ABOUT CLAIRE: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website | Product Madness




ABOUT ROCKETSHIP HQ: Website | LinkedIn  | Twitter | YouTube

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

⏫ User LTV can always be extended.

🔑 Key strategies to extend LTV.

🔔 The impact a push notification can have.

⛩️ Why UA and CRM should not be siloed.

📛 It is so important to use personalisation to connect with users

🔱 Three things to get right: timing, frequency and message.

🎇 The key types of live ops events.

🙋 The best way to understand what users want? Ask them!

🧩 Why user segments are crucial for crafting great experiences.

🎭 Incentives can be a double-edged sword. Striking a balance can be tricky.

🤭 Common mistakes marketers make when organising live ops.

KEY QUOTES

Welcome pushes are important

I have seen, in the past, the huge differences between a user that didn’t have a welcome push, and the one that had one. I saw around 40% don’t come back, if they don’t have this notification.

App genre factors into notification frequency

If you are a news application for instance, 3-4 times a day is okay for push notifications. But if you are a game, once a day or less is really good. With news, you have something that is really important, because you want to be up to date. But sometimes, with a game, you just don’t want to come back because you’re busy and you have some other things to do. So to find the right time, the right moment, and also the right frequency. 

User segmentation is critical

It’s really important to segment with the view of who is in your application, for instance, or mature users who have spent in your application. Maybe you don’t want to put really big marketing pressure on a user who is already spending a lot. You don’t need to engage him. So depending on all these criteria, I think you really need to segment your strategy.

There are basic segments

So when you had an inactive user, you had to make them active without churn, which is like a maze, because if a user is inactive, they don’t always want to be active. But it’s really important, because since iOS 11, we all know that, if you have a dormant application, then iOS can delete your app automatically. It’s a feature. So the first thing to see is inactive players and active players; it’s the most simple thing to do. 

Rewards need to be finely balanced

You need to balance the advantage you give and what you already have in the game, because at the end of the day, if you give a lot of currency, it hurts the economy. And if you give nothing, it’s the opposite.

Mass messaging is risky

To speak about the mistake I saw – some apps just send, for instance, a push notification to the whole user base, which will be terrible, because we will have a huge churn and lose a lot of users. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Shamanth: I’m very excited to welcome Claire Rozain to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Claire, welcome to the show.

Claire: Hello Shamanth, thank you for inviting me. I’m really happy to be here and to speak with you today. I think we have some exciting topics, so I’m really happy to share thoughts on them.

Shamanth: Absolutely. You’ve been one of the people that’s very forward-thinking in the mobile space. And I’ve definitely followed a lot of your writing and inputs and talks. So definitely thrilled to have you here today, Claire. 

Today we’re going to talk about how apps can think about increasing the lifetime value of their users. So why is it important to think about this, because, as context, you work for social casino apps that already have very high lifetime value. So why is it important to think about, oh, how do we extend this even further?

Claire: So I think it’s really important because you don’t have a user just to have one purchase or one open. The lifecycle of your user is something really important to work on, in order to extend this LTV, what you get from the user. Because of course, you’ve got some whales, but you also have a lot of longtail users that are going to spend on a weekly basis and those users are also key. So I think it’s really important also to focus on these kinds of strategies where you actually work on your user experience. For instance, CRM, marketing automation, when you adapt your advertising, and push new features to those users and depend on what but always engage. So I think all those things are really important, and also the growth strategy can extend and make the funnel more optimised in this way. And so people can actually spend more on your product because they enjoy the content in the application.

Shamanth: Yeah, so you’re saying there is a natural lifetime, but that can be extended, if they enjoy the content more, if you put in the hooks to help them extend the lifetime value itself. So what are some of the key strategies that can be used to extend our users lifetime value further?

Claire: So, there are several different strategies. First, it’s very important to onboard your users the right way, whether, for instance, you send a push notification, or just welcome your user.

