💎 Growth Gems #72 - Influencer Marketing, Lifecycle and UA
Hi!
This week I’m sharing gems on:
These insights come from Matej Lancaric, Robert Skrob, Marion Balinoff, Lukasz Baranowski and Marcin Smajek.
Enjoy!
🥇 TOP GEM OF THE WEEK
User acquisition: soft launch
In Growth Gems #69, I shared some gems from an episode of two & a half gamers by Matej Lancaric (UA & Marketing Consultant), Felix Braberg (Director of Ad Monetization at N3TWORK) and Jakub Remiar (Head of Monetization at Traplight).
Here are a few more from an episode focused on UA: Can UA save your game? Does your game need UA? UA for beginners.
💎 Different creatives have different retention profiles. Example: fake ads with low CPI but also low retention rates.
Matej Lancaric (UA & Marketing Consultant)
at 26:58
💎 When you soft launch and you’re looking at retention metrics, always use multiple sources because they might bring very different traffic (especially if you’re optimizing for app installs). Example: Google download optimization always brings traffic that’s below benchmark.
Matej Lancaric (UA & Marketing Consultant)
at 30:17
💎 Using proxy events for purchases to optimize your campaigns looks amazing on paper, but in reality it doesn’t work because you get different types of players. Example: optimizing for level 25 because there’s correlation between level 25 and purchase might just bring the types of users that reach level 25 (and don’t pay). However, it’s a very good exercise to try and learn from.
Matej Lancaric (UA & Marketing Consultant)
at 32:33
💎 You need to be in soft launch for 3 to 6 months so you can get more retention data. Then try to extrapolate from this for what you’ll see in the global launch. Global launch retention will be closer to the late soft launch retention, assuming there are not too many game/monetization changes.
Matej Lancaric (UA & Marketing Consultant)
at 37:28
💎 Purchase campaigns can have a longer payback period while Ad ROAS campaigns can have shorter payback periods (even D7/D14).
Matej Lancaric (UA & Marketing Consultant)
at 39:50
Lifecycle: welcome emails sequence
Whether it’s for a subscription app or a subscription to a box, there are commonalities when it comes to subscriber churn.
Robert Skrob (President at Be Unleavable, Inc. and author of Retention Point) shares his onboarding emails template in 7 Days of Onboarding Emails to Increase Retention.
A very different format to what I’m used to, but an interesting framework for anyone looking to come up with their welcome emails sequence!
💎 It’s vital to focus on the time period of the first 7 days, the first 4 weeks and the first 3 months. Those are the biggest opportunities to lower your churn rate.
Robert Skrob (President at Be Unleavable, Inc.)
at 01:10
💎 2 big mistakes of email onboarding:
Doing nothing, or almost nothing (i.e. just a welcome email)
A long series of emails talking about your product (“me me me”)
Robert Skrob (President at Be Unleavable, Inc.)
at 03:11
💎 Template for your 7-day new subscriber welcome emails sequence:
Day 1 - trust: it’s time to deliver what you initially promised in your initial offer. Use the list of key benefits from the product page, and include direct links to each of the items that you promised.
Day 2 - team: get users excited about the people that create and deliver your program to your subscribers.
Day 3 - main objection: find what is the #1 reason your subscribers quit (e.g. time, money, etc.), and make it the main reason they should keep the subscription.
Day 4 - beliefs: preconceived beliefs often prevent subscribers from becoming successful with what you deliver. This email focuses on presenting 3-5 of the most common myths or mistaken ideas so you can correct their thinking.
Day 5 - win: think about what’s the single fastest way to experience a victory with what you deliver. Get your subscribers a quick win so they can feel good about your program.
Day 6 - simplicity: many subscribers don’t believe they have what it takes to be successful with your product. Make success look attainable, with the quick win from Day 5 being the first step of the journey.
Day 7 - proof: this is the time to introduce your new subscribers to your most successful subscribers.
Robert Skrob (President at Be Unleavable, Inc.)
at 06:52
Influencer marketing
Google’s GameCamp webinars are usually pretty high quality.
