StakesAndLadders.com – a new way of punting on sports

[Teacake]

The updates for the tournament long pools have been really poor, you can hardly have a sweat when some pools haven't been updated for nearly a week.

[Honeybadger]

The updates for the tournament long pools have been really poor, you can hardly have a sweat when some pools haven't been updated for nearly a week.

Yeah, really sorry about this. I agree that the updates for the tournament long pools were not good, especially the fantasy team one. We don't have data feeds for snooker (yet) and so it had all had to be done manually, and I think that the tournament long pools slipped down the list until towards the end of the tournament. This is not an excuse, just as explanation. We will not let this happen again. We are still learning at S&L, and we don't ever want to make the same mistake twice.

Please accept my apologies for this, and also please PM me your address and shirt size and I will get a T-shirt sent out to you to say sorry.

[Honeybadger]

With the UKIPT main event starting tomorrow, S&L have launched a Fantasy Pool for the tournament. Pick a player from each of seven categories to create your team, and score points based on how well your selections do in the tournament. Closes at noon tomorrow, so if you fancy entering get in quickly!

Also, these pools are guaranteed, so there is a chance of overlays...

[horseplayer]

Whats the idea behind email marketing to existing users?

I seem to get a lot of emails from you (one every other day at least)

They dont bother me in the slightest but compared to other gambling sites you seem to email a lot and to some people that might get annoying?

I am sure research tells you the amount you send is about right but just putting it out there.

[Honeybadger]

Whats the idea behind email marketing to existing users?

I seem to get a lot of emails from you (one every other day at least)

They dont bother me in the slightest but compared to other gambling sites you seem to email a lot and to some people that might get annoying?

I am sure research tells you the amount you send is about right but just putting it out there.

We are currently working on our marketing strategy. Part of this will be looking at both number of email sent out, and the improving the design of them. We want to strike a balance between continuing to remind users about S&L and not annoying them. We have almost certainly got this a little wrong right now, and I think the eventual strategy is going to be to send two emails a week out to users. Does this sound like a reasonable amount to you? Anyone else have any thoughts on either the frequency or the design of the emails?

[horseplayer]

Tbh they all seem to merge into one to me? Bit samey

I would have thought once a week would be about right maybe twice as you are still quite a new site e.t.c

[Kmac84]

I am with Horsey on this one I just delete them now.  I liked the site at first.  But now not so sure, slow updates on a number of events coupled with slow settling on events and then the same players in every pool.

[mulhuzz]

2 emails a week is too much mate, you want to have action based CRM, so eg user does X so gets Y mail at Z point. This can also be if the user has lapsed too.

You can probably see (dunno how you're sending emails...) the effect of two or more emails a week by comparing open rates per user (on average) over time.

[Teacake]

The updates for the tournament long pools have been really poor, you can hardly have a sweat when some pools haven't been updated for nearly a week.

Yeah, really sorry about this. I agree that the updates for the tournament long pools were not good, especially the fantasy team one. We don't have data feeds for snooker (yet) and so it had all had to be done manually, and I think that the tournament long pools slipped down the list until towards the end of the tournament. This is not an excuse, just as explanation. We will not let this happen again. We are still learning at S&L, and we don't ever want to make the same mistake twice.

Please accept my apologies for this, and also please PM me your address and shirt size and I will get a T-shirt sent out to you to say sorry.

No need for a t shirt, just have these issues sorted for the World Cup 

[Honeybadger]

Hi guys,

I've been in touch with the S&L office today about the issues raised. Thanks for your feedback. Here is the current state of play, and the improvements which will be arriving in the (hopefully very near) future.

Emails. Currently users can choose to unsubscribe from emails under their account settings. When we release v2 users will be able choose exactly which emails to receive and hopefully how often too. I realise that this does not solve the problem since many occasional and/or dormant users will not know that they can do this - it will only be regular users, and to a great extent our email strategy is not aimed at users who already visit the site regularly. For users who have not opted in/out of emails we need to get the strategy right. On the one hand we want to regularly remind dormant users about S&L, but on the other hand we don't want to send so many emails that they just get ignored. Hopefully we will get this right, but we are learning as we go. So advice given so far is very much appreciated, as will any future feedback even if negative.