I have seen, in the past, the huge differences between a user that didn’t have a welcome push, and the one that had one. I saw around 40% don’t come back, if they don’t have this notification.

It’s huge, when you see it like that. 

Users can be really expensive, especially on social casino apps, so you really want your user to come back. So onboarding your user is really important. 

And sometimes if people have a bad first impression of your game when they open your application, after that they don’t come back. But if you re-engage them—I also think that it really needs to be personalised as best to onboard your user with the data you can get from them. For instance, my name is Claire. If an application says: “Hey Claire, would you mind coming back?” or they say: “Hey user, would you mind coming back?” I would prefer the first version than the second one; I would feel it was a bit robotic. So I think it’s important to personalise. 

Shamanth: Yeah.

Claire: I would say so design is really important. Use emojis when you speak to your consumer and also push what really interests the user. Really, segment your user based on what interests this user. If, for instance, you can ask the user what kind of information he is interested in, and then you can make several segments. This is actually really good to increase your CTR on each piece of content and even re-engage the user with the content he actually likes. 

But don’t over-push your user either, because even if you wanted him to come back, you don’t want him to just escape; not to make him churn, I would say.

If you are a news application for instance, 3-4 times a day is okay for push notifications. But if you are a game, once a day or less is really good. With news, you have something that is really important, because you want to be up to date. But sometimes, with a game, you just don’t want to come back because you’re busy and you have some other things to do. So to find the right time, the right moment, and also the right frequency. 

After all of that, be creative when you engage your user. With social casino apps, for instance, we are really lucky. We have a lot of really exciting live ops events. So, for instance, when we think of how we engage a user who has really enjoyed the game, he will more likely purchase a game he liked or even more so with a feature like live ops. He’s going to like it if he’s always playing because of the live ops event, for instance, and we are going to push it to him on social media. So I think all those things are really important. 

And if you really like your user, I think you had better ask your user in the application what he thinks about you, and how you can actually improve. So if you can push out a landing page with a survey or something like this, I think it’s also good to understand if your user actually likes your game, what he likes, and make the user evolve based on that.

Shamanth: Yeah, so there’s just a lot of possibilities, a lot of ideas. There’s a lot of things you can do to engage your existing users to really extend the lifetime value: just communication, live ops, all of the ideas that you talked about, just even the push notifications, itself can be huge.

Obviously, a lot of these require time, effort and resources. So how should a team evaluate putting resources behind extending the lifetime value through CRM or live ops or messaging, as opposed to user acquisition?

Claire: So, to me, I think it’s a tricky one, because we make people work in silos, like products CRM, and UA, where actually I think it should be all together. I began as a CRM manager, then I was a UA manager, and then growth manager, and I feel we should be really close. And we should all have the same resources. You don’t get a user just to get him to have a bad user experience. And if you have a huge UA team with no products behind or no sustainable product that you can enjoy, then is it really important to have users? I think it’s really important also to have product teams that can always innovate and have a big USP, because we know there is more and more competition. And if you don’t innovate in your product, if you don’t personalise the user experience, and if you don’t make it dynamic to the user, even if you get UA, and even increase the live ops events you’re doing to entertain your user, you’re not going to manage it. So I think each team needs the same thing: resources. And I think there is not any that is less important for the user.

Shamanth: Yeah, that’s a good point, in that in a lot of companies, UA and CRM can be siloed. And really, they need to be working hand in hand; they need to work closely together. 

Just to switch gears a bit. In live ops, what kinds of events have you found the most effective, and do these differ from app to app or genre to genre?

Claire: So I think live ops events are really the experience that is closer to the user. And what I saw performs really well is, for instance, all the seasonality that you can make with it. For instance, we have a game called Lightning Link. And we are doing a link-mas for December, which is a really exciting event where we can actually have different live ops and highly engaged users for 1-2 weeks. With this event, you play for incentives, but also can be even more in the events. And also you’re engaged because he’s not against the user. But you are always in competition with other players. So I think it’s entertaining. 

