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Understanding Lifetime Value and using it to grow your game

January 13, 2020 in Games | 3 min. read
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The secret to creating a successful mobile games business is to have players that come back to your game day after day. The way to do that is by focusing on the one metric that matters: Lifetime Value (LTV). 

If you can optimize your game to focus on retaining your players over the long term, you will easily scale your growth. Growing your game these days can be incredibly daunting; with millions of other games out there, it’s a challenge to stand out and combat the competition in the various app stores. But if you focus on getting your LTV to a good level, you’ll be able to acquire users at scale more smoothly with the assurance that your game will bring in a steady profit. 

The first step to increasing your LTV and guaranteeing the long-term success of your game is to segment your players. In doing so, you’ll be able to better analyze their defining characteristics and identify the factors that contribute to the way they interact with your game. Different groups have different behaviors, and figuring out these behaviors will help you learn how to better serve their needs. Managing all of these factors within the process of developing and releasing your game will ensure greater profits and returns for your game in the long run.

Join us for our upcoming webinar, “Increasing Player LTV: Tips and tricks for growing your game,” led by Ilya Kuznetsov, a specialist in monetizing with Unity Ads. Because we work with some of the biggest studios in the industry on monetization strategies, Unity can offer unique insights into what works and what doesn’t.

 

Sign up for the webinar 

 

By the end of this webinar, you will know how to:

  • Measure player LTV simply and effectively 
  • Segment your players to optimize for retention
  • Build LTV into the core game loop
  • Monetize your players without compromising their experience

What is LTV?

Lifetime Value is an important metric that encourages tracking the long-term health of your relationship with your players. The easiest way to think about LTV is simply the total number of days a player spends in a game, multiplied by revenue per day. As a simple example, if a player stayed for 100 days and spent an average of 5 cents per day, their LTV was $5.00. This method is best used for quick and approximate assessments, not for exact numbers. Analyzing your LTV will reveal insight as you continue to develop and improve your game because once you understand your players, you can better understand how to maximize your profits.

Understanding the worth of your players from a revenue perspective informs you about how to bring in new players and grow your community. Growing a game and personalizing the journey for your users can be incredibly complex to understand, especially if you don’t have marketing experience.

Segmenting your players

Player segmentation is used widely across the games industry, and with good reason – it’s a great way to ensure you’re getting the most from your game’s audience. You segment your users based on the data you gather, which means that the more data you collect, the better. 

By gathering minute-by-minute granular data, you will be prepared to personalize the game experiences for specific players, create content relevant to players based on the features that matter to them the most and drive strong perception of value to keep your players engaged for a longer period of time. 

For instance, you could start simply by segmenting your players by region, the date they downloaded your game, or how frequently they play. Do they play casually and infrequently, without much of an interest in progressing past certain levels or checkpoints? Or are they more competitive, playing more frequently to get better scores, using free boosts or features? This kind of data can help you determine which of your players are likely to convert from casual players to paying players.  

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You can get more tips and tricks to increase your LTV and grow your game in our upcoming webinar.

January 13, 2020 in Games | 3 min. read

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