What you need to know:

• Jenni Barnett has just finished year one of a three-year transformation. It’s starting to work, per the Tabcorp customer chief with a massive remit: digital customer losses are now in reverse.
• She’s restructured teams while overhauling strategy, product and “broken” customer experience.
• Along with product and tech, marketing and media have been aligned. Some new faces have been bought in, others moved out or around. But in many cases it’s existing teams stepping up, and “number twos and threes” becoming leaders.
• Barnett’s says combining media and marketing – and bringing agencies in to solve problems early, rather than briefing them late and watching everyone scramble – is already driving major wins, and better rates.
• Renegotiating media partners “that were delivering nothing” also helps.
• Now Tabcorp’s in market with a new campaign aiming to take the betting firm beyond racing and deeper into sport, where Barnett sees future growth.
• Tabcorp is pulling out of daytime TV as gambling advertising regulation looms, with digital and social taking that part of the budget.
• Content and ‘contextual personalisation’ is the next phase. Barnett’s starting with four macro segments, but only aims for ten max. “We’ll never be one-to-one”.
• Get contextual personalisation basics right, says Barnett, and her tenure at Telstra and Commbank shows you can get “five to ten times higher conversion rates”.
• Meanwhile, AI definitely its use cases – Tabcorp aims to use it to curb problem gambling – but Barnett warns marketers not to get distracted.

Stemming digital bleed

Jenni Barnett, Telstra’s former digital supremo, claims she “wasn’t looking” for a new job. “But what was presented was an opportunity to really help transform another iconic Australian brand.”

It’s been a transformation at pace since. Barnett said before taking the gig that she likes a bit of mess – and digitally that’s what she walked into (though she’s a touch more diplomatic now). Tabcorp was being picked off by overseas rivals, the likes of Entain-owned Ladbrokes and Neds, and Flutter Entertainment-owned Sportsbet, its app was ten years old, clunky and its media partnerships were delivering little value, per Barnett.

One year on, she appears to have plugged most of the leaks. Tabcorp’s results last week showed digital revenue share was marginally down, at 24.5 per cent versus 24.9 per cent, but with a three per cent gain in active digital accounts to 805,000. Modest customer growth, acknowledges Barnett, but a sign the firm is moving in the right direction. Tabcorp’s overall revenue share for FY23 increased by a percentage point to 34.6 per cent on the back of cash punters in venues.

“We're only the only one of the big three wagering operators in the Australian market that increased revenue and earnings. So that's a big tick. We did really well on cost and we did really well on headline growth for sport and racing,” says Barnett. “And for the first time ever, we've grown our digital customers.”

Digital growth is the cornerstone of Barnett’s wide remit, given the firm is targeting 30 per cent digital revenue share by FY25. That’s going to be a stretch, but the entire company, circa 3,000 staff, is now KPI’d on delivering it.

“We’d been losing share at a rapid rate – and that accelerated during Covid,” she tells Mi3. “We had more nimble players coming into the market, the foreign online bookies – and good on them – they created really good digital propositions. We’ve been slow to catch up, that’s what we’re now trying to do – and really pleasingly in the last year we’ve stemmed the bleed … It’s now stabilised in terms of revenue, market share.”

'Basics broken'

Tabcorp’s new app, raced out in months in time for the Spring Carnival, was the start of the digital catch-up.

“I don’t think we’d had a go at a new app for probably ten years. Digital experience is so important, particularly for this category … So we had to fix some customer experiences that were broken,” says Barnett.

“We were having customers click through 30 things to get to what they wanted to do – basic kind of ecommerce and customer experience principles that we had to go and fix.”

The digital and product teams have added tonne of features since, completing ten product releases within the app, which launched last September.

“We've played catch up. But [now] we want to leapfrog the competition,” says Barnett. “Like a lot of categories, products are commoditised. So it really does come down to customer experience, leading through that and creating differentiation.”

Back to brand…

Barnett, GM of digital sales, publishing, digital consumer and AI at Commbank before leading digital at Telstra, had been “out of marketing proper, in terms of the traditional marketing functions” for the best part of a decade before joining Tabcorp. Now she has a C-suite remit spanning product, data and data science, omnichannel customer experience and personalisation, brand, marketing and sponsorship with revenue responsibility.

Diving back into marketing as part of the Tab remit, “what I've realised is the importance of brand, you can't discount it. One of the things that I picked up very early here was that the brand health wasn't great. The brand strategy was okay, but the execution and the brand health wasn't. So it's just a reminder to me that that brand continues to be a hugely important part of a company proposition,” says Barnett.

