Tactile Games’ Plamen Stefanov On Bringing Breakout Success To Your Casual Game

[Music] thank you hello world welcome back to the pg.biz podcast as ever I am your host and joining me as always is the insightful incisive and inquisitive piggy ourselves good morning Peggy how are you good morning Brian you are in top form you have alliteration today I see I have been well caffeinated Peggy there you go and uh and and slightly um let's just say a different turn you've got a different Studio you want to uh share that with us is this your new look this is this is the look that says I was woken up at 6am by a labrador that had a pressing need um and until I switched my camera on I hadn't actually looked in the mirror I was actually more into the background book it's like a little bit of a Regal look because I think you're somewhere in the highlands probably a really cool BNB

hey well this is this is the summer Castle uh you know there are so many castles in Scotland to give them out to all in Sundry so so this is the summer one no actually I'm I'm uh in the center of Edinburgh um within spitting distance of the actual castle and we're gearing up of course for the uh Edinburgh Festival the world's largest Arts Festival which is going to kick off uh in just over a week and that's where the population of the city doubles so I'm going to be based here hopefully for the duration just to make sure that we're live at the heart of it all so you are in the middle of this amazing art scene and we're touching down in the world of casual games this week because we're looking at a breakout success and strategy that has allowed an app to reach amazing Heights the company is tactile probably best known for making story match three games the biggest title you might have heard of it Lily's Garden right generated

517 million dollars worldwide in lifetime player spending across App Store and Google Play According to data.ai which will be our guest at some point soon Brian and uh looking forward to already Peggy yeah and the lifetime spend of that magnitude requires of course a great game effective UA and we welcome Plum and stefanov he started with tactile right after getting his bachelor's degree in 2021 so he's been there not for a long time but has had Milestone accomplishments that's why he's called out also as liftoff mobile hero for exactly this his prowess in UA and when he isn't working Magic on the job in UA he spends his time with his free roaming pet rabbit so it fits the bill Bryan and we welcome him welcome great to have you Plowman it's good to be here guys thank you so much before we start we have two

very important questions Plumbing first of all what's your rabbit's name his name is Andy Andy the rabbit perfect that fits in love it every every rabbit should have a sensible name like Andy rather nibbles and the second equally important question is tactile or tactile tactile excellent we like you you can stay that's wonderful so Planet you're you're a UE user acquisition manager but but that means a lot of things now and far more than just acquiring users you you have to meet targets so can you give us an idea of your of your daily job the sort of tasks that you do the targets that you have to try and meet as part of of the tactile team my daily routine is pretty much going uh like 8 30 and then first thing in the morning refreshing all my dashboards uh because um I have dartboard for each binder I

work with and then we need to refresh them in order to get the most recent data so that will be the first thing I do in the morning uh when I go to work and then it's uh pretty much more or less the usual everyday which is checking performance uh usually uh how I do is I have uh Focus day for each partner uh just so I can check all the metrics and don't miss anything and then depending on the day uh I also check creative refresh creatives and then in terms of optimization I would say we optimize towards uh day seven uh Ross that's our go-to uh why we chose day seven is uh because uh when our data sound team comes up with targets uh then we evaluated that if we achieve a certain day 7 R was Ross then on uh depending on the game uh we were to

break even that makes a great deal of sense because obviously the whole notion of user acquisition continues to change and the and the challenges that you face um are growing and and changing so tell us a little bit about your background you know um Peggy mentioned that you left University and started at tactile but that's not always a straightforward path so what were you studying and can you give us some of the the sort of the areas where you think uh it helps you to be a UA manager and a good UE manager at that yeah well uh I started more of a like a B2B marketing for physical products uh not really uh advertising related but then because I studied in Denmark originally I'm from Bulgaria uh one of the semesters here it's mandatory to have internship and that's where I actually fall in love with advertising because the reminder ship I work with the Google search ads and Facebook ads so from that point I knew that I'm not

interested in the B2B stuff I want to do digital marketing have you always been interested in games with games kind of a career path or was this just too good an opportunity to pass up no no actually um in high school I was addicted to world Warcraft played a lot of that and I always like from that time I mean I imagined myself working in a company that makes games I didn't really imagine doing a user acquisition because I didn't know which existed as a position I was more dreaming about playing the game or like a QA maybe yeah but uh I would say it was my dream to work in a company that makes uh games fantastic well welcome to the games industry and how have you been enjoying it so far oh it's wonderful every day is uh like I feel like a dream come true to be honest I I don't regret for a moment making that touch so a part of the dream and I

