FAO B-Money mainly re: marketing

[_Loki_]

Extracted from another thread because off-topic. I wrote: "Why not email your customer DB quarterly (with an email opt-out option) ? Many of them who don't visit the forums will not know about add-on products etc. Must be costing you loadsamoney"


First newsletter was sent out last month. Did you not get one?

We'll probably be making one about video content soon too. Videos will be linked from main HM site in the future and probably at the top of the forums as well. Still deciding on how best to do this. For now, that blog post has all the links to current video content. Kind of want to make sure there are no issues with all the videos before I do a big marketing campaign with videos being the main content of that campaign. Soft launch for blog readers and tourney thread readers. :-)

-B

No. In 9 months of HM usage the only HM comms I've received has been from your rakeback affiliate

Also when HM reached 1.10 & was now out of beta I wasn't automatically informed of a new non-beta version being available. Same applies to the guy who introduced me to HM - he's on 1.08 something & unaware of where HM is now & what it offers

Also some of your add-on products require TOO MUCH WORK to understand what they are for & how they might be useful. To me it's all a bit much because I've only being computerised & online since last year. I think that maybe HM assumes customers know more than they actually do. I expect the blog will be useful for education - but your customers need to know the blog exists...

RSS feeds, blogs & vids are very nice, but sort out basic email to the customer base first ?

[B-Money]

_Loki_,

I was brought on as a UI Manager, but I wear many hats around here since I have a ton of experience managing software development. I'm responsible for FAQ's, Videos, Blog, Customer Voice, New Feature Designs, Prioritize Development Tasks, Bugs, Feature Requests, Support Filter for Programming, Make builds and upload to website, etc... You could say I do a little bit of everything around here.

You've already seen a ton of changes in the last couple months and more are right around the corner. I'm working hard to get HM users the information they want most. Last part of Crash Course video has a brief blurb about the 4 HM Apps and how you would use them. HM has a ton of information and documenting it all along with making solid video content is no small task. Morny is helping with FAQ content now and this is great. It will take time, but things are coming online now and this content is at a level now where we can think about the best way to promote it.

I'll talk to Marketing about the email you didn't receive. Since it was the first mass-email I'm pretty sure it was only sent to a % of our user base to test it out. I'll look into that. More newsletters are on the way. As more blog posts come online we'll promote the blog more. It's kind of like videos, I didn't want to promote the videos heavily until there was solid video content. Same thing with the blog.

I'd address version # and being informed about new versions, but I need to clear it with a few people before any public announcement is made.

All of your suggestions are great and being worked on. I remember a month or two ago when you first mentioned newsletters, I don't think I commented because the first newsletter was actually being finalized when you first mentioned it.

GL,
-B

[_Loki_]

Fair comment Brent :)

BTW Do you happen to recall my link to City of Seattle UserVoice ?

[B-Money]

I do. Morny took a pass at cleaning up uservoice the other day and noticed a bunch of spam. I'm not convinced uservoice is a service we should monitor daily or weekly when there is enough development work to keep us busy for well over a year. We have a internal "feature request" database now that I personally created and manage. This along with the great support staff, it's pretty rare a good idea will go unnoticed. Also, if there is a killer new idea I'd rather not have it out there for the world to see and copy.

Poker Software is a unique business because we're constantly releasing updates. It's the never ending development cycle with the next release date right around the corner. Not sure if you know, but EA has 2 Madden teams that develop the Madden games. They rotate every year for a release so their big picture items can be developed. We don't have that luxury. We have to keep up with current problems and develop new features daily.

That might sound a little negative but I am excited about working here. I'm surrounded by people that know poker inside and out, this makes development tasks a bit easier.

-B

[_Loki_]

A bit of a difference in scale mind you

Electronic Arts gets long-term bullish options bet | Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62H4O520100318?type=globalMarketsNews)

I'm looking forward to seeing the vids & other (mostly) free stuff you're doing
- & the morny FAQ's of course

[fozzy71]

Fair comment Brent :)

BTW Do you happen to recall my link to City of Seattle UserVoice ?


I do. Morny took a pass at cleaning up uservoice the other day and noticed a bunch of spam. I'm not convinced uservoice is a service we should monitor daily or weekly when there is enough development work to keep us busy for well over a year. We have a internal "feature request" database now that I personally created and manage. This along with the great support staff, it's pretty rare a good idea will go unnoticed. Also, if there is a killer new idea I'd rather not have it out there for the world to see and copy.
........

FWIW, I am considering opening up some suggestion forums here again, so we can monitor the spam issue. We are going to have to do some testing behind the scenes before we decide for sure if and how the new forums will be implemented, but I think it would be best if we had more control over and were more familiar with the suggestions.

It will most likely be a moderated forum where all new threads will have to have a poll attached and then be approved by a moderator or admin. That is the part we need to test a little bit so we are sure we establish a solid, yet simple, procedure for people to post suggestions and vote/comment on them.

Once we decide on the form and format of the forums, and establish the proper rules/stickies, it should make things easier for the customer. You wont need to login to another site (uservoice) or deal with spam we can't control. This will obviously require more time from the moderators to maintain the new forums but we have a good sized team now and I think the benefits will outweigh the time invested by us.

[_Loki_]

E X C E L L E N T !! Thank you

I think a significant number of users feel their suggestions are lost in the mess that is UserVoice - no matter what support says about how well it's monitored it still is not a good place for polling ideas

In your post Fozzy you wrote 'new forums' - that little 's' at the end is good news - it will mean a better discussion among interested parties can take place in their chosen corners of forums.holdemmanager

Should make the development path more transparent

Despite some negative (& childlike) user comments re RUSH - I for one am very impressed by this forum & the users/support staff

[The Minder]

+1

Uservoice is a lost cause. It would be nice to know what Roy's strategic guidance is so that we could submit requests against that, but I appreciate that such guidance would be very much 'commercial in confidence'. Bringing 'feature requests' back into the forum is the way to go, imo.

[Ajax]

There are two suggestions in uservoice that I like, and they have gotten enough votes to make it to the first page. When the suggestions are moved back into the forum, will their uservoice rankings still be given credit?

[fozzy71]

I definitely plan to bring all of the popular/important suggestions into the new suggestions forums (We plan to break it up somewhat, i.e.: HUD, HM UI, Apps, etc). The only thing I am not sure of yet, is if I can create it with a poll and then add a bunch of 'yes votes' to the poll, to try and make it similar to it's current UserVoice ranking. It may take us a week or two until we make them visible as I want to do a bit of internal testing to try and head off any possible problems before they happen. Then I just have to write stickies and move over the other suggestions.

[B-Money]

A bit of a difference in scale mind you

Electronic Arts gets long-term bullish options bet | Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62H4O520100318?type=globalMarketsNews)

I'm looking forward to seeing the vids & other (mostly) free stuff you're doing
- & the morny FAQ's of course

That's exactly the point I was trying to make. EA has 100+ people on a team. They even have two teams to stagger their yearly release. We have well under 25 people doing development work on Holdem Manager, yet we have releases every week or so.

HM staff count is at an all-time high now and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Roy has extra help, Morny is back. I see nothing but positive things in store for the future around here.

-B