For this month’s Better Collective Spotlight, we returned to Betarades – a provider of sports insights and free betting tips in Greece – to look at its Tipster League product launched in February.
Edward Fowler, Marketing Automation Specialist at Better Collective, shares his insights on the product which lets users guess the outcome of events and compete for attractive monthly prizes.
Each week, new competitions are added – targeted at the Greek audience – for users to challenge the communities or their friends.
SBC: What are the key benefits for Betarades working with the Tipster League?
EF: For us, it’s mainly about user retention and not relying on search engines too heavily. The key benefit for Betarades is having ‘lead generation’, which means getting users to complete a sign-up. This allows us, in addition to the great editorial content on the site that drives our traffic, to bring users back to the site through gamification.
Additionally, the interactivity of the Tipster League invites users to utilise our fresh content to inspire them with their predictions. This creates increased engagement across the entire site.
In this way, we can go beyond bookmaker reviews and bonus codes. We want to build sites and establish brands where users have a reason to come back to, and the Tipster League does this.
SBC: How close is this in design and functionality to what you see on, for example, a site such as bettingexpert.com?
EF: On bettingexpert, we have tipsters predicting the outcome of events and competing for prizes for those, but it varies across any sports and markets. The predictor differs in that it offers a much more targeted angle for the country and the local teams.
The Tipster League could be best compared to the Premier League Fantasy Football, where as a football fan from the UK I’m more likely to engage in purchasing my dream team for clubs I know, rather than reading about NFL tips.
SBC: Is this white label being used by other brands too? Is there a standard tipster game layout that works on a global level?
EF: The product itself is built to be flexible enough to work in any country, so we can scale it to any target audience. But generally, it’s aimed at all sports fans who want to make use of their knowledge in competitions, or show off to their friends.
However, we know that no sports fan or culture is the same, so we have prepared this product to be adaptable to any relevant segment audience. The fundamental concept and mechanics remain the same, but aspects such as sport, market, UX, etc, can all be tweaked to reach the highest level of appeal.
SBC: Are there plans to roll this out in other markets?
EF: We’ve piloted the product in the Greek market, and have currently not rolled it out into other markets. However, it’s due to be added to one of our Romanian sites soon, and the plan is to steadily continue implementation across a variety of markets and sites.
SBC: In terms of marketing automation, are there any campaigns for the Tipster League that have worked particularly well?
EF: We have some built in campaigns to reduce churn that have performed well. These automatically identify users that haven’t made a prediction during that competition week and send reminders with countdown timers to make their predictions, relevant to that specific week and the players inactivity. This has reduced churn by over 30%.
It’s still early days with the product, and we are steadily getting more data to help guide our ongoing implementations. The great thing about including Marketing Automation from day one is the ability to continuously gather information, learn, implement, and repeat to create an ideal user experience.
SBC: What can we expect to see during the rest of the year?
EF: We’re constantly optimising and creating new marketing automation campaigns. I imagine we’ll be able to create a ‘stickier’ product and see more loyalty through these, so we’ll see an even more polished marketing retention machine later this year.