wouldn't say it's the opposite I wouldn't say it's a nightmare but it certainly is the challenge it's that constant optimizing of campaigns because of course performance is a moving Target now you are optimizing to day seven row as you're also moving more to retention I understood when we were talking also in prep and actually all UA managers are moving at some level to life cycle marketing and looking okay day seven I get it optimized to that that's your Breakeven point but you're a breakout success so it must be more than that I mean for sure uh as you mentioned attention is so important because um if you have like retention is color related to Ross pretty much because retention points to user being interested in the product and then if they are interested in the world then that will result in earning money from that product so retention for sure it is uh very important uh and especially if

um launching a new game for example then that will be your main magic to optimize towards because at first you are not sure if the game will monetize well so orientation is the Magic in kind need to aim for in order to make sure that later on uh users will be engaged UAE is is a science informed by data but but it's also according to many people something of a black heart so it's not quite as cut and dried as follow the numbers do what the data tells you so what is your approach to this is it is it just is it hard and fast look at the numbers or is there room for kind of creativity and innovation of course uh there is room for creativity because uh that will be related to the ads that we use we do collaborate with our creative team so we do give them uh suggestions and ideas so maybe what we see Works based on our campaigns or based on uh

like competitor companies because they are like a different third partner tools that we can use to check those so I would say the room for creativity is understanding why your Arts work and that's something you can communicate to the creative team and then they can iterate on those uh suggestions So based on that do you do you have a preferred approach do you have something you can talk to the marketers In Their audience you know what advice would you give them if they're facing the same kind of challenges once you know the game's out there it's maybe a success you know can you can you pass on any expert hints or tips just do a lot of creative testing and don't do it with one partner like do it with multiple partners because every kind of every model has its own understanding um and then we also have like different networks that are targeting different user segments and different placements so again best tip will be test with

multiple partners um and then test a lot of videos you see that that changed with some of the some of the amazing guests we've had in the past on the podcast where anyone involved in in UE it all seems to come back to test test often test across a whole range of of creatives of Partners and audiences and don't be afraid to test more and more and more and and one question I have for your appointment is you talk about the partners and I hear two different things actually in the industry I hear try new channels try new partners and then I hear people say no no no we're at a time where you should stick with you know five or less The Usual Suspects and no risk which Camp do you fall into maybe like last year if you asked then I would say yeah focus on what you know it works but now we are more of um exploring if I can say like this so I would say yeah testing new partners is

so always good but then you also have to have like the files that are doing a good job so you can have uh like a experimental budget if we are refer to it as so it's a little bit more experimental now and the interesting thing about tactile is it's not just successful because of UA it's also successful because of the story right it's um it's a story that the audiences love because it's mostly made up of women like myself who love realism in stories I mean you have you have love you have divorce you have diversity you have it all now a creative and a game for that matter wins when the audiences love it now you've nailed that story what can you share about what women want in the creatives and what resonates with them from what I've seen uh our target audience prefer uh like a sad emotions or not positive emotions that's what I've seen so they do like a lot of

sadness sorrow pain maybe even it seems like there are no data engaged with positive emotions like smiling happiness having a good time they prefer yeah the main characters suffering oh my what does it make a sound like a melodrama okay so I mean in my opinion it's more like if you see only at the character is happy then you are like yes that's good but then if you see the sad emotion then woman will feel like yeah I have to help that character that's why they are more engaged that's that's what I think at least you see I I think that might be quite Universal because if you look at just some of the other games out there and I'm not going to name names but you know some of the match 3 titles that are advertised really heavily it's always somebody playing the game very very poorly you know almost infuriatingly badly so that you go no I

have to jump I can do better than that so it's kind of encouraging you so I think the that character's sad I can help you know I know what to do and I think speaks to quite a broad audience but obviously the particular demographic for your game I I think yeah that that's that's a strong approach that says a lot actually if you think about it because it says that because we see so much that we have to have a positive creative I just read a report recently that positivity Reigns supreme but this is no have a creative that shows you are needed to help that you are important that you're going to make a difference here and that that actually makes a difference um in the numbers and the conversion in the funnel is that what you're seeing plumen yes yes that's what we're seeing um and every time we test it that's the results we are always open to testing new stuff and of course we as a company we would prefer uh focusing on the happiness and smiles enjoy instead of

