Marketing technology in iGaming: scaling efficiency, player engagement, and compliance

How can your marketing teams get full value from their technology stack? Are your acquisition and engagement strategies keeping pace with rising costs and competition?

In this episode of Connected with Pragmatic Solutions, our CEO Ashley Lang is joined by Simon Gatenby, a senior marketing and technology leader with over two decades of experience across some of the industry’s largest gaming operators. The conversation explores how marketing technology has evolved in iGaming, why it has become a defining commercial capability, and what operators should prioritise as they plan for 2026 and beyond.

From product differentiation to marketing-led competition

As iGaming products become increasingly commoditised, the ability to differentiate through marketing and player engagement has taken on greater importance. Simon explains that while product innovation can still deliver short-term advantage, sustained growth now depends on how effectively operators acquire, convert, and retain players across the full lifecycle.

Marketing technology sits at the centre of this shift. It enables operators to engage players with timely, relevant messaging, optimise acquisition spend, and improve conversion rates in highly competitive markets where margins are under constant pressure.

The marketing funnel: from acquisition to reactivation

The discussion breaks down marketing technology across the customer journey, starting at the top of the funnel. Pre-acquisition tools help operators build awareness and reach audiences efficiently across digital channels, while landing page performance, relevance, and load speed directly affect both conversion and paid media costs.

As players move through acquisition, onboarding, and into active play, marketing technology becomes increasingly focused on real-time engagement. Personalised experiences, triggered interventions, and contextual messaging are no longer optional. They are essential for maintaining relevance and preventing churn, particularly when players are active across multiple brands.

Reactivation is equally important. Modern MarTech enables operators to re-engage inactive players using coordinated, multi-channel journeys that combine paid media, email, push notifications, and in-app messaging, rather than relying on static, one-size-fits-all campaigns.

Real-time personalisation and journey orchestration

One of the strongest themes in the episode is the growing importance of real-time decision-making. Effective marketing platforms can identify player behaviour as it happens and respond immediately with relevant content, offers, or recommendations.

This requires more than segmentation. It depends on the ability to ingest live data, assemble personalised creative dynamically, choose the right channel for the moment, and execute actions without manual intervention. Operators that achieve this level of orchestration gain a material advantage in both engagement and efficiency.

The role of PAM in the marketing technology stack

A core part of the conversation focuses on the role of the Player Account Management platform in enabling effective marketing. The PAM is not a peripheral system; it is the foundation that supplies real-time player data, event signals, and regulatory context to the wider MarTech ecosystem.

Simon highlights that a modern PAM must both send and receive data seamlessly. It needs to expose granular events such as deposits, withdrawals, bets, and risk indicators, while also ingesting decisions from external marketing and analytics tools and executing actions across the player journey. Without this two-way integration, even the most advanced marketing platforms cannot deliver their full value.

Marketing efficiency in a regulated environment

Operating in regulated markets introduces additional complexity, particularly around attribution, KYC, and player protection. The episode addresses how marketing technology can help operators navigate these constraints without sacrificing performance.

Rather than treating compliance as a blocker, effective operators build it into their marketing design. By aligning attribution with post-verification outcomes, anticipating regulatory friction points, and communicating proactively with players during onboarding, operators can protect players while maintaining conversion and lifetime value.

AI and the future of marketing execution

Looking ahead, the discussion turns to the role of AI in marketing technology. Rather than viewing AI as a standalone capability, Simon describes it as an embedded layer across the entire marketing process, from audience selection and creative generation to campaign execution and measurement.

AI is increasingly used to optimise decision-making at scale, selecting the right campaign for the right player at the right moment, and continuously learning from outcomes. However, competitive advantage does not come from building proprietary AI models. It comes from having a platform architecture that can integrate, share data, and act on insights quickly and reliably.

5 key takeaways

• Marketing technology has become a core commercial capability as product differentiation declines.

• Real-time, contextual engagement is essential across acquisition, retention, and reactivation.

• The PAM platform is foundational to effective MarTech integration and execution.

• Regulatory requirements can be managed without compromising marketing efficiency.

• AI will increasingly automate decision-making across the entire marketing lifecycle.

Watch the full episode here