Mobile Game Engagement

Mobile gaming has driven the rapid growth of the world video gaming market, boosting game engagement with smartphone games accounting for almost 50% of the video gaming revenue worldwide. Last year, the mobile gaming revenue in the US reached 10.73 billion dollars, while also seeing a surge in mobile gaming users in the midst of the pandemic. As this industry continues to grow and thrive, it is essential to have healthy user engagement strategies when it comes to users. In order to convert free tier users to paid users, you will need to identify their needs and interests at all points of engagement. With the mobile gaming industry expected to surpass 100 billion dollars in revenue by 2023, it is essential that you adopt game engagement strategies to keep your users engaged, and set them on a path to being a loyal customer.

Here are five strategies that you can adopt to increase your user game engagement on your mobile gaming platform, setting your users up for a long term, loyal relationship with your product. 

1. Onboarding: As with any platform or product, the introduction is a make or break opportunity. This onboarding phase is when all users are at the highest risk of churn. The average app loses 77% of daily active users within the first three days of installation, so it is integral that you do everything in your power to onboard the user with ease, and attention. A few key strategies that you can introduce in the onboarding process include:

• Send an automated push notification welcoming them to the platform 
• Include tutorials during the onboarding process. This can include walking the user through the game's features.  
• Offer free incentives in app, such as    in-game currency.
• Watch the levels of engagement. If you see the user churning at a certain point of the onboarding process, a push notification can bring them back . Try offering an incentive to do so. 

Habit building reminds your users to keep playing, so it is important to incentivize them to use  the app more and on a frequent basis while reducing churn. 

2. Add Notifications: When you have perfected the onboarding process and inspired habit app usage in your user, it is important to keep your eye on your users and their level of engagement. A mobile push notification and an email notification (with unsubscribe options) are one of the most effective ways to increase engagement, and peak the interest of your users. These push notifications can include:

• Reminders to open the app at a specific time each day, better known as adaptive scheduling. 
• Send notifications to invite users back into the app. 
• Invite users to share their high scores. Adding an easy share feature is a great way to do this. 
• Offer a deal. Offer an extra life, tool  or in game currency.

3. Use   Milestones: Milestones are a great way to keep users motivated in an app. Milestones can be high scores, level achievement, or level completion.  These milestones are  great motivators for your users. These milestones are an opportunity for you to reward users with an in app message with opportunities to obtain more tools or new skills, while also congratulating them. 

4. Churn: We have shared a lot about churn on our blog, and as we discussed, understanding churn and user engagement is as vital to your success as developing a strategy to beat churn, and get ahead of it. Essentially, this means focussing on at users that are at risk of  dropping off the platform. There are various ways in which you can work to bring them back including: 

• Offer discounts  or bonus content
• Offer in game currency, additional tools or access to codes 
• Invite feedback. You can ask for feedback in exchange for any of the offerings above.

5.Conversion: In many occasions the end goal for your product should be to convert the free tier players into loyal, paying users. There are two ways in which you can achieve this: 

• Small Purchases 
• Subscriptions
  
  

Push notifications are again, another great way to convert users to make purchases such as in-game currency, avatar customizations or of course, inviting them to subscribe to a premium tier. The popular game Fortnite, does this flawlessly. Fortnite offers players a “Battle Pass” subscription where users can buy in-game currency, unlock access for premium gaming modes, avatars and other premium features.

A well planned strategy of a personalised, milestone user engagement will have the users feeling like they are making progress, and moving forward in their game experience, and inspire them to play more frequently.

Our predictive analytics can help you pinpoint the moment of churn, while providing insight into the optimal point of engagement. We can help you retain users, while also increasing game engagement on the platform. Connect with us to find out more.