depressing stuff but at the end of the day numbers is what matters most because we we do need to have profit I kind of want to stay on that topic for for a second because in terms of the formats that you use you know we know we know that video is effective and as you you've just covered it's like looking at the the sort of the characters who need help making the player feel needed um is is clearly effective but but what else do you do to kind of connect with your players you know and again it's a majority female audience you know have you found any other sort of ways of connecting with them outside just make it sad and people will hop right along well we tried many stuff like banners work sometime of course inventory is not that big for balance so they don't scale so we are primarily video and also the reason for that not only the inventory size uh which was obvious one but then we are very active story driven game so

with videos we can share our story and we can just because it's like a regular girl when she is facing some real real life issues that everyone could face that's why with videos we have the ability to share the story of that character so that way gyna users can get attached to her for example then with banners or static images then you can already share a story with them or with data formats that's why for us video with the best performing are there any other evasions or trends that around your radar and to kind of maintain that position at the top of the mind and I you know other ways to attract you know other player types seems like it's a big training our field is including mini games uh that complement the main game so that's something we also started testing a long time ago

um last year maybe it was it took us a while uh to find out the winning concept or the concept that actually uh engages users more than before uh because sometimes it actually has negative effect that if if your characteristics is not like the new type of games inside your main game so I would say that's one way to really start uh improving the engagement of users and in terms of many games can you give us any example of you know the the type of game and how you're implementing it and experimenting and then detesting uh with them yes so uh first of all how we start is uh if we see a concept of mini game world would uh during creative testing so that's the first step implementing that uh a mini game into a creative and testing that and then if we see that new users are actually engaged

with that video video app then we can share that feedback with the pro team and then they can start working on how to test that in the actual game that will be our uh way of implementing uh so if of course it comes from us when we do competitive analysis for example then we get an idea we see someone else is doing something that might work they will share that feedback with the creative team and then they can put that gameplay inside the video and then it just it's up to us the UI team to test that Circle then if we see some concept showing uh promising results then we're going to share that with the product team so it is like a long process I guess so yeah comparatively that that makes sense but but also you seem to be getting quite a virtuous circle so if the mini game works you can take that and turn it into video and so you you know you get multiple bites of the Cherry uh as it

were yeah exactly but uh for us usually it's uh we also test the new uh teams for the mini games or new levels uh for many games uh with videos first because that's the easiest to produce then kind of the cheapest to test in introducing it in the product is uh pretty much the last step in the funnel so so everything feeds into everything else and it's in Italy yes exactly exactly so Plumbing you you very family user acquisition you are UE not product but what we're finding in a lot of the top Studios that um the teams work together and work together quite closely to come up with good games and features um and then how do you get it out in front of the audience how does this work at tactile uh pretty much the same uh we we do have uh scheduled meetings with the product team where we share our UA experiments or something if we're testing or how things are going in general and then the protein will share if they

did some tests in the game and the results of those so pretty much we share uh we communicate all the time sometimes we even complement each other so if they are planning to test some new feature for new users then we might start uh campaign just to bring more users to increase the the data size so we I would yeah I would say it's the same with everyone like with everyone else how did the testing results work in terms of what flies in the minigame you know are you giving the the product team um feedback are they kind of coming in with their own um ideas and in terms of testing results you know how does the how does the whole cycle work yeah so I mean pretty much uh first we test the Concept in a creative then they implement the exact same mini game Concept in the game already with the same team and stuff and then test it to a smaller size and then

they will come back to us in saying okay we tested with this amount of users then they perform plus minus some percentage compared to the control and the control is obviously the users that do not receive the test game the test mini game so that that's our usual process that's what we discussed when we meet and that's what you followed then for um what is the name of the mini game again I'm sorry was it pulled a pin am I correct or yes okay so you followed it for that is that what you followed is that the blueprint now that's pretty much the case so we saw com it was working well for competitors then we uh uploaded uh some videos first we test of course we tested some videos containing that type of mini game then upload it to actual companies everything scale immediately from day one so that was our pretty much green light to test that in the product so they test they saw positive impact could be retention could

be conversions that could be many different Matrix but they saw overall positive impact so that's why they released to most users I give a lot of great advice and that's what you've also done in a recent blog and we'll give that also in the show notes where people can go audience can go and read it and you've gone through like the metrics it's almost like a glossary these are all the metrics you need to know to optimize marketing casual games but looking at what you know games marketers do what do you think they either do well or possibly even missing on that list of metrics and where they need to improve or up their game for me it's always about digging deeper and deeper into the matches just because every metric that Matrix is pretty much influenced by some other metrics and then you have to be deep into the funnel of like the message and then I mean at some point you end up reaching the ceiling so you cannot go

