Urban Airship Wants to Make Promotional Push Notifications More Useful
A tactic used recently by games in order to try and get players to play more is to use push notification messages that promote the game. For example, Gameloft games often promote item sales, and others just serve as ways to remind the player that they have this game installed, and that they should play it.
However, Urban Airship is proposing that there’s a better way to do push notifications from games, to find ways to get players engaged in a way that will get them to come back more often. They have a partnered up with GamesAnalytics in order to analyze the way that players play, in order to tailor special offers via notifications to get players re-engaged with games.
For example, developers who use the platform can track player behavior in order to tailor messages and offers to them. For example, for users who might be at risk of churning out of the game, a bonus could be given to encourage them to play the game again. Or, for those who are likely to spend a lot of money, an offer could be pushed that would encourage them to spend more than they may have before. The platform will be available for both iOS and Android.
Urban Airship CEO Christopher Dean believes that this could be extremely beneficial to those in the mobile business to retain valuable users. “Push messaging can deliver a dramatic uplift in user engagement and retention, especially when context is considered to deliver truly relevant and targeted messages. Our partnership with GamesAnalytics helps streamline the triggering of messages that hit the mark from the user’s perspective and positively impact the publisher’s bottom-line.”
However, the concern is that at least on an anecdotal basis when communicating with mobile gamers, these push notifications are seen as potential annoyances to users, because they are inherently self-promotional, However, for developers willing to take the risk, enhancing the value of the notifications they do provide could prove to be beneficial to not just their bottom line, but also to users who want to find reasons to stay engaged with games.
