Free Player Retention Guide Get Now
Making games free-to-play has proven to be an effective strategy for getting players to try new games. However, you must convince those players to keep playing the game to make money. Running an effective retention campaign can be a complex and resource-intensive process. The right player retention software makes the job easier.
Key Takeaways:
There are many facets to an effective player retention strategy. As a result, there are a variety of tools to help you manage the different aspects of player retention.
Communication with players is a core component of any successful retention campaign. Push notifications and in-game messages alert players to time-limited events, new in-game purchases, and additional content.
Email campaigns and text messages remind lapsed players to log in to the game again. Communication hubs make it easier to create, organize, and schedule various messages and coordinate different messaging channels so you aren’t duplicating effort or bombarding players with too many messages.
About 91% of mobile games use LiveOps to improve long-term retention. LiveOps is one of the most powerful player retention software tools developers have to drive player engagement, and engagement is the key to retention.
LiveOps includes time-limited events, which create a sense of urgency and FOMO that encourages players to regularly log in to the game. It can also involve features such as leaderboards and tournaments designed to boost engagement by allowing players to compete with or against each other. A good LiveOps platform helps you design, implement, personalize, and test your LiveOps campaigns.
An effective retention campaign depends on understanding your players. What do they like and not like about your game? What common traits do they share? What frustrates them enough to drive them away from the game? Which features keep them coming back for more?
Data tracking and analysis is the key to better understanding your players. The right tools allow you to accurately track and analyze data to create actionable insights.
Data analysis gives you a big-picture idea of what players are doing and why, but sometimes you need to take a more granular view. With session tracking player retention software, you can record player sessions and review them to assess the player experience.
You can learn a lot about players by analyzing data, but it’s also useful to just ask them about their experience with your game. Feedback tools, such as surveys and polls, make it easy to collect feedback directly from players.
To retain players, you must constantly release new features and content. However, if your new releases are full of bugs or the players simply don’t like them, they can backfire. Testing tools allow you to experiment with new features, campaigns, and content before you release them to your game so you can assess the impact they will have on retention.
Bugs, lag, slow load times, and crashes can cause players to quit. Performance monitoring tools allow you to analyze your game’s performance so you can spot and fix issues before they lead to churn.
There are many tools on the market to choose from. Consider these factors when choosing the best options for your game.
Some tools do one specific task, while others are large platforms that integrate many different tools. Whichever tools you decide to use, it is important to ensure they all work together. This will save you time and effort by avoiding resource-intensive tasks such as manually importing data from one tool to another.
Think about what you want to accomplish with your tools. A massive platform that does everything under the sun may not be worth the cost if you don’t use most of the features.
Players don’t respond well to generic messaging. Your tools should have features to segment players into cohorts based on their behavior and demographic data. This will allow you to target your messaging to be relevant to individual players, making it more effective.
The player retention software you choose must be able to grow with your game. Consider factors such as how many simultaneous devices, users, campaigns, and notifications it can support.
A tool that isn’t available when you need to use it isn’t worth much. Read customer reviews and check to see what kind of support the software company offers. Make sure they have support hours during your regular operating hours.
Consider how much you can afford to spend on software now and as your game grows. Many tools offer different plans for different-sized games.
Most games communicate with players through multiple channels, such as push notifications, in-game messages, texts, SMS, email, and social media. The software you choose should provide features to make it easier to coordinate messaging on all of the channels you use.
One of the surest ways to lose players is to suffer a breach of your customer data. Additionally, you must comply with state, federal, and global regulations for security and privacy practices to avoid legal issues. Make sure the tools you use don’t put your player data at risk.
The team at Sonamine can help you get the most out of your player retention software. We can work with whichever tools you use and even learn your custom tools. Contact us today to get started.
For a limited time until December 2024, Sonamine is offering a 60 day money back guarantee to OneSignal customers. Come experience the ease and simplicity of the First Time Spender Nudge package and watch your conversions soar.
For a limited time until December 2024, Sonamine is offering a 60 day money back guarantee to OneSignal customers. Come experience the ease and simplicity of the First Time Spender Nudge package and watch your conversions soar.