I think collectibles are also something that works a lot in social casino apps; everyone is doing it. And we just have one on our Cashman casino application. It’s a new season, and we are doing different seasons, where we have different themes which are really interesting. And for this one, you have a pinata game, you have some mini games. So it’s really great, because you can also expand your game thanks to these kinds of events, and still convert more people. 

Tournaments are working really well, because players are always wanting to compare themselves with others. So all of these actually make live ops really key, because this is how you boost your daily active user engagement, your revenue, and this is also where you have the opportunity to add more placements for ad monetization, and to make the best value you can get.

Shamanth: Yeah, just even within events and live ops, it sounds like there’s a lot of very different kinds of events you can have. I know you spoke about this in the context of social casino, but I’m sure a lot of these can be adapted to different genres just as well. 

So with the live ops, let’s just say there’s a tournament or you have collectibles, do you typically have users at different experience levels or different kinds of users or different segments of users? Does everybody see the same thing? Do you find it helpful to segment them? What are some of the ways in which it’s helpful to think about segmenting users for live ops events that you have found effective?

Claire: Yes, for instance, we all have different kinds of users. Some users will take value from my ads, for instance, and some users from enough IAPs or purchases. So the different segmentation we do is we say to a user, for instance that didn’t pay: “Do you want to continue to play and if yes, let’s watch, for instance, one ad.” and from this, we are doing some segmentation. 

We also have different targeting options, of course, depending on the location, the OS, as a source of installs, purchase intent in the game, the product view, device, if it’s a new, old user, a dominant user, engaged user. It’s really important when we engage the user to always segment in the best way to give a personalised user experience. And you can’t mix one time user with a engaged user; or people that install your application for ages, for instance, and those who installed it yesterday. 

So I think

it’s really important to segment with the view of who is in your application, for instance, or mature users who have spent in your application. Maybe you don’t want to put really big marketing pressure on a user who is already spending a lot. You don’t need to engage him. So depending on all these criteria, I think you really need to segment your strategy.

Shamanth: Yeah. Are there specific kinds of events that appeal more to, let’s just say, new users, or less experienced users? And are there specific kinds of events that appeal more to more experienced users? Or how would you recommend thinking about that?

Claire: So in my last company: active user and inactive user.

So when you had an inactive user, you had to make them active without churn, which is like a maze, because if a user is inactive, they don’t always want to be active. But it’s really important, because since iOS 11, we all know that, if you have a dormant application, then iOS can delete your app automatically. It’s a feature. So the first thing to see is inactive players and active players; it’s the most simple thing to do. 

An active player maybe is more invested in live ops events, and on all that is shining. But also with respect to the pressure, because if a user connected yesterday, maybe doesn’t want a push today. You will need to adapt to what is practical. And with the inactive user, for instance, find some incentive to make them come back. Like, for instance, if I bought a pair of shoes, and it is in my car, I just quit the application, I would love to have a promo code or something tonight. At this time, it’s the right time to engage your user.

Shamanth: That makes a lot of sense. And just speaking of incentives, how should marketers be thinking about incentives during live ops? Because I would think there is a risk that if you give incentives, some people might be put off, some people might say: “Oh, I want these free coins. I will come back.” So how do you recommend thinking about incentives in live ops?

Claire: In social casino, it’s a real game economy. So

you need to balance the advantage you give and what you already have in the game, because at the end of the day, if you give a lot of currency, it hurts the economy. And if you give nothing, and if it’s the opposite, the same.

So with scientific games, you really need to work closely and follow all the rewards that you give and to adapt it also to the seasonality. For instance, if you have a live ops event, you need to adjust to the promo code you’re giving them for engagement. Because you know it can be the double card so it won’t be benefiting. And same for instance, if you watch rewarded video, if you have this placement in your game, and at the same time you’ve a live ops event as well, that gives you a lot of rewards. But you need both teams to communicate and to see that it’s not overlapping. Because at the end of the day, sometimes when you do too much, it’s the worst thing to do.

