Just 1% of players of a social game will generate 30% of its revenue.

The statistic comes from a report by marketing firm Optimove. It studied the habits of 235 customers over 18 months of playing social games to determine six personas of players.

The first persona is the New Non-Spender – players who have registered in the last 14 days but not made a payment.

Optimove found that only 24% of new players to social games will make a purchase on the first day, while 44% of users will wait over a week before making purchase. A further 24% will wait for four weeks or longer.

Hey, new spender

A user who makes a purchase becomes a New Spender. 39% of these users who make a second payment will make another purchase within a day of their first, and 64% will make another purchase within a week of the previous one.

However, Optimove found that overall, if a player has made one purchase, there is just a 0.8% chance of them spending again. That said, the more purchases a player makes, the more likely they are to spend again.

Players who do spend again become Active Spenders. These are the users developers should be looking to nurture. 75% of a game's revenue will be brought in by 10% of players, and 55% will be generated by just 5% of players.

Optimove also outlined three more personas – the Churn Spender, who has spent but churned from the game, the Reactivated Spender, who returns after a churn, and the Active Non-Spender, who were previously Spenders that still regularly play the game but have not made a purchase in the last 21 days.