraging existing talent and in-house specialists to meet demand across markets
• Achieving a consistent approach to translation

The fact that LangOps can be centrally directed also means that teams aren’t isolated, and the right resources can always be invested in the right place. Ultimately, this efficiency pays off: Many brands of excellence that have adopted a LangOps strategy, like award-winning game developer Wargaming, have reaped incredible benefits, such as better turnaround times, increased player conversion, reduction of costs, and improved customer satisfaction.

Similarly, Hero Gaming, a fast-growing company in the iGaming market that includes brands such as Boom Casino, Casino Heroes, and Simple Casino in its portfolio, was able to expand its operations and launch into Finland without any additional headcount. It relied on its existing support teams in Malta and India to support longtail languages, while cutting costs, slashing response times, and maintaining an average CSAT score of 90%. 

Raising the stakes with Unbabel

The path to the future of iGaming and successful international expansion is clear and achievable with the combination of technology and people. Unbabel, who was recognized by Gartner as one of three LangOps Sample Vendors, is a language technology platform that helps companies expand and localize their offering, marketing, and support in 130+ language pairs, so that they can offer their customers an unmatched CX. 

Unbabel blends the power of machine translation, natural language processing, and quality evaluation technology with the expertise of human reviewers and translators, to help midsize to enterprise businesses create true connections with their end customers. Many businesses in iGaming, plus other consumer industries including media, streaming, eCommerce, and travel, have relied on Unbabel to face the challenges at the core of expansion. 

Are you ready to go all-in with a language operations strategy that works?

Sign up for our free trial today: