BetCity.nl used notebooks to assess the success of marketing campaigns

About the team

"Basically, from a business perspective, we organize our various data tasks along a sort of continuum, from Business Intelligence to Data Analysts, Data Engineers and Data Scientists." - Daan Uittenhout, Head of Data Analytics at BetCity.nl

BetCity.nl is an online betting platform that allows users to place bets on various sports events and casino games in the Netherlands.

BetCity.nl data team has five full-time staff members and three freelance professionals. Daan, the Head of Data Analytics, has a dual role as both an individual contributor, analyzing product-related data, and as a manager.

Each team member possesses a unique expertise and splits their focus along the data "pipeline":

• One member bridges the gap between Business Intelligence and Data Analytics, specializing in data analysis, visualization, and dashboard creation. They emphasize the development of "data products" that can deliver valuable insights on the day-to-day.
• The second analyst has a more technical background, splitting their time between data analysis and data engineering tasks.
• The third team member is a versatile full-stack developer and data engineer, proficient in both disciplines.
• Last but not least, the team boasts a skilled data scientist.

Additionally, Daan's team is supported by two to three freelance Business Intelligence Data Analysts, depending on current projects and requirements.

BetCity.nl stack

Let’s take a closer look at BetCity.nl data stack:

• A central data warehouse: BetCity.nl consolidates data from various sources, such as their production data warehouse, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, web scrapers, and marketing data from ad platforms, into a single BigQuery data warehouse.
• A dashboard solution: To provide productized dashboards for different teams, the data team uses both Looker Studio and Power BI.
• A notebook solution: Husprey serves as their go-to notebook solution for advanced data analysis and collaboration.
• Some spreadsheets: For daily tasks and increased flexibility, business users employ Excel and Google Sheets.

BetCity.nl challenges

BetCity.nl, as a gambling operator, maintains a team dedicated to designing promotions and bonuses for their users. This team needs to determine the effectiveness of their campaigns and identify areas for improvement. The more data, the better conclusions for those campaigns. However, non-data teams often lack some data analytics capabilities and processes.

The Analytics team is therefore responsible for delivering insights. There are many campaigns running in parallel and the iteration loop needs to be as short as possible. This puts pressure on the Data team that has to generate numerous reports. They build generic reports for all campaigns and then delve into the specifics of... up to a dozen of reports every week!

“If you run a gambling operator, all the offers are quite similar: bonuses and promotions are one of the only ways you can differentiate yourself from the competition. So this kind of operation is the most important tool that we have. We only use Husprey for these specific analyses, but they are what matters the most.” - Daan Uittenhout, Head of Data Analytics

Husprey: a time-saving solution

Husprey notebooks have become a time-saver tool for BetCity.nl's data team, streamlining their ad-hoc analyses.

There are two primary reasons for that:

1. Husprey notebooks allow the analytics team to concisely summarize insights (typically in just 2 or 3 sentences) within the same document they use for analysis.
2. The team has developed templates for recurring analyses, significantly reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks.

For example, during a recent reactivation campaign aimed at encouraging inactive users to resume betting on the platform. What would happen if they sent 50 euros to inactive users? The team used Husprey to simulate the financial impact of offering coupons before evaluating the campaign's success post-mortem, i.e. identifying the additional revenue generated from this campaign. Once the analysis was complete, the notebook was promptly shared with relevant stakeholders, greatly reducing the "Time to Insight."

“We’re still in a start-up situation, even if we now have more than a hundred employees. We need to make decisions quickly. Thanks to Husprey, if we launch an operation one day, we can analyze it very fast and get the first insight the day after.” - Daan Uittenhout, Head of Data Analytics

Over time, BetCity.nl has also discovered how Husprey seamlessly integrate with BigQuery and the rest of their data pipeline. There's no need to connect multiple tools or wait for assistance from other departments. The team can query BigQuery as they would in their BQ console, but with added benefits like user-friendly interfaces, charts, and integrated reporting.

As a result, Husprey also has become their go-to playground for daily tasks and small exploratory analyses.

“I already recommend Husprey to other people, because I think the usability – especially for growing companies – is handy for anything that doesn’t require a dashboard. You can use it faster.” - Daan Uittenhout, Head of Data Analytics

All in all, notebooks are a great way to prevent your data analysts from ending up overwhelmed by the flow of incoming requests. Notebooks empower teams to build both ready-made templates, saving time when preparing their analysis – and therefore save time gathering the most valuable insights.

“Really great customer support, very fast and professional. Very nice tool to use for SQL and the data team.” - Antonios Karampekios, Data Analyst at BetCity.nl