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游戏开发商可参考的邮件营销技巧

发布时间:2012-02-08 11:34:43 Tags:,,

作者:Nicholas Lovell

营销和构建社区是自主发布游戏的开发商需执行的事务。与粉丝接触和交流是利用免费游戏赚钱的必要措施。本文是《How to Publish a Game》3篇摘要之首,指在揭示如何吸引用户和构建关注着群体。

获取用户

获取用户的首条标准是确保你将来可以再次联系到他们。数十年来,游戏发行商向来视用户为一次性的玩物。当出售新游戏之后,营销团队将注意力移向下个项目时,这个用户也就被弃之敝履。

这是种相当浪费资源的做法。

开发商和新晋发行商已经意识到,用户已不再是一次性物品,现在他们已经是持续性服务的顾客,理应得到良好的服务。

可以采取多种措施以便将来能够再次同顾客联系和交流。你可以让用户提供邮件地址、关注Twitter、注册成为Facebook粉丝或订阅YouTube频道。

这些方法都有助于你将来再次同用户交流。这意味着你无需再付钱重新获取这些用户。这对你业务上的成功很有帮助。

email marketing(from optinmarketingreview.com)

email marketing(from optinmarketingreview.com)

营销邮件

邮件往往是最强大的营销工具。它是灵活的,处在你的掌控之中(游戏邦注:无需遭遇类似Facebook平台的规则变动),而且拥有很高的回复率。

同时,说服用户向你提供邮箱地址也是件很困难的事情,他们可能会误认为你会频繁发送垃圾邮件。

我建议使用第三方供应商的服务,比如AWeber、MailChimp或GetResponse,这些公司可确保邮件成功传输给用户。

如果你想要自行完成而不借助第三方也行,但是或许不久之后,用户就会把你视为垃圾邮件发送者。

自动回复的重要性

如果你不懂得合理利用资源的话,就算能收集到邮箱地址也是毫无用处的。自动回复是种简单且至关重要的方法。

作为开发商,你现在寻求的不再是一次性的合作。你希望能够同用户构建起稳定的关系。你希望玩家能够开始相信你,向你提供部分个人偏好和信息,花钱购买你的游戏。

你需要采取措施赢得他们的信任。

所以,你要从最基本的事情做起。他们给你邮箱地址,是希望能够得到某些东西(游戏邦注:比如试玩版、免费体验游戏的邀请码等)。

你可以将致谢词自动回复给他们。自动回复的信息可以让他们觉得你将其视为有一定价值的用户。

第2天,你可以再给他们发送另一条自动信息,比如“我们希望你能够享受我们游戏带来的乐趣。我们将通过3封邮件向你介绍我们的游戏世界,这是首封邮件。”

让邮件显得有价值,让邮件内容充满趣味性,提供良好且富有建设性的意见。这样几天之后,你的玩家便会开始信任你。

所以,确保不断赢取他们的信任。不要给他们发送垃圾邮件。尽量向用户发送他们觉得有价值的内容。但是不要认为只要你发送了足够的邮件,就会有人付费购买游戏。

要向他们发送那些你自己愿意收到的信息,构建忠诚的粉丝群体。这样,那些玩家才会给你回报。他们会选择支付金钱,奖励你之前提供给他们高价值信息的行为。这样,你就能获得更多的盈利。

自动回复是你的良好助手,但要善用该服务。

邮件营销技巧

1、让用户将你的邮箱地址添加到地址簿中。这有助于提升邮件传输性,以及邮箱地址进入用户白名单的机率。

2、体现自己的风格。在邮件中精确呈现相关内容,不要使用“免费!”、“马上点击!”之类夸张的用词。

3、邮件中只要1个感叹号就足够了。

4、不要用“免费”、“点击这里”、“马上点击这里!”、“马上行动!”或“时间有限!”之类充满煽动性的词语,这会让邮件看上去像是垃圾邮件。

5、邮件需包含实际地址。

6、应方便用户取消预订。你的收件人可以选择点击“退订”或“Report as Junk”。你固然不希望他们点击“Report as Junk”,但也要简化退订过程。

7、用SpamAssassin检测你的目标邮件。尽管这并非完美做法,但它可以让你发现邮件中的垃圾邮件特征。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

EMAIL MARKETING FOR GAME DEVELOPERS

Nicholas Lovell

Marketing and community-building are mandatory for self-publishing games developers. Reaching out and communicating with your fans is essential to making money with a free-to-play game. This post is the first of three extracts from How to Publish a Game that we’re reproducing here, to show you how to attract customers and build a tribe of followers. For a complete guide to self-publishing

and making money from your game, buy the book now.

