We're pondering trying something - a new feature. (And some marketing talk.)

Hi all,

I have a couple of items to discuss with you.

Item 1 is a new initiative we're looking into.

As you can probably guess, we need more players to fund the site and the annual costs of acquiring data.

Our marketing challenge is that this game is not a casual football game. As you all know, it's a game for knowledgeable and discerning football fans. You all are the type of knowledgeable people who enjoy the game, and you're a small subset of the general population of football fans who, like Brett Favre in the early 1990s, don't know what a nickel or dime coverage is. As a result, our general mass marketing on social media (mostly Facebook and Instagram) has produced some customers, but also a negative return on investment for us, because most football fans aren't interested in the intricacies of building and maintaining a 53-man roster. We've also tried working with influencers on a commission basis to promote Sandbox, but most influencers have a relatively small following and face the same problem that most of their followers aren't our market.

So this is a conundrum for us from a business perspective. We're not going to get rich off of this game, and we don't even really need to get paid for it since it's a hobby. But we do need to cover our expenses, and for that we need more players.
We also think that if we get the right type of players (like you), they'll enjoy the game and renew and we'll build momentum to cover costs.

Therefore, we want to try an experiment. I think it'll benefit both our current members and also hopefully bring some new members aboard.

cdcox is looking into the programming, but we'd like to repeat last season as a "special exhibition". Think of it as the 2022A season. It would keep the rosters from last year and would run in a parallel universe. We'd just replay the season in a parallel universe from our current teams.

Our marketing goal would be to fill up some of the bot teams by giving away temporary memberships to new players, via some ads on social media. It wouldn't be a full experience for them because they'd just take over the existing bot-team rosters, but they could get into the game and build depth charts and game plans and play the season. Our hope is that some/many of them would renew as paying members to keep their teams once they saw how awesome the game is.

This exhibition season would be free for them. If they don't renew, they go away. If they do renew, that's great.

We want to be sensitive about giving anything away for free when you're our paying customers, but you would also get to play in the parallel universe system at no additional cost, so we think it's a win for you and for the site. It'll also give you something new to do while your main-universe team is bidding in free agency.

As I mentioned, cdcox is still looking into the programming for this. It's possible that he'll identify some fatal roadblock, but our initial thinking is that it won't be hard to implement. I wanted to share it with you so we don't catch anyone by surprise with the new feature, and also not to confuse or anger anyone if you see ads that we're giving away free temporary memberships.

Item 2 is short-term marketing, and I'll ask your help on this.

We'd like to ramp up marketing efforts again, but trying something new. I'll ask your help on a couple of things.

1. First, I'd like to make some promoted posts on Facebook, and I need content. I'll start an "Annual Review" thread where we can summarize last season for our teams. I'll provide an initial example. You can make it as cursory or detailed as you want, but I'd like to put these in some promoted Facebook posts. I won't use your real name or username, just your team name, but it'll give readers a feel for how the league works. So if you can check out that thread and add to it, I'd appreciate it.
2. Second, word of mouth is very valuable marketing for us. If you like the game, it would be awesome if you would let others know about it, by posting stuff on social media or telling other football-knowledgeable friends about it.
3. Third, if you happen to know influencers in your football circles who would be interested in interviewing us (or you) about the game, we would appreciate referrals. We need to get the word out.

Like I said, we're not expecting to get rich off of the game, or even to get paid for it. That would certainly be nice, but realistically our goal for the foreseeable future is just to cover our costs. So ... a little help?

Thanks, all! I hope this season was fun for you, and good luck in free agency!

Thanks Kevin. I think a flyer or PDF image with details about the game and explain it could help us so we can post it on our social network accounts. My biggest issue with word of mouth has been the other person thinking its going to be time consuming. So something that can help sell sandbox better that I can send them would help me.

Biggest issue I see is some of those bot teams have traded away their future picks plus some leagues are barely active.

Freebie memberships would be sporadic. People would be like, "f this, my team has no future, I have no $$ invested, I'm outta here?". This is a hard core NFL sim, not for everyone.