deeper but then you should have a pretty good hypothesis on what to test in order to improve that that's pretty much my my Approach like always the deeper into the metrics when I hear this brand you know I'm just thinking it's uh it's kind of a good thing maybe that AI is coming into all this because if I have to look at everything all the time and then go deeply into everything all the time that just sounds massive that sounds like a lot of heavy lifting yeah there's a lot of data coming out of even the simplest mobile games Peggy so either you know we're working large teams or maybe there is a rule where technology can simplify things so um planet do you guys have an eye on the AI or are you already making plans and how you could potentially use this to to help get that sort of insight and drill it even deeper yeah for sure I mean like like everyone else we are looking into that uh from a

UA perspective I can say that it will not take our jobs because uh we also do a lot of uh I can say like relationship management just because we need to speak with partners and understand how they see things on their end so that's something AI cannot take away from us like the human to human relation that's something AI cannot yet to do at least but for the metrics and stuff I do agree you can you can do some uh cool stuff and then I can check that for you and in a way inform you if uh A change is happening but at the end of the day it will also be hard to take the decision because sometimes it's not just a black and white sometimes it could be something else like even if metrics are like a dropping or increasing then uh you might know something else that will make you live and will not do any adjustments

which I guess they I might not be able to do I mean there's always a human element to our job it's efficiencies in the process rather than decision making exactly yeah that's that's how I would summarize it okay and also interesting Brian um he talked about partner management I don't think we've had many guests talk about how that's part of their job as well so that's just an interesting aspect that CRM and partner management are part of UA so yes there is a lot more than just the numbers um I would say that's my uh top three tips for someone who wants to start UA is learn how to communicate well just because it's very important to know how to speak with account managers I know that not all companies uh they the UI Majors speak with a company it would be like growth managers or business developers that do so but for our company because we are a smaller team

it's uh up to us just giving me an idea actually someday a show very soon Brian um exactly that how Indies how small companies can talk to their Partners get the best deals you know that sort of thing hey communication is everything Peggy that's that's why we're here you and I both know uh at our own cost that there are a lot of people out there who who are not necessarily comfortable with communicating let alone communicating well so um yeah maybe that's a sort of a skill set that we can we can open up and bring in to Plumbing it's we're running out of time but we're gonna have to kind of bring things to a screeching halt so before we do um we have a couple equations that we ask all of our guests and we'll give you a second or two to think about it the first one is what you're playing right now and games wise and what's kind of you know obsessing you on whatever format whatever platform you have and then the second and more important one is what's your favorite game of all time

so you know nothing trivial it's a CS go where I play modes for your passwords but then on my phone I play our new game because for me the mechanics are incredibly well done so I played this one it's called makeover match and then the other game I played it's called Uh much Masters I think but it is a much cheaper game but uh multiplayer much again so you do compete with other people and I have like a competitive nature so I like competing with others that's why I kind of like this game you mentioned World of Warcraft so you know that's that's pretty much all competitive PVP so I I hear you that that would be those uh three games are my go-to the past couple of weeks and and of all time okay that's something I don't have um maybe I'll say World of Warcraft Just because I was a kid and then that was like huge to me uh nowadays it's not I don't really feel

that close connection to games as I used to hey you know you grew up you get a job all of a sudden you discover that you there are other things you can do on a on a laptop like you know work earn a living but who knows we may come the full circle and play to earn will be a will be a real thing and you can go back into World of Warcraft and and you know make a make a new career there I'm just going to thank you Plumbing so much for coming sharing and I learned a lot also about now effective UA but also sort of emotional uh UA that's a great lesson to take away as well that uh creatives can be very very human at the core yeah well I'm glad it was uh interesting too because I had a great time uh it was my first so I hope I do that again sometime fantastic well for your first time I think you you've performed fantastically well really confident really interesting throughout so we would be very glad to get you back on at some point in the

near future and find out more about how things are going at tactile and um all of the lessons that you're learning in the world of UE that would be lovely 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 and 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 at pgbiz 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 forward slash podcast and we would love to hear 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 well on thepocketgamer.biz website tune in again for the next edition of the perfectgamer.biz podcast and we look forward to speaking to you in the near future until then I'm Brian baglo I'm Peggy Ann saltz and that's a wrap until next week foreign