“When I first arrived people used to say to me the brand stuff was all about creating awareness. But we don't need awareness. We actually need brand to create preference and consideration. So that's really the strategy for us.”

Hence last week launching a new brand campaign via Accenture Song, appointed alongside Ogilvy in January after Barnett decided to split brand and customer duties.

The ad focuses on sport – not racing – with Barnett aiming to broaden Tabcorp’s category play. “We’re very well known for racing, which we love and continue to focus on. But if we're going to grow the company, we need to be known for sport as well,” she says

“So it's just a nice little reminder since I've been back in the game … around how brand can have a real role in creating preference and consideration and showcasing the depth of what a company can offer.”

… but only after fixing CX, product

The big brand push could only come after Tabcorp had begun to fix its digital product and experience problems, says Barnett.

“We need to reposition the brand, but if you don't have the proof points in the product and experience to back it up, it's a real waste of money. So what we've been very, very considered about is actually we need that preference and consideration from a brand point of view, getting share of mind, at least getting people considering Tab, and then quickly following that up with the heavy proof points and the ‘so what’ factor for customers – and then hopefully turn that into conversion,” says Barnett. “So that's a very deliberate strategy for us in terms of how we've approached that golden trio.”

Channel mix and TV pull back

Following the government’s inquiry, Tabcorp is front-running looming intervention on gambling ads. Barnett says the company won’t do daytime TV ads between 06:30 and 20:30.

“We've been really clear that we believe there's too much gambling advertising on TV, particularly when families are watching sport on free to air, which still rates exceptionally well. To be clear, we haven’t said we're pulling out of TV [altogether], but we do believe it needs to be moderated,” per Barnett.

“We need to read the room – the community is sick of it. When kids are talking about ‘multis’, that’s really sad. I think it’s gone way too far, it does need to be moderated. Certainly that's the line we've taken and voluntarily put into place before government guidelines are handed down – which will come and probably should come.”

Tabcorp will instead focus more paid media budget into digital channels for acquisition, with content spearheading that push.

“Content is a huge play for us. Even just basic things like telling people about what they can and can't do in the app via social, via digital. That's really what we're utilising to get scale, but in a very, very targeted way – and more informational type messages rather than pushing hardcore offers down people's throats,” says Barnett. “TV will be in that mix, but more via social and digital.”

Personalisation – less is more

As well as it’s sizeable physical footprint – circa 4,000 venues and 50,000 screens – Tabcorp will increasingly use its app to drive personalisation.  But it’s not about to go nuts, per Barnett, instead initially aiming for “four different macro segments”. She calls it “contextual personalisation” and from previous experience at Telstra and Commbank, knows just getting the basics right will massively move the conversion needle.

“Personalisation is a bit of a buzzword. But how we’re thinking about it is, if you’re interested in sport only, then when you go into our app, don’t show me content about racing as the first thing I see. That sounds pretty basic, but that is what we have to get right. Maybe they like to engage in content from tipsters. Maybe they like to see stories about a particular person, a trainer, a particular horse – and then you can create or curate an experience based on the customer’s preferences,” says Barnett.

It's a playbook she's used before.

“In previous companies that I've worked in, if you do that really well, you can see anywhere between five and ten times the conversion, because you're removing the noise, you know your customers, and you're just giving them things that are relevant to them. And I think that's really important – it's about relevance and it's about context,” she adds.

“We’re never going to get one to one, it’ll be one to many. But for me, it’s around curating an experience in context: Talk to me like I’m in a venue if I’ve just walked into a venue; talk to me like I’m in a stadium if I’ve just walked into a stadium. I know that will drive conversion, because I’ve seen it when you can be really contextual.”

Barnett thinks Tabcorp may ultimately end up with “eight, nine, ten macro segments” to enable personalised offers and content. “But I probably wouldn’t want to do any more than ten.” She says Tabcorp, now “deep into the Adobe stack”, has the back-end capability to do that, and has built out significant data and analytics capability over the last year. “We’ve hired some cracking data and analytics people, who are making a world of difference in a short space of time.  So I feel we have all the elements [in place]. It’s just coming down to speed of execution.”