Shamanth: Yeah, yeah. And also if a user just becomes used to getting freebies, they don’t value actually playing the game so much either.

Claire: Yeah, absolutely. And naturally, social casino games are tricky ones because you’re not winning real money. So you need to see value in those coins to pay for it. And I think it’s the same for all games. People play games and say: “I’m entertained and I will pay.” And so to pay, for instance, in app purchases, like they can say: “I paid but I didn’t earn enough.” Then they don’t pay. They just go on social media and text the world, and then wake up the next day. So you need a really high quality game. And you also need to balance the value you give to your consumer with coins.

Shamanth: Yeah, that’s a good point. They shouldn’t just take the reward, go away, come back the next day, take the reward, go away. They could just keep doing that. I think that’s intrinsically appealing, right? Because they should come back and just continue to engage in the game itself.

Claire: Yeah, I think the user is really the key; you need to entertain the user. And so you need a proper USP. And I think that’s why people come back. It is the same with dating. People come back because, thanks to the dating apps, they met someone with whom they’re having a good conversation. It’s not just to get a user, and then it stops, and you just shoot some ads or something maybe. You need to solve a personal marketing problem. And this project is here for this.

Shamanth: Yeah, that is so insightful. And I think it goes beyond what a lot of people just think about UA being just in terms of media buying, right? It’s not and I think you need to solve somebody’s personal marketing problem, like you said. 

So with live ops specifically; when you’re looking at building a system or a process for live ops, what might be some of the common mistakes that marketers make while executing this?

Claire: So I think just to react to what you said. I read something last night, and I thought it was so true about media buying. You can’t judge a performance of someone in UA according to the ROAS he has. And I think it’s really important to underline this. And it’s really good that we’re doing this kind of podcast so we can underline that. 

Even if you’re the best UA manager, if you don’t have a proper USP in your game to make your user purchase, you are never going to have any revenue. So I think it’s good to also share this thought because a lot of people begin and end depending on their ROAS, more or less good, which is not always the case. 

But

to speak about the mistake I saw; it’s basically a static onboarding so someone has not done what we can set them up to do with segmentation. And we’ll just send, for instance, a push notification to the whole user base, which will be terrible, because we will have a huge churn and lose a lot of users.

So I think it’s really important to do onboarding. And adapt it, but make it dynamic for each user. And depending on all the user reactions: 3, 5, 7 you change it. 

I think no personalization as well is a mistake. It’s kind of strange, but when it’s integrated, like a message, it should be like when my friend sends me a message: at least they know my name. It may be terrible, because at the end of the day, it’s addressed by speaking to customers, but I want to be considerate. So yeah, I would say don’t spam the user. 

And if you begin with your application, I would say maybe try some solution, like Batch, for instance, that is really dynamic. And don’t use your in-house CRM because sometimes it can make your integration really hard and it can make the process also really hard. It’s not something that is supposed to be really complicated. I remember I worked on Accengage for a bit in the past and I just had to click on the button. So if I think something is the solution? The best thing for you to do is focus on all of this marketing automation.

Shamanth: Yeah, definitely. I think there’s pitfalls, but there’s definitely opportunities. And like you said, even for high LTV apps like social casino apps, it can be so critical to use live ops and push notifications really to extend the lifetime value. 

Claire, this has been very insightful. I’ve certainly taken a lot of ideas from you today. And this is perhaps a good place for us to start to wrap up. But before we do that, can you tell our listeners how they can find out more about you and everything you do?

Claire: You can find me on my website, on Linkedin, on Twitter. Don’t hesitate to reach me; I will be happy to chat.

Shamanth: Excellent. We will link to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Claire for being on the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Claire: Thank you Shamanth!

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!