Acquiring Customers

The number rule for acquiring customers is to make sure that you can contact them again in the future. For decades, games publishers have considered customers as disposable playthings, to be courted for a new game and then discarded as the marketing team move on to the next project.

How wasteful.

Developers and the new breed of publishers have realised that, as a strategy, this is barking mad. No longer are consumers disposable, only fit to be spoken to every 12-24 months as each new franchise iteration is launched. They are now customers of an ongoing service, and need to be treated as such.

Being able to contact a customer again can take many forms. It might mean asking the consumer to: Provide an email address; Become a Twitter follower; Sign up as a Facebook fan; Subscribe to a YouTube channel.

Each one of these methods means that you can communicate with those users again. Which means you no longer need to pay to re-acquire them. And that goes a very long way to making your business successful.

Marketing Emails

Email is often the most powerful marketing tool. It is flexible, under your control (and not subject to arbitrary changes of rules like the Facebook platform), and can have great response rates.

It can also be difficult to persuade consumers to give you their email address, can get you labeled as a spammer and can be tough to deliver.

I generally recommend using a third party supplier like AWeber, MailChimp or GetResponse. These companies are heavily focused on “deliverability”, helping you ensure that your emails get through to your consumers. MailChimp provides an extremely helpful guide to email marketing for free on its website. (For more useful links for your games business, go to the resources page)

If you want to do it yourself, go ahead. But it won’t take long before you are labeled a spammer.

The importance of auto-responders

Gathering email addresses will be useless if you don’t do anything with it. Auto-responders are an easy and critical way of following up.

Put it this way: do you put expect to sleep with someone the moment you meet them, or do you expect there to be some romancing involved?

You, as developers, are no longer looking for one-night stands. You are looking to build steady relationships. You want your gamers to start to trust you. To give you things (like personal information). To spend with you.

You need to earn their trust.

So you start with the basics. They give you an email address in order to get something (a trial, a login to a free-to-play game, a free sample of a book on How to Publish a Game).

Your autoresponder hits them with a “Thank you”. An automated message that confirms that you view them as a valued customer.

The next day, you might send them another automated message. It might say “We hope you’re enjoying our game. Here is your first of three emails introducing you to our world.”

Make the email valuable. Make it fun. Offer good, constructive advice. Do that for several days and your gamers will start to trust you.

So make sure that you keep earning their trust. Don’t spam them. Try to send them things that they value. Don’t drive conversion by lowest common denominator marketing, or by thinking that if you send enough emails, some people will eventually pay you some money.

That’s spam thinking. And if you think like that, take a long, hard look in the mirror. That’s the face of a spammer.

Market by sending them things that you would like to receive. Build a loyal following. And then those gamers will seek you out. They will choose to spend money with you to reward you for the value

you have already given them. You’ll be more profitable AND you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror every morning.

Autoresponders are your friend. Use them wisely.

Email Marketing Tips

ASK users to add your address to their address book. This will help with deliverability and potentially white-listing.

BE yourself. Say what your email is about. Don’t use hyperbole “FREE! MUST END SOON! CLICK NOW!”.

ONE exclamation mark is enough (in fact, it’s probably too many).

AVOID writing, “free” or “click here!” or “click here now!” or “act now!” or “limited time!” That looks like spam.

INCLUDE a real physical address. (This is a requirement of CAN-SPAM, the US email marketing legislation).

UNSUBSCRIBING should be really easy. Your recipients can either hit “Unsubscribe” or “Report as Junk”. You *really* don’t want them to hit “Report as Junk”. Do not make them login to unsubscribe.

RUN your target email through SpamAssassin. It’s not perfect, but it will give you a sense of how spammy your message is. (Source: Game Brief)


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