Review of the most important topics of an online business: Acquisition, how to improve targeting new users, Retention, how to make them stay the most, Monetization, how to earn money from them to feed the funnel

1. UD3. ARM
Feeding the Funnel
Juan Gabriel Gomila Salas
/joanby
@Joan_By
Juan Gabriel
Gomila Salas
joanby

2. ARM Model
• Acquisition: How do I gain new users?
• Retention: How do I retain those users?
• Monetization: How do I make money?
CPA < LTV

4. Acquisition

5. Acquisition: types
• Paid acquisition
• Facebook Ads
• Google Adwords: Display y Banners
• Mobile Ads
• Email Marketing
• Incentivized Ads
• Affiliates
• Other: magazines, blogs, TV, Radio,…

6. Acquisition: types
• Organic acquisition
• Viral
• Social
• Public Relation (PR)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Cross-Platform
• Corss-Promotion

7. Acquisition: Ads & Display
• Target: keywords, interests, demography…
• Creativities: format, sizes, CTR, CVR…
• Pricing: CPM, CPC, CPI, CPA…
• Examples: Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Twitter Ads, Web
Impressions, Zetanet, Ad4Game, LinianAds, LifeStreetmedia…

9. Acquisition: Email Marketing
• Bounce Rates
• Spam Filters
• Open Rate
• Examples: Mailchimp

10. Acquisition: Social Media
• Facebook Fan Pages
• Twitter Account
• Youtube Channel
• Blogs
• Web

11. Acquisition: Press & Public Relations
• Talking to the Press
• Get your game reviewed
• Talking to your fans & gamers
• Gaming conferences

12. Acquisition: Virality
• Make easy to invite friends
(Facebook, Twitter, Gmail…)
• Incentivized Vitalization
• Enhanced Vitalization
k-factor = % users who invita * avg. invitations * % friends who accepted
k-factor < 1

13. Retention

14. Retention: Engagement
• First 60 seconds
• DAU/MAU
• 1-day, 3-day, 7-day
• Monthly retention
• Average Session Length
• Number of sessions per day
• Reengagement

15. Retention Tools
• Leaderboards

16. Retention Tools
• Achievements

17. Retention Tools
• Collections & Badges

18. Retention Tools
• Tournaments

19. Retention Tools
• Missions & Challenges

20. Retention Tools
• Chats

21. Retention Tools
• Core Game Loops

22. Retention Tools
• XP and Level Models

23. Retention Tools
• Virtual Currencies

24. Retention Tools
• Rewards & Gifts

25. Monetization

26. Monetization: sell the game
• Advantages
• Fire and forget development
• Familiar process for many developers
• Similar revenue at launch

27. Monetization: sell the game
• Disadvantages
• Focus on launch day gives only one chance to maximize sales
• Limits ongoing relationship with gamers
• Typically higher price point
• Hard to offer a free version of the game
• Requires 100% of development budget to spend upfront

28. Monetization: subscription
• Advantages
• Recurring revenue stream
• Predictability of income
• Easy for consumer and
developer to understand

29. Monetization: subscription
• Disadvantages
• Long-term commitment deters users
• Ongoing development costs
• Requires billing and consumer service infrastructure
• Hosting and server costs
• Limited upset opportunities

30. Monetization: premium
• Advantages
• Paid once, enjoy forever
• Offers clear value to
premium costumers
• Easy to code

31. Monetization: premium
• Disadvantages
• Means hobbling the free version (i.e. your prospects get a poor
experience)
• Needs different designs and layouts for each service, which adds
usability and testing headaches
• Requires billing and costumer service infrastructure

32. Monetization: virtual goods
• Advantages
• Allows the user to set
the price they want to pay
• Easy to track and measure
• Flexible
• Often generates more revenue

33. Monetization: virtual goods
• Disadvantages
• Requires billing and customer service infrastructure
• Requires substantial investment in inventory management
• Hosting and server costs
• Ongoing development costs

34. Monetization: advertising
• Advantages
• Monetise traffic even
if users aren’t paying
• Can be simple to
implement

35. Monetization: advertising
• Disadvantages
• Can cheap your brand
• Requires active management to generate substantial revenues
• Most ads currently targeted at gamers are for rival games
• Unlikely to finance your entire game, even once the current
market improves

36. Monetization: sponsorship
• Advantages
• Substantial budgets available
• Can pay for the entire game

37. Monetization: sponsorship
• Disadvantages
• Work-for-hire revenue that simply swaps the publisher for a brand
• Requires significant and specialist business development work
with media agencies and brands

38. Monetization: offer walls
• Advantages
• Additional source of revenue
for virtual goods business
• Offers alternative ways to pay
for cash-strapped consumers
• Relatively simple to implement
(provided virtual goods have
already been implemented).

39. Monetization: offer walls
• Disadvantages
• Carries all the negatives of virtual goods
• Requires careful monitoring

40. Monetization: payment methods
• Bank transfers
• Credit & Debit cards
• eWallets (Paypal)
• Mobile payments
• SMS Premium
• Mobile eWallets
• Phone Calls
• Prepaid cards (physical & vouchers)

42. Think about the ARM funnel

43. Exercise #1
• What kind of metrics should track an Acquisition Manager?
• What kind of metrics should track a Retention Manager?
• What kind of metrics should track a Monetization Manager?