Beyond Email: Delivyr Eyes the Global SMS Opportunity in iGaming

For an industry increasingly focused on personalisation and reaching players at the right moment, one of the most established communication channels remains comparatively underused.

SMS offers operators something that crowded email inboxes and increasingly fragmented digital channels can struggle to provide: immediacy. Yet within regulated iGaming, concerns around compliance, carrier requirements and the complexity of implementing text messaging at scale have prevented many operators from fully embracing the channel.

Delivyr believes there is an opportunity to change that.

Having established its proposition in the highly regulated US market, where it has built a growing portfolio of iGaming operator clients, Delivyr is now looking at the wider opportunity for SMS across the global iGaming industry.

At the centre of its approach is a simple proposition: operators should be able to communicate with players via SMS without adding another significant compliance burden to their marketing and CRM teams.

Removing the SMS compliance barrier

Delivyr has built its platform around the regulatory challenges that have traditionally made SMS difficult for gambling operators.

The system includes more than 150 preloaded messaging templates, while operators can also create their own messages, which are reviewed for compliance before they are used.

The concept is effectively to create a controlled environment with built-in guardrails, allowing operators to make use of SMS while reducing the risk of messaging falling outside applicable requirements.

For Delivyr, education is an important part of this process. The company believes one of the biggest barriers to adoption is the perception that SMS marketing is simply too complicated — or, in some cases, effectively impossible — for operators in tightly regulated markets.

Its experience in the US has therefore become an important proof point for the business. If SMS can be deployed successfully within one of iGaming’s more complex regulatory environments, Delivyr believes there is a wider conversation to be had with operators internationally.

From marketing channel to player experience

Delivyr is also keen to move the conversation beyond the idea of SMS as a tool for sending occasional promotional blasts.

Instead, the company sees messaging becoming part of automated player journeys, triggered by individual behaviours and events.

That could include welcome communications, promotional offers and player reactivation, alongside OTPs, transactional updates and customer service messaging.

Used in this way, SMS becomes less of a standalone marketing channel and more of an extension of an operator’s wider CRM and player experience strategy.

Importantly, operators do not necessarily need to introduce an entirely new workflow to achieve this. Delivyr integrates with CRM and CDP platforms including Optimove, Fast Track, Customer.io, and Smartico, allowing messages to be incorporated into existing player journeys and automation.

Putting performance behind the proposition

Deliverability is another area where Delivyr believes it can differentiate.

The company reports SMS and MMS deliverability of around 95%, supported by its relationships with mobile carriers.

More significantly for operators considering whether to add SMS to their communication mix, Delivyr says its clients are already seeing measurable commercial results.

The company points to examples including a 40% increase in revenue and an individual campaign that generated ROI of more than 4,000%.

While individual campaign performance will inevitably depend on factors including audience, offer, timing and player segmentation, the results demonstrate why Delivyr believes SMS deserves greater consideration alongside more established CRM channels.

The company’s commercial model is also designed to allow operators to experiment before making a significant commitment. Delivyr operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, with a $2,500 one-off compliance fee and messaging priced at $0.05 per message.

This gives operators the opportunity to initially test SMS with particular player segments or journeys, measure its impact and then expand activity where the results justify it.

A global opportunity

The US remains an important market for Delivyr, but its experience there could ultimately provide the foundation for a much broader proposition.

Europe and other regulated iGaming markets have their own requirements around marketing, consent and player communication, meaning there is no single approach that can simply be replicated globally.

However, the underlying challenge is familiar across markets: operators want to communicate with players in a timely and relevant way without creating unnecessary complexity for compliance, CRM and marketing teams.

As operators continue to invest in increasingly sophisticated CRM technology, personalisation and automated player journeys, Delivyr’s argument is that the channel used to deliver those communications deserves just as much attention.

Email will remain an important part of that mix. But Delivyr’s early experience in the US suggests there could be significantly more room for SMS alongside it.

For a company that has initially built its proposition by tackling one of the industry’s more challenging regulatory markets, the next opportunity is to demonstrate how that experience can translate into a much bigger global conversation around SMS, player engagement and customer experience.