Sportserve (Dafabet) / Senior Digital Projects and Marketing Operations Manager / 2014 – 2021
Salesforce lifecycle automation — Dafabet
Twelve countries, safer-gambling compliance in every market, and no system connecting user behavior to messaging.
The read
Dafabet had users, products, and markets across APAC, EU, and LATAM. What it did not have was a lifecycle system that responded to what users actually did.
New users were registering and not placing their first bet. Existing users were going dormant with no triggered re-engagement. High-value users were not being identified or treated differently. And every piece of communication had to comply with safer-gambling requirements that varied by jurisdiction.
The read: the lifecycle was not a lifecycle. It was occasional batch campaigns with no behavioral logic connecting them. The product had a clear activation event - the first bet - and nothing in the system was built around it.
The decision
Build six interconnected behavioral flows in Salesforce Marketing Cloud with the first bet as the central activation milestone. Design the compliance layer into the architecture from the start, not as a review step at the end.
The compliance-first decision was the one that changed how the team worked. When compliance is architecture, campaigns ship faster. When it is a review step, every send creates a back-and-forth cycle. Building it in removed the friction that was slowing everything down.
The metric I chose
First-bet conversion rate. In a gaming product, the first bet is the activation event. Everything downstream - retention, LTV, cross-sport engagement - depended on whether the user crossed that threshold.
Secondary: 7-day reactivation rate. If the re-engagement flows were working, that number would move independently of acquisition volume.
The build
Six flows, each triggered by a specific behavioral event:
First-bet activation: triggered on registration with no first bet within 24 hours. Email immediately, mobile push at one hour, second email at 24 hours for still-inactive users.
Dormant re-engagement: triggered on 7+ days with no bet. Day 0 email dynamically pulling upcoming matches by geo and sport preference. Day 3 email with AMPscript-driven promo code respecting regional regulatory caps. Day 5 in-play push or SMS.
High-value nurturing: behavioral triggers identified power users at 3+ bets per week or top 20% average bet size. Weekly VIP email, streak-based push milestones, CRM field update for account manager routing.
First-withdrawal trust flow: withdrawal event pushed into Salesforce via API, triggering a confirmation email reinforcing trust and surfacing deeper product features.
Churn-risk and safer gambling: behavioral volatility signals triggered in-app messages and jurisdiction-approved responsible gambling copy at the send level.
Cross-sport expansion: sport-usage matrix flagged single-sport bettors and cross-promoted adjacent markets with first-bet incentives and odds-based personalization.
AMPscript handled regional cap enforcement, jurisdiction-specific copy variants, and promo eligibility at the send level. Compliance was not a final review step. It was in the architecture.
+8–15%
First-bet conversion rate improvement
+10–20%
7-day dormant reactivation improvement
+20–40%
CTR on triggered vs. batch campaigns
Six flows, one connected system, one activation milestone at the center. The result proved a principle that carried into every lifecycle system built after: if the system does not know what the user just did, it cannot send the right message. Behavioral triggers are not a feature. They are the foundation.
Tech
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, lifecycle orchestration
Journey Builder, flow design and execution
AMPscript, dynamic content and compliance logic
Data Extensions, behavioral segmentation
MobilePush / SMS Studio, cross-channel delivery
Miguel N. Monzones
Vancouver, BC, Canada