They’re also long ⏳
This one on Influencer Marketing is 97 minutes long but has a nice mix of insights on fundamentals and new ideas (new to me).
Discover gems from Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting), Lukasz Baranowski and Marcin Smajek (Growth Managers at Reality Games).
💎 YouTube is the best influencer investment in terms of value vs. conversion rate.
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 08:38
💎 Before the influencer campaign, generate 3 scenarios based on different conversion rates from views to installs: pessimistic, medium and optimistic. This allows you to understand how much you need to invest.
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 09:22
💎 The older the audience, the more expensive the influencer is going to be.
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 10:50
💎 Because most of the traffic is organic, you want all the influencers posting at the same time in order to generate a big enough uplift.
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 13:10
💎 There are 4 main ways to find influencers:
Manually - looking through YouTube, Instagram to find the related channels
Self Service Platforms - Upfluence, Matchmade, Traackr, etc.
Multi-Channel Network (via managers, agents)
Influencer Marketing Agencies
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 15:50
💎 If you set a performance-based price (variable), then make sure you define:
A performance window (7d, 14d, 30d)
A maximum cap of views you’re willing to pay for (regardless of the performance), slightly higher than the average number of views the influencer usually does
Sometimes, influencers will also ask for a minimum guarantee.
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 22:05
💎 3 simple rules to follow when writing your brief:
Keep it short - you need to catch the attention in a short time.
Go straight to the point
Must be visually appealing - prefer a Google Slides presentation with videos and visual assets to a web document of 10 pages
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 27:06
💎 “Integrated” influencer videos (e.g. 60-90 second videos within the influencer content) bring the best value/cost because the audience is used to the influencer content. A dedicated video will not drive as many views.
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 28:14
⛏️ Going Deeper: this is also what Nadia Bubennikova (Head of Agency at BuzzGuru) was sharing in Growth Gems #62👇
Marion mentioned as well that you should ask for your integrated video to be placed within the first 25% of the video (when engagement is still high), and below is what Reality Gems asks influencers.
💎 You have to negotiate with influencers. You can almost always cut the price.
Marcin Smajek (Growth Manager at Reality Games)
at 42:30
💎 Ask influencers to encourage their audience to take part in a competition. You might get much better results. Example for Landlord Go! -> can win a PS5 by competing in the game.
Lukasz Baranowski (Growth Manager at Reality Games)
at 48:50
⛏️ Going Deeper: The ultimate goal is high ROAS. Getting the influencer to promote a competition that’s within the game will get users more engaged and to spend extra money to win the prize.
Marion also shared something similar: contests always increase engagement rates, install rates, etc. You need to find the right prize that engages the audience. Finding something related to the influencer might work the best (e.g. a custom hoodie signed).
💎 Prepare a manual about your game as part of the influencer brief, to show the parts you’d like to be shown in the video. It will help with onboarding users.
Lukasz Baranowski (Growth Manager at Reality Games)
at 52:47
💎 In your brief, show good and bad examples of videos so they understand the level of quality you expect.
Lukasz Baranowski (Growth Manager at Reality Games)
at 55:34
💎 There will most likely be influencers that drop out (they get covid, they’re moving, etc.), which will lead to your influencer campaign not getting enough traffic. Book 25% more influencers than what you need.
Marion Balinoff (Influencer Marketing Consultant at Marion Balinoff Consulting)
at 1:11:26
💎 Sometimes some unexpected audiences will be a good fit for your game. Example: people who watch videos about food like Landlord Go (real estate investing game).
Lukasz Baranowski (Growth Manager at Reality Games)
at 1:21:32
💎 The ratio between subscribers and views has a high influence on the performance of your ad. This is a good way to find promising influencers that started recently (e.g. 10k subscribers with 9k views).
Lukasz Baranowski (Growth Manager at Reality Games)
at 1:22:20
And before I leave, a quote on incrementality measurement in an episode of We’re All Mad Here (Incrmntal’s podcast):
“It’s super healthy to have it. It’s unhealthy to rely on it.” - Thomas Petit (Growth Consultant)
See you next time. Stay savvy!
⛏️ Sylvain