Customer acquisition / oriented publishing technique has been a growing trend in the mobile app space and understanding how to re-convert your customer is a science product managers and designers are required to understand if they were to adopt this strategy.
This post discusses the different conversion strategies you should consider when planning out your conversion strategy.
Customer Creation
Customer creation is the act of making a f2p user into a paid customer. Customer creation strategy differs from Re-conversion strategy. This is because the expectations and the design mechanics that trigger a f2p user is different from how a customer is willing to re engage in the payment process again.
Let’s take a look at some effective customer creation strategies.
Starter Pack
Limited Time Bundles
1 Time Value Added Bundles
These are very common strategies in converting players, but more importantly that the above bundles the main decision for players to convert into a customer is:
Onboarding Process
Gameplay experience.
If the first time user experience (FTUE) is informative and fun and the first impression of the gameplay is positive the effectiveness of the above bundle offerings will be extremely effective as the value prop for the purchase is motivated by further increasing the fun factor of the game.
Therefore when creating the content in these bundles it’s important that you focus on the products that enrich their experience versus other monetization mechanics, for example, purchasing time.
Digging a bit deeper in the content portion of this section, you will be more successful converting users that unlock new weapons or higher rarity characters in your game than creating a bundle that just contains hard currency and energy. This is because of the intuitive factor. Players will understand the value of a weapon or character versus the value added deal in any currency in your game as they currently do not know the economic model of your game.
Re-conversion Strategies
Re-converting a customer is an entirely different model that a designer is required to attack. These are your loyal customers that understand the economics of your game and constantly look for exploits in the game to expedite their progression. Re-converting your customer base will mostly be the core of your business as your customer base will essentially be covering 95% of your expenses.
It’s important that you let this sink in as the 5% of your player base will be paying for 80% and up of your monthly revenue. This is why your re-conversion strategy is very important to execute. Without a strong re-conversion strategy you’ll be relying on a volume user acquisition strategy to support the product. Which is common with what you see in the hyper casual space.
With that said. re-conversion strategies focus more on purchasing time or power
Re-converting with Time.
Time is a rather broad stroke to pitch but based on your game, and if your game was a power scaled type game, then you’ll have to see where Time can be sold, and below are a few areas where you can create time value added bundles.
Energy
Event Energy
Upgrade Resources
Re-converting with Content
New content
Value added Hard Currency Deals.
The core motivation mechanic behind re-converting your customers has to lean solely on your core loop. This will help make the decision on how to monetize your product.
For example,
PVE
if your game is a PVE rpg game than the core primary loop is to clear as many and as far as a level as you can. What that means is you are selling power for players to grind. Providing expedited ways to progress faster in their journey will yield higher conversion.
PVP
If your game is a PVP game you are selling braggin rights and a fair 2 play concept, during the progression or at end game. Either or providing bundles that allows players get to end game faster to participate in the PVP fairly will be a your main objective to re-convert players.
Another common strategy that is seen in the PVP space is selling vanity items and focusing on cosmetics to re-convert the players on a seasonal basis. See Battle pass post on how this is done.
All in all, the market will continue to get saturated as the cost to acquire a customer is getting up into the $40 range. Fine tuning your customer creation strategy along with your re-conversion strategy will really make the difference between your product succeed or failing.
Good luck