Would it be possible, to take the rosters of every bot team in each league, pool all of those players into one big draft pool? Once you have all the bot teams filled with a human, those new owners participate in an initial draft just like we did when we started our team. There’s a lot of details and options that could be worked out still. But this could be appealing to a new team owner. Instead of inheriting a mess of a team that you’d have to play a season with, before you could make big changes with free agency and a rookie trade. New owners would instead use that draft pool to start to building a team from scratch. A new owner might feel more invested in the new team if they picked the players. You could give the the initial $1200 salary cap money to sign the new players. This should allow current teams to not lose all of thier team building plans and rosters to not be changed or interrupted. I just wanted to post the idea, and I’m sure there are quite a few ideas others can add more details or maybe this suggestion leads to a new a better option? There are something’s that I’m not sure how address like draft picks that may have been traded between a bot team (when it was human owned) and a current existing team. And maybe some leagues don’t want to add this idea to thier league, and just leave your current bot teams as vacant and wait to find a new member(s) to fill the vacant team. I think you’ll be more vested if you don’t have to take over a team that needs a major overhaul, and can draft players they prefer from the bot team draft pool, instead of having to play Sandbox games for a season before you can really make the right rebuild moves. Maybe it doesn’t change the rebuild timeline of the quality of the players you picked from the draft pool, but at least you’ve picked your roster and it’s yours.

Thanks for the input, guys.

JackCarsten, are you thinking a standalone document that you can print or forward? Or would a link to a simple summary flyer on our site work?

Wind From West, yeah, that's a concern of mine. Some bot teams are going to be stronger than others, but most will be weak. Our biggest problem with retention (I think) is that people tend to leave when they have a losing season, and by definition about half of the teams will have that outcome. It'll be more for the bots. Our thinking is that maybe some people would be interested enough that they would want to build their own teams and would buy in. We knew that retention would be a challenge for this reason when we designed the game, so another option we considered was tiered pricing - full price to build your own team, and cheaper pricing to take over a bot team. But then we changed it to all-in-one pricing to take over bot teams if you like, so that model is irrelevant now.

On a related note, I took over a bot team recently that went 1-14-1. It's almost like building a team from scratch, but without the long draft. I think I'm going to enjoy the rebuild.

PaperLions, you posted while I was typing my previous post. That's a really intriguing idea. I worry that the drafted teams will still be weak compared to the previously owned teams just because the previously owned teams will likely have more concentrated talent, but at the same time, it would give people some control over a rebuild. And drafts are fun. I'll run that by cdcox to see what he thinks.

Rainman, do you have the Facebook link?

Im trying to figure out how to promote this but no one wants to build full teams, let alone take over one of 31 other
GMs ideas.
They're all about regular ff.

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Originally Posted by Kevin

Thanks for the input, guys.

JackCarsten, are you thinking a standalone document that you can print or forward? Or would a link to a simple summary flyer on our site work?

Wind From West, yeah, that's a concern of mine. Some bot teams are going to be stronger than others, but most will be weak. Our biggest problem with retention (I think) is that people tend to leave when they have a losing season, and by definition about half of the teams will have that outcome. It'll be more for the bots. Our thinking is that maybe some people would be interested enough that they would want to build their own teams and would buy in. We knew that retention would be a challenge for this reason when we designed the game, so another option we considered was tiered pricing - full price to build your own team, and cheaper pricing to take over a bot team. But then we changed it to all-in-one pricing to take over bot teams if you like, so that model is irrelevant now.

On a related note, I took over a bot team recently that went 1-14-1. It's almost like building a team from scratch, but without the long draft. I think I'm going to enjoy the rebuild.

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I think a link to a simple summary flyer would work. Just something that does a better job of selling it then me, cause I'm having a hard time getting folks interested. And if you play madden or fantasy football then can't see why you wouldn't be interested in this.

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Originally Posted by Kevin

PaperLions, you posted while I was typing my previous post. That's a really intriguing idea. I worry that the drafted teams will still be weak compared to the previously owned teams just because the previously owned teams will likely have more concentrated talent, but at the same time, it would give people some control over a rebuild. And drafts are fun. I'll run that by cdcox to see what he thinks.

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I think you’re right in that the new drafted teams still not being much better. But, just like you said, drafts are fun, and if you’ve drafted your own players, maybe you can can get a base group of players so you can build your team and can get the team in the right direction and new owners will feel more invested and stick around longer since it’s a team they drafted. Some of those bot teams have a decent amount of cash carried over from season(s)….maybe you could collect all of the salary cap dollars each team has could be pooled together and divided up evenly across each all the new teams too? There are a couple of other ways you could divide that up, such as the team with the first pick thru the last pick get a little less for 1st and a little more for the team picking last? I’m sure someone can think up even better ideas for this. Or you could just wipe the the salary cap dollars of each team clean. I like the new ideas you’ve laid out today, too.