Tech and capability overhaul

Beefing up data and analytics (hiring ex-NAB, HSBC and Commbank exec Amy Shi-Nash to lead that function) and bringing together product and tech teams has been part of a broader capability overhaul signalled by Barnett last year. “We'll need to dial down certain skill sets. We may need less of some particular types of traditional marketer,” she told Mi3 in October, serving notice to narrow single channel specialists and project managers that change may be required.

“I’d said early on that we require less traditional marketers and more digitally-led marketers or skill sets – and that that holds true,” says Barnett.

“We were very overweight on above the line; very overweight on media partnerships which weren’t returning anything. So we’ve renegotiated all of those and now we have some great partnerships with all the media companies – and then we've obviously switched to digital in terms of acquisition and customer engagement as a strategy.”

She also made a twin raid on Commbank for heavyweight media and marketing expertise, in May bringing in Vanessa Sanford as General Manager of Marketing and Media while Jo Jones joined as Head of Digital marketing across all Tabcorp brands.

But Barnett indicates the overhaul has not necessitated a bloodbath.

“What I’ve been surprised about as I’ve made structural changes, is it's really amazing to see talent step up. I always look at people that are second or third in charge. You see a lot of talent in people that are second or third in charge and sometimes if you remove a leader or you move them out or move them across the organisation, it's really amazing to see teams step up,” says Barnett.

She says combining the media and marketing teams is a standout example.

“Just bringing media and marketing together has made such a huge difference in terms of how we go to market – and I haven't brought any additional new talent in to do that. It's the existing team – I've brought someone in to lead it – but outside of that it’s the same people. They've all just really stepped up. So that's been super great to see.”

Combine functions, align agencies – win

Barnett says Tabcorp’s agencies are now also benefitting from aligning media and marketing.

“We had brand and marketing very separate to media and partnerships. You can’t – and this has played out really well as we launched our new campaign – you can’t plan your brand and marketing strategy, without bringing the media [function], your media agency and your partners into the mix early,” says Barnett.

“It should be one brief on the business and customer problems that you're trying to solve. Whereas before the media agency would be briefed late, if at all, and then everyone had to scramble. So all I'm really saying is that in my view, to get that tight connection between media strategy, marketing strategy and brand strategy, you have to do that as one. Because it's one problem you're trying to solve, and then each of those elements play a role,” she adds.

“It’s more efficient, you can plan better, which means you can get better rates. Having the media teams involved early means you can do things differently, so you don’t waste as much money, you don’t waste as much time and the outputs are better,” says Barnett. “What the team came up with for this latest campaign we’d have never got to under the previous structure. It’s the cohesive, single-minded nature of what we’re trying to do as a business – and everyone has a role to play in that.”

She says the combined approach has also created a “step change” in the way it works with its agency village.

“The agencies feel part of it. We've work with some brilliant agencies that probably hadn't been utilised to their full potential. So actually saying, ‘You're here to help us grow, here's the problems we're trying to solve, what do you think?’ – just makes for a more cohesive agency village, and people feel part of it. So it’s just felt different, easier, more strategic. It's been better planned; we're not scrambling at the end. And it's really reduced the silos internally.”

AI and upwards

After a year of restructuring, Barnett thinks most of the key building blocks are now in place to rein-in rivals and starting taking back digital revenue share from them while trying to address problem gambling – or nip it in the bud – via AI.

In May the firm struck a deal with Mindway AI, which specialises in recognising at risk gambling patterns.

“Like personalisation, AI is another buzzword. You've got to be really clear what you mean about AI” says Barnett. “A brilliant use case for us is how we make our products safer. Mindway AI uses cutting edge technology to detect changes in customer behaviour faster. So if you think about that in our context, it’s proactive intervention when we think customer behaviour might have changed: Are they betting more? Are they betting at different times of the day than they would have? So we're going to use AI in that context to look at customer patterns, and then intervene proactively, which I think is a really killer use case, particularly for our category.”

She says the firm is also looking at things like ChatGTP to translate ”very complex policy documents to plain English”, something all marketers will be experimenting with given the tsunami of consent requirements likely to come out of the Privacy Act overhaul.

Other than that, she says marketers have to ignore the distraction from the latest shiny toy, and avoid falling down an “AI rabbit hole”.

Barnett is focused on what’s more immediately important: Digitally reeling-in the big offshore rivals is no mean feat, but she thinks Tabcorp is now at the races.

“We’ve got a big 12 months ahead. We’re one year into a three-year transformation. The strategy is right, we’re seeing green shoots, we just have to double down on execution.”