DoubleDown Interactive’s Faith Price On Lifecycle Marketing Tips To Extend Your App’s Lifespan

[Music] this is pocketgamer.biz this is the podcast Studio at Ma and this is where I'm talking with games marketers all day long and they are literally lined up in front of the door so we have a great lineup but I want to kick it off with faith price you are now director of growth marketing a double down and last year when we were here you weren't you were just I think just promoted so it's been an exciting time for you and such a challenging well not challenging job but everyone's doing this now they're bringing together acquisition and retention you're doing this in your job how's it been last year it's been really exciting to be able to work on the full funnel Journey for um basically the user so as you mentioned like working on UA

working on retention that's what i' had been doing um at Double Down for like the previous four years and then last year added in user engagement which is communicating with the user after they've become a player so how do we talk to them via you know push notifications social email Etc and so it's been great experience because we get to figure out in the UA side of things like how does the how does the player want to be communicated with and what interests them what gets them into the game and then um on the user engagement side what keeps them there what messaging what do they like to see um what sort of events do they like you know so we're able to share a lot of learnings back and forth as well and help provide some info to the product team too that's the way it's supposed to work by the way Faith remember it was like you get the data in you're going to see the acquisition know the person see what they're doing in their behavior in the game and push that out the product

and then also feedback to engagement sort of like close this Loop but it's interesting I talked to a lot of marketers and they're telling me things like because they're just starting to do what you're doing right and they're just seeing that it's like you know what when you watch it later on in the funnel what you thought was a huge bonus at the beginning can sort of Peter out by the end what are some interesting observations maybe even some surprises because the signals that told you these were valuable players now that you can see on that maybe they're not engaging or they you know they're not what you thought they were um it it totally flips the script depends on the app and depends on the segmentation as well I think for I think for Social Casino which is the flagship app that double down has like really on the on the UA side right like we're trying to get the they're trying to get the highest quality users and it's more about um what the main

features are that appeals to them uh and so once they come into the app again like product will maybe work on some features and then we'll try to push them via UA and we'll try to push them via VIA user engagement and I think the most interesting thing is the the features that will keep the user engaged um are not necessarily the features that will bring in a new player mhm and so that uh when we've done testing you know you would think right like oh we have um a new um sort of tournament not tournament system we have like uh new um contests or new Journeys or new daily Rewards or missions or any of this and players show an affinity for them when they're in the app so surely like this would be an interesting thing to a new player but no it's really about the core value of the app

that's what the new player likes and so I think for every app you just have to test like is it your core value proposition that they're G that's going to bring in the new user or is it all of the additional features that help retain that user when they've been in the app for a month a year 10 years right because Double Down is a 13-year-old app how has this helped in yeah I wouldn't say boosting sort of the monetization model but making certain that you're getting more you don't have to necessarily reinvent it but you do have to extend the life cycle how is life cycle marketing extending the life cycle of a 13-year-old out so I think part of it is um creating that Community right and that Fe that um feedback loop with the with the player um but I think also part of it is like how do we work in conjunction with the product team to figure out which features are engaging

and then um promote them out to the user honestly for user engagement um depending on the depending on the channel a lot of it is they want something that's fun and entertaining in the communication right so it's not just like come back to the app for this uh there's a lot of uses of like little trivia or games or or word searches or things like that they like sort of like these little mini mini engagements but that's an interesting finding and observation because I was also talking I'll always talk to marketers and hear what they're telling me and it was great because we think we know something and then reality is the it it proves us proves it different and it was oh we're so worried about our onboarding and our welcome and making certain that you know our valuable players feel welcome and it was like actually

they want to get to the game so the welcome just ticks them off basically and so I like guess what don't welcome them which totally goes against what you would think you would think oh this onboarding has to be hey hi and oh you've been doing an awful lot you know welcome back in the winds in particular so what are some like those Eureka moments where you now know something because of what you're seeing across the funnel that you didn't know before when you weren't and maybe something you can also share with our audience because of course they're trying to create these Journeys now I think for us like some of the testing that we've that we've been doing and some of the things that we've looked at is that we have put in um you know a welcome essentially a welcome Journey uh but you really have to balance that with how much time it takes for the user to complete that and then where are you going to put your Communications engagement communication to them within the app in that Journey for example when are you going to ask

them if they want to subscribe to your emails or you know or or um put in you know uh push notifications like when are they going to want to have that communication with you and that's you have to think about that as part of your welcome Journey because if you wait right until they're all the way through that Journey um are you losing out on those immediate on that immediate communication with them um or if you put it too early in like have you already communicated enough value that they're willing to have that relationship with you so I think it's a it really comes down to testing in your app and seeing like do your users when is it best to have that to to put those options in front of your user it's also going to depend on how complex your app is right so some apps are are fairly simple right

like a Social Casino like a card game like most people know how to play solitary you're not going to have to put in a huge onboarding for that um but if you're a midcore title you know if you're something that has a lot of different features uh definitely you're going to have that longer tutorial and that testing is also interesting because you've got totally different team you've got yourself you've got product really interested in what you're testing and those results have to go back there um engagement and you've got your buddy right AI on your shoulder helping out hopefully what does that testing look like now actually testing is is at least for us is a is really heavily on the product side okay so they're um they are the ones that are doing a lot of the analysis and a lot of determining sort of how do they want to run through those tests and then um for at least for user engagement we you know we do participate

