Happy New Year! Now that festivities are wrapping up, it’s a great time to look at how the holiday season impacts your game, and what we might be able to do about it.
During the holiday season, it is completely normal for your game to experience drop off in daily active players. Something we hear a lot of at Teak is that there is often a belief that because people have time off during the holidays, they will play more. That is actually not the case for the vast majority of games - usually, people are spending time with family and friends, attending parties, or partaking in yearly traditions. All of this means less phone time, contrary to what you might believe.
In addition to this, it’s perfectly normal for game CRMs and other marketing teams to have time off during the holidays - this means that content in the game isn’t being as refreshed as much, and campaigns might be longer than usual with not as many daily events.
Combine that with the players playing less, and yes: drop off is very real and normal. In fact, at Teak, we’ve noticed that it’s not uncommon to see a holiday DAU drop-off of 3.5% or more. Sharing these insights with your team and managers can be illuminating and helpful when it comes to discussing strategy, especially since the preconceived notions can be incorrect.
So now the question becomes: how do you get players to come back after that holiday slump? How can we bring them back and restart their normal cadence?
Winter Cat brings good tidings and free coins for the new year!
Below are some of the tips we’ve seen work the best when it comes to the holidays specifically.
TIP #1: Save Their Streak 🔥🔥🔥
Usually, a player loses their streak when they don’t play for a day or few days. However, this holiday season, try instead letting your high value players, such as Core and VIP, keep their streaks even if they miss a day or two. We may suggest this even if they miss a full week - being able to bring players back will outweigh the downsides of offering them their streak again.
This will be hugely beneficial for the player and make them feel they are appreciated in your game. When a player loses their streak, they lose the motivation to keep playing and the momentum they’ve been building towards is lost. By letting them know their streak has been saved, you tell them you’re thinking of them first.
We would even suggest being explicit in the push notifications you send about this - you can even say something like “It’s been a while! Don’t worry, we saved your streak.” or “Come back in! We saved your streak for you.”
Teak makes it easy to create a unique audience of high value players who would love to receive this news.
TIP #2: Use Words Wisely 🤔
When it comes to reengagement content, it can be tempting to want to coax people back into your game with a little guilt tripping. Maybe you’re thinking of saying something like…”We’ve missed you, please come back and play” or “You haven’t tapped into the game in a while…”. Instead of the directness of calling out their lapse in play, try rewarding them with coins on top of the reminder to entice them back. This way, your notifications become less about begging and more about offering. Something like “What are up to after the holidays? Here are some extra coins on us!”
Remember, the holidays are a time when people are bombarded with a large amount of emails, notifications, and more from multiple stores and media outlets. Become the notification they’re excited to see instead of just another in the noise.
In addition to no begging, we would suggest not getting too specific when it comes to the wording of notifications. Refrain from acknowledging or referring to the holidays as a “break” or talking about “going back to work”. So many people who play these games may be people who don’t necessarily work in an office environment. Some may even not have had quite a break during the holidays if they were busy with family obligations or even seasonal work. Focus instead of acknowledging that the holidays are concluded and you’re excited to hopefully bring them back for some play.
TIP #3: Keep the Same Notification Cadence 📅
You might be tempted after the holidays to ramp up notifications in an attempt to bring people back. However, resist that urge and instead keep a fairly regular cadence for each lifecycle. Ensure the content is fresh and engaging, but don’t overwhelm people.
However, we would increase rewards on the notifications being sent across the board, especially for core and lapsed audiences - as much as you and your team are comfortable!
TIP #4: Potentially, Create a New Audience 📣
Putting it simply, the number one goal in this time period after the holidays is to bring back Core players who have moved into Lapsed, not necessarily bring back all lapsed players. For this reason, you may want to create a new audience that combines your core players with your recently lapsed (in the last 3 to 7 days) so that you are still addressing your mainly core players, but keeping them separate from the longer lapsed players.
It might even be worth it to put specific dates on this audience and play times. Teak makes it easy to create an audience by date, so you can really segment out who was active just before the holidays. For example, you could create an audience of players who had at least five sessions between December 10th and December 20th. This creates a new audience of people who were active leading up until the holidays then fell off. You could even have an audience of players who played in the last 30 to 20 days but did play in the last 20 to zero days. On top of that, you can layer on their lifetime value and spend in your game to ensure you are really targeting those high value players you especially want to bring back.
A fresh audience can help you target those players who normally are active but just succumbed to the business of the holidays.
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Bringing players back after the holidays is no easy task, and it should be given proper attention and strategy. We hope the tips above were helpful! And we’re curious to know - anything you’ve seen that works particularly well? Or a learning you were surprised by?
Reach out with any questions! We are here to help.
Erica + Teak Team