by Game Marketing Genie, on 30-Jul-2020 11:09:09
As a gaming studio, you’ve got a lot of options for reaching your players. Most of the old methods like TV ads don’t work as well anymore, but email marketing is still widely used. Why? Because it has defied the odds to continue providing brands with an array of benefits such as building trust and generating some of the highest ROIs out of any marketing channel available.
If you’re looking to learn the strategies that will make your email channel vibrant and customer-centric for years to come, then this blog post is for you. We’ll go over this and more to help you understand the value of email in your game marketing strategies and which tools are available for you to make your campaigns a success.
Are opinions on email marketing now difficult to what they once were?
The first ever email marketing blast got $13 million in revenue, but does that still hold up today? It’s strange to refer to any form of digital marketing as old school, but email marketing qualifies for that tag nowadays. The first mass email campaign was conducted in 1978, and this makes email marketing older than most marketing methods. A campaign in which Digital Equipment Corp. sent emails to 400 recipients set the bar high for marketing ROI since the campaign is reported to have generated about $13 million in sales.
Since then, a lot has changed in the email marketing world with the evolution of the internet providing the right conditions for email to explode. New channels and platforms for advertisers to reach their customers (video, mobile, social, digital display, etc.) have also come up, but email has remained an effective and hugely popular marketing medium.
With billions of emails sent each day and the ROI for email higher than other marketing channels, it's no wonder people still count on email to reach current and prospective customers. Marketing experts believe that the best place to set up an ad is where vast numbers of your audience exist, and this makes email marketing great for reaching out to a lot of interested users.
So, does email marketing still work?
The short answer is yes. For starters, almost everyone uses email. With more than 4 billion people able to access the internet worldwide as of 2019, it’s now common - and sometimes even necessary - for people to have an email address. Some people manage multiple email addresses with one used for personal items (social media and bills), one for work/business, and another for mailing lists.
An email address is also required to perform many things online, such as online shopping, and online banking, so almost everyone who can access the internet has a valid email address. People are also very much attached to their emails. 99 percent of those who own email addresses check them every day. Some even check their email more than 20 times a day, with mobile devices making it easy to do so. Further, 58 percent of internet users say that email is their first check of the day.
Figure 1: First check priorities. Source: Optinmonster
These statistics show that irrespective of the people you are targeting with your game/s and their location, email remains one of the best ways to reach your players - both potential and existing!
Why is does it still work?
Data from Statista shows that more than 3.9 billion people use email worldwide. That’s more than social media, and this shows just how effective email can be when marketers need to reach potentially huge audiences. The effectiveness of email marketing has also been aided by the fact that users are now able to access email from their mobile devices. With mobile phones surpassing desktop computers as the most popular devices for internet browsing and email activity, marketers went ahead to optimize their emails for mobile.
Figure 2: Mobile traffic increase over last seven years. Source: Broadband Search
It is now easy to reach mobile customers, and this has resulted in higher email open rates, mirroring the mobile shift across the digital marketing space. Customers now enjoy emails optimized for mobile viewing, and this has gone a long way to improve the CTR and move prospects further down the sales funnel.
Email marketing is also useful for helping customers stay connected. Those who want to get notified about upcoming promotions and game launches can do so by signing up to receive branded emails. Automated workflows allow your studio to keep the conversation going and respond to user concerns by directing prospects to the resources that have the information they need.
Another thing that makes email marketing an effective channel for promotion is the fact that it allows marketers to make the most of personalization. Forbes shows that 90 percent of a brand’s audience prefers personalized content, and this makes personalization the cornerstone of the best-performing marketing campaigns. The content should not just feature their names and other personal information, but also capture the browsing and buying habits.
Email marketing makes it possible to send personalized communication to prospects through segmentation. Through segmented lists, marketers can group similar prospects together, thus making it easy to create customized campaigns. Throw in personal touches like usernames, and you have content that makes recipients feel like they are the primary focus of your studio.
The effectiveness of email marketing is also highlighted by the fact that it allows companies to share bargains and coupons and for customers to make in-store purchases. Campaigns of this nature function as a one-click sales tool where users can populate their payment details and confirm the purchase of one of the promoted products.
Best of all, it’s reasonably cheap. With an ROI of 4400 percent, every dollar spent on email marketing has the potential to generate $44 in returns. This shows that email marketing delivers and why it’s a hit with marketers.
Making email work for your game studio
Email marketing, when managed correctly, is one of the best ways to reach your players, entice them with your game/s, and improve customer loyalty. Unless you’re experienced in this field, you should work with an gaming marketing agency for your campaigns.
Here are some of the email marketing tips agencies recommend for growing your video game online.
Understand your goals
To make email marketing work for you, you first of all have to set clearly defined goals. Knowing your goals will make it easy for you to structure your campaigns. You will know which tools to use to achieve your targets and the type of content to share with your subscribers.
You can use email campaigns to create awareness about your game, encourage users to take action (spawning conversions), offer upselling and cross-selling opportunities, or collect user reviews. You need specific strategies and content formats to achieve each of these goals effectively, and knowing what you are working to achieve early on will help you know which resources to get for the campaigns.
Understand your players
Your campaign should be tailored to meet the needs of the people you are targeting. Audience research will help you understand the special characteristics of your target users and how to reach them effectively.
Start by creating buyer personas for your ideal customer. Make sure to capture vital information such as the age, location, and buying habits of your target users. If you’re targeting people with different characteristics and interests, you will have to segment your audience to ensure you are reaching each group with the right content and at the right time.
Gaming studios that embrace customer-centricity and create personal and relevant content for their audience groups will see their email marketing returns increase while those that resist it will get shut out of the customer’s inbox.
Make your content engaging
To make subscribers read everything contained in your emails and proceed to take further action, you should make sure that you create content that appeals to them. With clients leading increasingly busy lives, opt for a minimalistic style that prioritizes quality over quantity. Make sure your content is mobile friendly to allow recipients to access the emails on the go. Work with copywriters and design specialists to give your content an edge that will encourage email opens and boost the CTR.
Automate tedious processes
It may not be possible to maintain one-to-one conversations with prospects, and that is why you need to automate your email campaigns. Automation allows you to deliver specific actions based on particular client behavior. It ensures that prospects receive the right information at the right time, thus simplifying your lead nurturing process.
Personalize your copy
Personalization should be a key component of your game marketing strategy overall, but also your emails for two reasons. First, it is because it’s very effective. Personalized emails have a 6x transaction rate than other marketing emails, according to a study by Business2Community. Recipients prefer emails customized with their individual data like their names, buying, and browsing habits.
Second, it’s easy to implement. There are tools for collecting vital customer data and incorporating it into your emails. This gives your emails communication a personal touch and helps you establish personal connections with your subscribers.
Track and analyze your results
You should continuously analyze and track your campaigns to identify the areas that need improvement. With time, simple adjustments to your email content – based on past performance – will help you drive more clicks, downloads, and signups.
Making your email stand out in a wave of competitor promotions is difficult. You don’t want to be marked as spam, and you still need your emails to be clicked into.
Game Marketing Genie can help you make a strong email marketing strategy that will make you stand out from the clutter. Our game marketing agency has what it takes to create email campaigns that are personalized to your demographic and support your current marketing efforts.
Need more info? Let's chat today about how we can unlock your game's potential.