within the app but a lot of it is external to the app right like how do we keep that uh relationship alive so that the user comes back to the app on a regular basis and so there's a lot of testing that we do external to the app as well in terms of um like types of messaging types of authors you know types of channels we're doing a big analysis project now to say like what's new in the space in terms of um communities where people spend their time right like everybody's on Facebook everybody's on Instagram uh in terms of like where marketers are um and a lot of people have been on Twitter SLX yeah uh those are the ones everybody knows about right Tik Tock like what else exists out there and I think that's part of growing as a marketer is trying to see where are the other places where your users your players are and then what's the Tipping Point point where that becomes a large

enough Community where you want to invest and so we are also doing some um you know analysis of that too any interesting channels you can note we're looking at sort of the new ones obviously everybody's looking at threads yeah I'm hearing that there's more functionality coming to Whatsapp it's still in the analysis stage and it really depends on your app right like if you're a lifestyle app like you you still want to be on Pinterest exactly and you've got Social Casino so you've got social built in at some level how are you doing with your own community building that and probably Community Management I wonder does that followed your remit to Faith what don't you do uh what's it like there so we are still um yeah we still have a very active social uh social Community um and I think that's where we we do a lot of testing around uh what What's the message when should we talk to them how often should we talk to them um you know I think when you've been around for 13 years too you also have to evaluate like what are the

behaviors that we've been gendered and and is it what we want right like have we trained them in certain behaviors that are no longer useful and then how do we if we think that right like if we got if we've created expectations and now we want to um maybe move in a different direction or be more efficient it really is all about testing for those like what what can we test how can we test it so you're testing all the time I'm curious because I'm not a marketer I just really am interested in how you do what you do so maybe the dumb question but like your daily routine all I hear is test test test it's like how do you do anything else what does the testing routine look like it really depends on where you set the Focus right and I think that's where this yeah I think that's where the strategy comes in um and so talking with the team like their strategy is that they have to do like tests on a certain cycle so every you know so every every month like I sit in

a meeting with them and they talk about like here's what I tested last month and here's the results and then here's what the next iteration is or here's what we're going to do instead because maybe that didn't work in such a way that we know there's no point in doing a next iteration so I think you really have to be very specific like this is our like this is our the DNA of our team we believe in testing we're going to commit to doing these tests I'm hearing that a lot too is that it really now starts with going back and saying what is the objective now that sounds super simple but the thinking that goes into that that has shifted that has changed as objectives have changed because it's not maybe growth at all cost strategy you're thinking and looking at things differently so you have to be very specific about your goals and also in life as well I mean you have basically reinvented yourself I've known you for what now five VI's faith it seems and

just watching you evolve is a joy lots of people out there have either the choice that they need to evolve and reinvent themselves in their current position or they've been laid off and they have to say Okay I was UA now I want to do product I was product I want to do yay it all comes together anyway that's the good news the hard thing is Reinventing yourself give me some thoughts from you some advice to everyone out there who has to either take on this challenge or at least understand what it means one is you have to be curious right like you yes you can just be solely focused on the one thing you do and be the Deep dive and like be the subject matter expert and and you will be you know pretty successful yeah but everything works together in this industry and and so I think it's great to do that but you really need to pair it with curiosity what else is going on what's going on in the industry what's going on with the app what's going on

with the company what's going on with other departments like how does technology work how does marketing work how does creative work so being curious and educating yourself right so that's I think that's step two is educating yourself um after you know after everything with covid like there's so many ways to educate yourself in terms of webinars um free resources on the web companies like corsera or udity that have very lowcost ways of getting um you know classes on different things so you have to choose to take advantage of the resources and grow your skills and then once you have that um or in conjunction with that the third thing I would say is look for opportunity the way I move from the reason I moved from um us and when I was a big fish from user acquisition to ASO is nobody was doing ASO and so I was like this is really interesting I studied up on it and then I said

nobody's doing this and I essentially created my own job wreck and so I think you know if you see if you are looking and saying I don't necessarily whether it's UA or product or or UE or whatever right and you're saying well this is great but maybe there's some instability or maybe I just want to expand like do the research get educated and then find where that opportunity is for your company in the industry in general you're covering all the bases and you're giving back at so many different levels I could go on but this is just a teaser for a Pocket Gamer upcoming you know full scale 30 minute episode because you're bringing a colleague with you and we're going to talk about career building we're going to talk about self well Evolution personal brand and and and personal growth so I won't even begin to delve into that right now and you do have a busy time at but I want to thank you so much faith if

it wasn't that we were sitting so far apart I'd jump over and give you a hug but all I can do is do this love having you thanks so much thanks Peggy I always enjoy chatting with you this show is all about how to do your job better how to make an amazing game how to Market it and you have a say so if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on then we would love to hear from you we want to hear from you we want to reflect the reality of the mobile games Market in all its wonderful complexity and strangeness so if you have any suggestions for us if you have any feedback for us you can always get in touch you can email us at podcast pocketgamer.biz you can find us on Twitter @ PG Biz and you can reach out to us through the pocketgamer.biz website if you're interested in listening to all of our podcasts you can find them at pocketgamer.biz podcast and we would love to he your thoughts on future shows and we've got

you covered on all the major platforms so subscribe to the audio podcast as Brian said look for us on YouTube if you want to read it hey you can do that too because we have a companion post for you as well on the pocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the pocketgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future