In our Campfire Stories, we spotlight Appi Campers and share their stories in their own words. In times like these where we are adapting to new circumstances every day, we invite you to get to know us and lean on our community — the app marketing experts and your camp friends — as we continue to grow, step forward, and learn together as a community.
Lidor Feldman’s Campfire Story
Lidor is the Retargeting and Cross Promotion Lead at Papaya Gaming, managing retargeting campaigns Papaya offers. Her day to day involves creating treatment protocols, monetization live-ops for users that come back from Retargeting campaigns, and much much more. Previously, she was at Playtika for almost three years as a Retargeting Campaign Manager, managing social and casual games on various platforms.
User Behavior and Retargeting
When it comes to retargeting campaigns, user behavior, different personalities and interests should be built into the fabric of the campaign in order to create an optimal user experience. Before starting to develop a retargeting strategy, I take a look into the psychology of our users – when they are logging on to play, when they drop off, if they are most interested in prizes, etc. This will dictate how we serve ads to these specific segments of users. You can’t just assume all users are the same.
Psychological and behavioral targeting is a powerful tool when tailoring ads to audience personality traits. When you start thinking about the psychology and motivations of users, you have a higher success and retention rate than when you group all users into one category. By segmenting users based on their unique personalities and routines, you are not only creating a more captivating and personal experience, but you are also earning their trust and loyalty.
User Behavior Breakdown
Timing
First and foremost, it is helpful to look at the timing of user activity. Does the user play every day? Or does this user come back every few weeks in more of a random fashion. Developers need to have different segmentation for the last activity of each user so that you can tweak the retargeting strategy to fit each individual user.
If you are seeing that a user hasn’t played in months, entice them with retargeting verbiage around “Come see what’s new in our game!” or any other new updates you might want to promote. You can utilize video to really emphasize the new features that they can explore when they come back into the app and begin playing.
Make Users Feel Special
Celebrate the return of the user! Have a special pop up for the user that has returned or a new feature waiting just for them. For example, you can have a gift waiting for a user that has just returned and another reminder that they will have another prize or gift waiting for them when they return tomorrow. This helps to not only increase user retention but to also make the user feel like they are important and welcomed back to the app. Having “Welcome Back” pop ups increases the chances of users returning organically. That is the overall goal – to have loyal users over an extended lifetime. We are essentially changing that users’ behavior.
Seasonality Pushes
Take advantage of big holidays to create excitement around new features or surprises within the game. Segment out users that have not played in over 30 days and draw interest to a big event that is happening on a certain holiday. Create messaging around this event saying that there will be new features unlocked during the week leading up to this event so that users get excited and are drawn back into the app so that they can find out what happens on the day of the event. Start the gifting prior to the big event so that users are interested in your app prior to that one day as there is usually competition among other apps to win users on popular holidays.
The goal is to get the user hooked by having something to look forward to. If there aren’t any large holidays to use as a way to excite users, create something on your own that is special within your game. For example, since there aren’t many holidays in the summer, you can have your own summer push where if you play for a certain amount of days you can unlock new gifts or elements within the game. This will create motivation for users to keep opening and using your app.
Localization
Being thoughtful about where your users are located is another aspect to take into account within user psychology. Most of our users are in the United States, however we are currently working on projects in the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries and there are different phrases and sayings there than in the US. For example, if you know that most of your players are in the UK, highlight special royal family events that are important to that audience.
When you are approaching new geographic targets, it is important to first see what their organic user behavior is like. Maybe they tend to play games at different times of the day than users in other countries or on the weekdays versus weekends. See what these users are like before you begin the retargeting campaigns so you get a sense of where to reach them and what will resonate the most. Each location will have different challenges and characteristics.
User Behavior Retargeting Tips
- Not all users are the same - It is important to know the differences in user groups and tailor ads accordingly. Some users have a very clear pattern of when they are interacting with an app and some are more sporadic and random. Based off these differences, the type of messaging and creatives will vary.
- Take advantage of seasonality - Take advantage of big holidays to create excitement around new features or surprises within the game. Create messaging around this event saying that there will be new features unlocked during the week leading up to this event so that users get excited and are drawn back into the app so that they can find out what happens on the day of the event. Keep them interested in what the surprise waiting for them will be!
- Celebrate returning users - All users want to feel important! Have a special pop up for the user that has returned or a new feature waiting just for them. For example, you can have a gift waiting for a user that has just returned and another reminder that they will have another prize or gift waiting for them when they return tomorrow. This not only increases user retention but creates a sense of loyalty with that user.
