Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm. It’s the top downloaded and grossing app on both iOS and Android and Nintendo’s stock has gone up by about 50% in the last week. It’s an undeniable hit and, so far, needs no help in keeping players engaged.
Yes, we have a Level 15 player in our midst
But the jury is still out on whether engagement will continue over the long term. It’s a great game, so it’s very possible it will. But why take the chance?
We have several ̶o̶b̶s̶e̶s̶s̶e̶d̶ dedicated players here at the Iterable office and we’ve noticed that the game could do a slightly better job at engagement outside the game itself.
Clearly, Nintendo/Niantic do not need our help making money right now. But we’re happy to chime in anyway. Here are three simple ideas they (or any other game/app developer) could easily implement with a Growth Marketing Platform like Iterable: a welcome series, milestone notifications, and a re-engagement/reactivation campaign.
Welcome Series
When you first launch the app and log in, the game has a brief tutorial to get you started. But we really felt like we could have used more info on gameplay and what to look forward to later in the game. A simple welcome series could do the trick. Best of all, since the game uses Google login, they already have our email address!
Here is what a very simple two-message welcome series workflow would look like in Iterable:
Simple Pokémon welcome series
- The workflow gets triggered when a player logs in for the first time.
- Iterable waits for a day.
- Iterable sends the player an email on “How to catch a Pokémon” and other tidbits on game basics.
- Iterable waits for a day.
- Iterable sends the player an email on “What are Pokémon gyms?” This email contains more advanced info.
This is an extremely simple workflow — prepared in less than 5 minutes. We could have easily made it more interesting by adding more steps and certain filters to segment the player audience.
Milestone Notifications
A positive side effect of playing the game is the exercise players are getting by walking all over their neighborhood/city capturing Pokémon. What better way to get players coming back than letting them know when they have hit certain important milestones and encouraging them to keep going? Perhaps a nice email or push notification when someone has walked 10,000/25,000/50,000 steps in the game?
What better way to spend your time at the beach?
By sending a simple event to Iterable when certain milestones are hit, the game could trigger a message (or series of messages) to players via email, push notifications, SMS, or any combination thereof.
Re-engagement Campaign
Finally, some of us (perhaps the ̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶ busier team members) installed the game and played once, but we need a bit of a push to go back a second time and really get into it. It’s been several days since my initial session and I haven’t received anything that would lead me to re-engage.
Here is a quick workflow that could gently nudge me back to the game:
Simple Pokémon inactivity workflow
- The workflow gets triggered whenever a player logs in.
- Iterable waits for 3 days (or whatever period of time denotes potential inactivity).
- A filter checks if the player has logged in in the last 3 days. If they have, then they are not inactive and they fall out of the workflow.
- If they have not logged in in 3 days, they get a gentle “COME PLAY!!!” email.
It’s worth noting that you could have a player in the workflow multiple times (essentially every time they log in within a 3 day period). This guarantees they will get the message whenever they go inactive (if ever).
Like the previous workflow, we could make this workflow much more comprehensive and sophisticated, including personalizing the email so that it includes something relevant to each player (e.g., mentioning location, level achieved, friends playing, etc.).
We hear Clefable is an impressive Pokémon to have captured
In conclusion, we love capturing Pokémon. Or, at least some of us do.
But we would love it even more if it engaged us when we aren’t in the game by:
- Giving newbies a bit more info on how to play.
- Sending us encouragements when we reach certain milestones.
- Reminding us to come back to give Nintendo our hard-earned cash in exchange for Poké balls.
And these are just basic examples — the sky really is the limit in terms of the user engagement campaigns that could be run around a great game like this.
As always, let us know if you have any questions about how Iterable can help your company achieve the omni-channel relevance that captivates engagement by requesting a demo today!
