Tailored Messaging

Randomised trial results on risk-factor adjusted pop-ups.

What is the topic?

Pop-up messages are provided direct to players when they initiate a gambling session or upon a specified in-play trigger, with content designed to help players manage their gambling-related risks. Such messages can have a better chance of engaging players at an appropriate time than email based messaging, particularly given the large volume of emails commonly received.

Why is it important?

Targeted interventions with higher risk players have the potential to support safer gambling strategies without unduly affecting the experience of the majority of players. Challenges include identifying the best intervention groups, increasing impact, and evaluating results. Playtech Protect has been working with Swiss Casinos since 2023 in a series of randomised trials to improve one particular intervention: pop-up messaging. These trials build on a growing evidence base on the effectiveness of more personalised interventions, as we found with deposit limit setting in our 2020/21 research – see our Industry Research Brief Vol 1(2) – and RG Plus identified in their 2024 evidence review and focus group study on critical points for interaction in the customer journey.

What did the research do?

This research brief focuses on an A/B/C randomised trial that tested personalised messaging against generic messaging and a control group, primarily examining engagement rates with the messages and with responsible gambling tools, such as limit setting and self-exclusion. We will also briefly describe a prior A/B trial that tested pop-up messaging against a control group which examined changes in play behaviour. Message text can be found in the Appendix.

The A/B trial ran between December 2023 and January 2024, where players flagged as high risk by BetBuddy had a 50% chance of being assigned to the control group or to a pop-up message on their next log-in to any Playtech game. 261 messages were sent and 263 cases were identified where a message would have been sent but were withheld to drive the A/B test.

The A/B/C trial ran between September 2024 and February 2025, with 862 players involved. The selection criteria were intended to identify high spending, higher risk players, where an RG intervention might be particularly warranted. Specifically, we included all players with a net loss of CHF 2500+ (~US$ 2900 at the time) at the online casino in the last 30 days who were also identified as either high risk or moderate risk by BetBuddy. One third were randomly assigned to a one-off generic message intervention; one third to a personalised message plus a follow-up message 15+ days later if their losses remained high (45 day net loss of CHF 4000+; ~US$ 4500 at the time); and one third to a control group. Messages were personalised using the top category of risk factor identified by BetBuddy: Amount spent; Time spent; Account activity; and Other/Multiple risk factors, where the latter is effectively best understood as a mostly generic message.

Read the full research findings here