Updates/pool settlement. I agree that there are a few pools that are not updated quickly enough right now. Most pools are updated as close to real-time as we can get, but not every one. This is not going to be the case forever though. Our live updates (via OPTA feeds) are still in Beta testing and thus not live yet. This means that sometimes updates are slow because we are still doing (almost) all of them manually. However, the auto-updates will be rolling out over the next few weeks. It has taken us a lot longer to get these right than we expected - it turns out this is an issue for almost everything we try to do, everything just takes a long time to get right. I think this is a problem faced by all start up companies like ourselves, and we are as frustrated by it as anyone! We wanted the live feeds to be fully functional by now and are gutted that they are not. But they will be.

This affects pool settlement as well of course. At the moment all pools have to be double checked by a second member of S&L before settlement. This often means that pools are not settled until the following morning. For example, the PL Darts has really good live updates (I do it personally most weeks and try to be less than one minute behind) so users should get a proper sweat. But because it ends at 10.30pm the pools cannot be settled until someone else can check them through in the morning. When we get the live data feeds working properly then not only will almost all pools update in real-time (pools without OPTA feeds will still have to be done manually ofc), but also pool settlement will be much quicker.

Number of users/same users in the pools. This is a key issue obviously. The nature of pools betting is that it relies on liquidity. At the moment, after an initial surge upon launch, we are growing (too) slowly. And of course some previously active users have stopped playing. So many of our pools are not as full as we need them to be, and often it is the same guys playing each other especially in the higher stakes pools. However, we are just about to launch a big marketing drive, including an affiliate plan that will hopefully lead to several thousand new sign ups over the next few months. If things go as we hope then by the summer we will have a lot more users and the pools will be populated as we need them to be. And by then, as I said above, the live updates will be fully working.

Over our first few months of launch we were mainly focussed on getting the product right. In particular, refining the design of the pools (and we've had a lot of useful feedback to help us in this respect from you guys), and getting the data feeds sorted (almost ready to go, as I said). Our resources were not focussed on marketing. However, now that the product is (almost) as we want it, we are turning our focus to marketing S&L properly and getting new sign-ups.

One other thing to note is that v2 of the software will be coming out very soon. There will be a ton of improvements with v2 and plenty of new functionality as well. Hopefully pretty soon we will have the product as we want it (or at least close to how we want it), and we will have several thousand new users too.

We are a start-up company trying something that has never been done before (at least not in the way we are doing it). We know where we want to be, and we are working hard to get there. And we will get there. At the same time we are listening to your feedback and making changes based on this. I hope you guys (and all our users for that matter) will bear with us and continue to support us. We have made mistakes, and will no doubt continue to do so. And also, certain difficulties have arisen that have been beyond our control (e.g. the delay in getting the live feeds working properly). But we will get it right. I believe in the S&L concept and think it has the potential to be brilliant. Hopefully it won't be long before S&L is an amazing resource for those who dig our concept and enjoy punting in a pools format.

[Honeybadger]

Darts tonight That is all.

[The Camel]

When you enter the £1 pool for an event, there should be a button which you click to replicate your selections for the £5 and £25 pools.

[Honeybadger]

When you enter the £1 pool for an event, there should be a button which you click to replicate your selections for the £5 and £25 pools.

There will be very soon. v2 of the software is almost ready... Few weeks now I hope.

[Honeybadger]

We have put on double guarantees for our Eurovision pools. No way we will ever make these guarantees! So it's pretty much certain that there are going to be huge overlays. Come snap up the value... the overlays mean that it is likely to be +EV even if you just select the answers at random.

[Honeybadger]

Hi guys. We have published classic and fantasy pools for the WSOP. There is a £100 entry pool as well as the normal £1, £5 and £25 pools.

These pools are great IMO and should provide a fun sweat over the WSOP. Plus, we've put hefty prize guarantees on them (£3,000 in total guarantees).

During the WSOP we will also be publishing pools for all the $10,000 (or more) tournaments.