Personalizing rewards is an important aspect of rewarded messaging in games. And when it comes to rewarding, there is no group more important than your VIP players. Given what VIPs put into our games, it’s crucial that we make sure they feel valued.
Rewarded messaging is any push notification you send players that contains a reward - whether that is free coins, spins, or any bonus your players would appreciate. Today, we’re going to get into how to use Teak in a way that makes rewarding your top players easy to set up, as well as some of the strategic aspects you’ll need to consider.
Before we can start, you must first define which players should be considered VIP. If your game has an existing tier structure that is utilized in the game, that can be utilized to select an audience of your top players. If your game doesn’t have that structure in place, Teak can help you define tiers based on metrics like frequency of play, time spent in the game, and amount spent in the game.
Typically, your VIPs will be your players who are part of your Core audience with the added layer that they are spending money in your game. If you need somewhere to get started, we recommend using your top 10% of spenders in the past month as your initial VIP group.
Your game’s VIPs as depicted by George Barbier (Au Revoir, 1920)
Once you’ve established your VIP groups, you want to start determining how much to give them. At Teak, we do not have a specific amount that is “right” to give, but we do recommend using your standard reward calculations and going up from there. Talk to your team about what they are comfortable giving out, but keep in mind that since these are your top players, a significant amount can be appropriate here. Think of them the same way a casino might think of their “high rollers”, a group of players who often receive free event tickets, comped meals and even rooms. You want to treat your top players similarly, but in your game. Consider doubling or even tripling the base reward, depending on what that base is.
Another important aspect of rewarding VIPs is cadence. Your VIPs are more likely to come back and play often, so you can take a few more risks when it comes to sending them daily bonuses. They can have their own messaging cadence that is more frequent and employs more direct language that applies specifically to them. Overall, your VIPs should be receiving at least one VIP exclusive message and reward a week, on top of the messaging cadence for their place in the player lifecycle. This doesn’t mean spamming is a good idea - since they are already in your game frequently, you don’t need to push them too much. Instead, focus on the quality of the messaging and the timing. For example, a great time for your pushes to go out to your VIPs could be if they miss their window of play. Or, create a notification that gives them a bonus just in time for the window in which they normally play.
There is a powerful ability hidden behind this tiny button.
The last thing we’d love to touch on is Teak’s Tiered Rewards feature to manage the complexity of this strategy. One of the benefits of using Teak to manage your reward giving is you have the ability to give different rewards to different audience tiers. This means, you can send one message to a broad audience, but the attached reward can change based on sub audiences layered on top. This way, each audience receives an appropriate amount of free coins or spins - and you avoid a situation where, for example, a VIP receives a push with a very low amount of coins for the amount of gameplay they engage in. Ensuring your VIPs are getting appropriate rewards can more than double their response rates.
The best advice overall when it comes to rewarding VIPs is to use the tiers to ensure your VIPs are getting a good amount of currency or rewarded items. We also recommend testing and learning using Teak’s A/B testing feature - don’t be afraid to try new things with your VIPs. They are your most loyal players and you can take a couple more risks with them - as long as you always reward them well and often.
Any other specific questions about VIPs or Tiered Rewards? We’d love to hear them!
Until next time,
Erica