Overview
The global online gaming market generates more than $20 billion (US) per year. With a billion gamers worldwide, it’s no wonder online gaming is growing double digits every year. And it’s attracting all generations—81% of GenZ, 77% of millennials, 60% of GenX and 42% of Boomers are into games.
Similar to the motion picture industry, most gaming brands follow a traditional marketing formula based on an event—blast a campaign to the masses when a new release or title is ready, and hope for the best. Sure, it retains the existing base and gains some new followers, but what about the other 364 days of the year? It does nothing to truly build loyalty, create opportunities for downloadable content (DLC) and offer perks to high-valued customers.
That’s why a leading global game developer turned to Treasure Data, a leading Customer Data Platform and Leverage Lab, a strategic first-party data activation partner to collect, grow, and leverage its first-party data.
Objective
Our client was keen on extending the crescendo of new title launches while establishing more direct relationships with buyers of its games. It had the data. It needed to get value from the data, shift to an “always on” personalization at scale marketing strategy and drive business outcomes.
“We were ready to take our first-party data to another level and go beyond what the industry is accustomed to when releasing games,” said the senior analytics manager. “Our dream was to leverage our valuable data in new ways to gain more followers and grow our existing base.”
Gaining clear insights from the data would allow the client to strengthen loyalty, identify opportunities for more DLC and offer perks to the right customer, at the right time in the right channel.
Challenge
Over the years, the brand collected a tremendous amount of valuable first-party data from its users, including data from web visitors, Microsoft Xbox purchases, emails and newsletters, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, DSP clicks, and more. Unfortunately, this data was highly siloed and stored across more than a dozen disparate systems. And, gaining routine access to Microsoft’s Xbox data points in a usable format would be a boss-level battle. To help the client develop a more robust audience journey strategy, the Leverage Lab team knew that it had to break through the challenges and find a way to harness the valuable insights within the data.
Strategy
The team found plenty of untapped opportunities during the Leverage Lab discovery phase. Based on its proprietary Infinite Customer Journey approach, Leverage Lab envisioned an “always-on” marketing engine that supported scheduled releases while building a deeper connection with gamers at each stage of their journey. After use cases were solidified with the client, a foundation for a trackable customer journey was established. The team at Leverage Lab formed strategies for each stage—to take anonymous visitors to known visitors, first-time buyers to routine buyers, grow subscription-based accounts, and build more passionate fans.
The Treasure Data Customer Data Platform has the ability to take IP addresses from website visitors and match them to various sources of gaming data, including third-party sites. The software platform allows for the segmentation of audiences based on a variety of factors. Leverage Lab set up automatic tags on users with high-purchase intent signals, and captured web events that indicate high-purchase intent signals and gaming system affinity.
Leverage Lab and Treasure Data helped the client level up its marketing game with deeper insights from all the valuable first-party data. Data now included pre-release interest, the specific console the audience plays on, other titles purchased, preferred language, and affinity toward purchased, downloaded content.
Now the team could build high-value audience segments, form lookalike audiences, suppress and geo-target to cross-sell other games, and upsell high-propensity audiences to scale up the client’s new customer acquisition strategies.
Impact
Leverage Lab took all that knowledge gained and put it to use through activations and gaining new connections. Touchpoints were enhanced and tailored to the audience along the entire customer journey. From Facebook to The Trade Desk, SalesForce Marketing Cloud to Google Ads, the “always-on” engine was working.
“Leverage Lab brought a new level of technical and creative thinking that helped us get over several hurdles,” claims the senior analytics manager. “They listened to us, provided sound advice and explained the rationale to our team comprised of technical and non-technical people.”
Stakeholders are being empowered to better leverage data. The Leverage Lab team conducted training for the client and its ad agency on ways to leverage the data and provided a script on ways to build on an Infinite Customer Journey. “The documentation was extremely valuable and will help us well into the future,” said the senior analytics manager. “They even made the hard work fun along the way.”
And, it’s paying off. The client realized an immediate boost in return on ad spend, a whopping 65% improvement. CPC went from .80 to .29. The client has the chops for any street fight that comes its way, and the groundwork is set for even more results this year.
“Leverage Lab and Treasure Data are an answer to my dreams,” said the senior analytics manager.
