✧ A deep-dive into a patron’s journey with promotions

The promotional lifecycle was a comprehensive research project that I lead to gain a foundational understanding of how theScore BET and ESPN BET patrons interact with promos from start to finish. From a television ad to sign up to placing their first promotional bet, we captured the pain points in their journey and identified key opportunities.

Type
Strategic research

Year
Delivered June 2024

Role
UX Researcher

Project Background

As the UX researcher on the promotions team at theScore, I was in charge of many evaluative research projects that supported my product designer, Danny, in the delivery of table stake features. However, as a result, it limited our ability as a team to innovate and to plan for features beyond what was already slotted on the product roadmap. In my discussions with Gabe, my product manager, we understood that we needed more data to inform our strategies in the future once those table stakes were complete.

As a result, promo lifecycle was borne from the goal to understand our users’ behaviours more and to uncover solutions that would optimize the promotional experience on theScore BET and ESPN BET.

Research Goals & Questions

Once the workshop was completed, I affinity mapped all the questions and ideas into major themes, which informed the north stars of the research.

  1. Understand how users discover & opt-in to promotions

  2. Determine how users interact with promos throughout its lifecycle

  3. Identify pain points on our promo journey

We also consolidated some high-level questions to guide the research plan.

  1. At what point in the betting flow do users browse for promotions?

  2. What channels are they using to find promotions?

  3. How can we improve the engagement of promotions?

  4. When do users seek more information on opted-in promos?

  5. How often do users miss out on eligible promos?

Research Intake

Before even generating any of my own, I facilitated a whiteboarding workshop to intake ideas and questions from my cross-functional stakeholders. This included ICs and managers from the product, design, marketing, and engineering teams. By including perspectives from all disciplines, it helps me craft a structured research plan and ensures that the research findings will be relevant and impactful to the business goals.

Other important details were also discussed and agreed upon during this phase such as:

  • Target audience (Who am I going to recruit?)

  • Timeline expectations

  • Potential KPIs

After the board is populated, everyone gets a chance to further discuss and expand on their ideas. After a blind vote, the most popular ones are surfaced, which guides me towards what knowledge gaps are the most important.

Brainstorming whiteboard with stakeholders

Creating a Research Plan

Using my best judgement, I determined the research methodologies that would help to most effectively answer the questions of my stakeholders:

Survey

The survey was key in collecting quantitative data on their current experience with online sportsbook & casino promotions. It was also used to screen participants for recruitment into the next stages of the research and to collect demographical data.

7-Day Diary Study

Since new promos are released daily, we needed longitudinal insights into a bettors habits & behaviours. We also collected data on their emotional journey and associated them with different actions & events, allowing us to fine-tune marketing releases.

Moderated Interviews

Interviews were conducted after the diary study to add colour to their responses by following up on their most interesting responses. Here, a contextual inquiry section was added to see how patrons bet on a daily basis with multiple apps including ours.

Supporting: Data Analytics

We pulled data from Amplitude to gain a necessary quantitative perspective. By looking at a of different promo related components in the app, we determined what features were underperforming and were negatively impacting the funnel.

Supporting: CX

We collaborated with the CX team to generate a real-time report on promo-related tickets. They were able to surface the biggest painpoints prior to conducting our research which helps inform my questions.

Survey

The project had a huge scope and impacted many different vertical and functional teams. As a result, I needed to communicate a compelling message that was 100% reliable to mitigate potential stakeholder pushback. By triangulating my qualitative and quantitative data from different avenues, I ensured that all the findings and research suggestions were validated.

Although the tradeoff was taking more time, I fortunately had a very loose deadline. In other words, if the project was more urgent, the plan would have been truncated.

Why use so many methodologies and sources of data?

The research phase began with a survey built on UserZoom. By translating the ideas from the stakeholder whiteboard, I carefully crafted a mix of multiple choice and open-ended questions. Coordinating with the CRM team, we sent the survey to our patrons from theScore BET and ESPN BET. We ended up getting around 400 responses where several huge painpoints were already uncovered.

Per the survey, 86% of respondents stated that they’ve missed out on a promotion after already placing a bet…

Diary Study

I recruited 9 theScore BET and 9 ESPN BET patrons based on the quality of their survey answers while making sure I had a balance of both sportsbook and casino players. Questions were carefully crafted to capture the nuances of their betting habits on a daily basis throughout the course of a week.

We got a peek into what they were opting into, what they were betting on, and why certain promos were appealing or unappealing etc.

Snippet of the diary study structure

Moderated Interviews

Diary study responses generated a lot of opportunities for followup during the interviews. As they were completing their daily entries, I created a personalized set of questions in parallel for each interview participant to expand on.

Followup questions for two participants

We knew from prior research that there was little loyalty amongst online bettors. Therefore, we conducted a contextual inquiry to see how they would shop around for promos and odds across multiple betting apps including theScore BET and ESPN BET. They walked us through all their actions in a live betting session while I asked probing questions.

Participant walks through the beginning of their betting journey

Analysis

Analysis took a bulk of the research time considering all the different pieces of data that was collected. The interviews were analyzed through transcript tagging before themes and quotes were transcribed and organized onto a FigJam board. From there, notes from their survey answers, diary study entries, and interview quotes were affinity mapped altogether.

The sheer quantity of data required me to do affinity mapping in several phases before themes and findings could be articulated.

A (very) small preview of the affinity map

Sensemaking & Storytelling

Piecing it all together was a major challenge, so to make it easier, I broke it down into definitive phases of the journey. The phases served as the backbone to my research narrative and made it easier for the audience to follow along.

For each phase, I presented behavioural patterns that our participants exhibited alongside common painpoints that persisted.

The promo lifecycle

My strategy for using evidence was to supplement my qualitative findings from the diary study and interviews with quantitative data from the survey, CX, and data analytics. Here’s an example of what it looked like when combined into one finding. Below, I discussed how users look for promos and added in supporting data from our live funnel data on Amplitude.

Example of a combined finding

Key Findings

Alongside every painpoint, I attached a clear recommendation so that all the findings were directly actionable in the future.

Executive summary of the findings

Next Steps & Reflections

The shareout immediately inspired two projects on the roadmap that directly targeted problems and opportunities uncovered within the research. This included the promo page rework and promo inclusions projects.

The promo page rework study looks to improve the discovery and opt-in phases of the promo lifecycle, where we finetune ways to make promos easier to find and identify. While for promo inclusions, it focuses on improving user context as they progress through different promos to optimize for a patron’s understanding.

The promo lifecycle was undoubtedly the most complex research undertaking I’ve had thus far. Its impact is not only in its recommendations but also in its value as a foundational jump off point for future research in the promos space. Special thanks to my manager Ashten Bartz who provided extensive support throughout this 3-month project!