Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit attendees have been listening to an industry panel discuss and debate the power of cross-promotion.
The panel began, rather sensibly, by discussing what cross-promotion is and why it's important.
"The app stores are made to churn," began Machine Zone co-founder and CEO Gabriel Leydon.
"The OS providers want users to download new apps every day, so basically the App Store is your friend but also your worst enemy."
"So cross-promotion is just a way of retaining players, because those are the people that actually like your games."
Treading softly
The panel encountered some differences of opinion when it came to exactly how developers should cross-promote to their users, though.
Brendan Burke, head of player science at digital marketing platform Playnomics, urged caution.
"You don't want paid users in your cross-promotion pool," he stressed, emphasising that developers should analyse their playerbase carefully to ensure they're only cross-promoting to lapsed users and non-paid players.
Similarly, Swrve marketing director Tom Farrell recommended a data-driven approach, informed by an understanding of the player lifecycle.
Something to shout about
Machine Zone's Leydon, however, felt that developers would be best served by a "sledgehammer approach" to cross-promotion.
"It's really important to get it out there as clearly as possible," Leydon explained, referring specifically to developers looking to cross-promote their own users into other games in their own portfolio.
"There's no point in saying cross-promotion is a bad user experience everyone's looking for new games, so you should definitely be aggressive about it.
"Unless you're coming out with apps every day, by the time you launch a new app, your existing game will only have real users left anyway, so you'd be surprised how effective you can be with a sledgehammer approach."
News
Related Articles
News
Nov 15th, 2012
Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit 2012: The golden age of low-cost user acquisition is over
Top Stories
News
7 hours, 13 minutes ago
Supercell’s Squad Busters ranks No. 1 for App Store game downloads in all soft launch countries
Feature
Apr 23rd, 2024
King’s Trevor Burrows on the power of art: "We could see our numbers literally dropping"
Feature
Apr 22nd, 2024
Tjodolf Sommestad talks AI, tips for indie devs, and a day in the life of King's president
Events
App Promotion Summit London | Europe | Apr 25th |
Esports Future Summit | Middle East | Apr 27th |
Dubai GameExpo Summit 2024 | Middle East | May 1st |
The MENA Games Industry Awards 2024 | Middle East | May 2nd |
GameDev Atlantic 2024 | May 4th | |
Mobidictum Meetup Berlin May 2024 | Europe | May 7th |
Mobidictum Meetup Tallinn May 2024 | Europe | May 21st |
Israel Mobile Summit 2024 | Middle East | Jun 6th |
Popular Stories
News
Apr 17th, 2024
Monopoly GO! celebrates its first birthday and shares its behind-the-scenes story
News
Apr 23rd, 2024