Intelligent Artifice, formerly the Mobile User Acquisition Show

Our guest today is Jayvian Hong. Jayvian heads Strategic Partnerships at Miniclip. Over the past few years, Jayvian has developed deep partnerships with the App Store and Google Play Store. These partnerships obviously weren’t formed overnight but took time, effort and patience. 

While initially she and her team had to work hard to find their footing with the big platforms, Jayvian and her team’s persistence and strategy eventually paid off.  Today, she is a mentor on a program that the Play Store has in place to support indie studios.

Jayvian also co-founded Game Changers, a monthly webinar series that features exceptional women in the gaming industry and revolves around leadership, game design, marketing and much more. 

In today’s episode, Jayvian recalls the initial years of her partnership with both the App Store and Google Play Store and shares some strategies for game developers to build crucial relationships with the big platforms that can drive more than just featuring-based installs.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS:
🥁 The beginnings of Jayvian’s collaboration with app platforms

 🕋 Why app platforms are considered to be black boxes

 🤗 When did app platforms become receptive of Jayvian’s communication

🎰 The criteria to qualify for a shot at getting featured on the app platforms

 📉 What has more impact while pitching? Stories or metrics

📓 How to prep app platforms for an app launch

💪🏼Is featuring on an app platform as powerful as it used to be? 

🎮How Jayvian worked with Google Play to tap into the Indian gaming market

🎭 Common mistakes made by developers when pitching their products to app platforms

👩‍🎤 How indie developers can take the first steps to establishing an association with app platforms

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Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-build-lasting-partnerships-with-itunes-and-google-play-app-stores-with-jayvian-hong/
**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

A few weeks ago, we released an episode on balancing monetization and retention. We talked about improving user experience to enhance retention by getting rid of monetization. However, this does not always work. We did say that it’s not a one size fits all solution. 

In this episode, we talk about another hack that can be used to improve your app’s retention – adding monetization barriers. Sounds confusing, but it’s a strategy that has worked successfully.

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Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-monetization-barriers-can-improve-retention/
**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

MMM based incrementality models: Is it the light at the end of the tunnel?

Post IDFA, we were quite skeptical about employing MMM based incrementality analyses in our measurements. Our opinions have changed over time and today, we believe that these models have helped us in our measurements significantly. 

However, it’s not always hunky-dory. There have been quite a few challenges that we encountered on the way. On the upside, we’ve also figured out how to overcome these challenges.

In this episode, we go over the key limitations of employing MMM based incrementality analysis and include steps to mitigate these limitations.

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Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/4-challenges-of-mmm-based-incrementality-models-and-how-to-mitigate-them/
**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Our guest today is Jon Hook. Jon is the CEO at BoomHits, a mobile game publisher with many hits in the hypercasual and idle genres. 

In today’s episode, Jon tells us about how the hypercasual genre has evolved to the point where it’s approaching saturation in the form that it currently is - and outlines the next stage of its evolution - hybrid casual.  Our conversation flows around the new dynamics involved in monetization, game design, unit economics, hiring, publishing, and much more in all things hybrid. 

I highly recommend this to anyone interested in moving to hybrid games and also to those that are currently working within the genre.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🎮  Factors that contributed to the rising popularity of the hypercasual games

🎰  How the unit economics differs for hypercasual and hybrid games

💰 Key motivators for players to spend $ on IAPs

 Tips to move from a hypercasual to a hybrid game

 💻 What resources should developers look at adding to build a hybrid game

📓 The different publishing strategies for both the genres

⛔️ Common mistakes to avoid when moving from a hypercasual to a hybrid genre

**
Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-hybrid-games-combine-the-simplicity-of-hypercasual-and-depth-of-casual-games/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

How many times did you think to yourself “Well, that 60 min meeting could’ve been a 5 min email!”?

Today's guest is Brett Nowak. Brett is the founder of Liquid & Grit, a product research company for games that creates actionable reports about new game features and industry trends for game developers. Prior to this, Brett spent a big chunk of his career working with different gaming studios.

Today we discuss the zero meeting workplace - a system that’s provided efficiency, flexibility and quality of life to both employers and employees. Brett highlights examples from his own experience implementing this culture in his own team as it has grown to 46 people - showing just what is possible if you just question assumptions. 

Much like we did after our last interview with Brett on hiring, we at Rocketship HQ implemented some of these practices as a completely asynchronous team spread across the world. 

This is perhaps a peek into what the future holds for workspaces - and there are lessons here for everyone, irrespective of whether you’re remote, in-office or somewhere in between.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🤝 What  inspired Brett to initially minimize meetings

⚖️ How meetings bring about bias in the workplace

📈 How to operationalize processes to scale your company

🔺 The change begins at the top

💰 Doing away with meetings makes the company more profitable

🗂 Documenting all processes smoothens out logistics

⚒ Tools to support the no-meeting workspace

 Emotional cues still work only face to face

 🛍 Workplace banter doesn’t contribute to profitability

 🧩 The elements of making the zero meeting workplace concept a success

🤼‍♂️  Weekly review meetings are unnecesary for the most part

**
Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-zero-meeting-workplace-with-brett-nowak-founder-at-liquid-and-grit/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

What does it take for an indie studio founded by someone with no game design experience  to achieve 100 million downloads?

Our guest in today’s episode is Sheetal Bairamadgi. Sheetal is the founder of Crikey, a game studio based in Sydney. Sheetal began her career as a digital marketing manager, and after working with a number of apps during her tenure as Chief Marketing Officer at Leadbolt, Sheetal decided to  start her own gaming studio, Crikey. Crikey has a number of games to its credit, and the most popular one is Phone Case DIY which got 100 million downloads within a couple months of release.

In today’s episode, Sheetal takes us through the journey of how she envisioned Crikey and how she and her team refined the processes of their ideation and research from their early games that got lukewarm responses to their first big hit. This conversation again proves that it is possible to build hit games by focusing on research, processes and data, even if you don’t have much formal game design experience.

Key Highlights:
👾 What inspired Sheetal to transition from ad tech to game development?

👩🏻‍💻 Why Sheetal picked hypercasual games to get started with

🎮 The key challenges and learnings with Crikey's first game.

📝 The research process used by the Crikey team for coming up with game ideas.

💡Great ideas can come from anywhere - and from anyone on the team.

📱Even the app icons can make a huge difference to a game's performance.

💯 How the Crikey team learned to improve upon their processes and games as they built new games.

🙌🏽 Who Sheetal's first hire was - and why.

🥇 The roots of Crikey's first hit game - and how the idea developed into the actual game.

🔙 What Sheetal would do differently if she had to start all over again.

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Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-use-structured-tgifs-to-build-a-100-million-download-game-from-scratch-with-sheetal-bairamadgi-founder-at-crikey/

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Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Is there a secret to achieving better retention?

Marketers and app developers are often asked the same question - how can we improve retention?

Unfortunately, while there is no magic formula for this, in today’s episode, we’re sharing one strategy that helped us improve retention rates which further rippled into better monetization. This could be something worth trying if you are working on improving your retention rates as well.

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Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-find-the-balance-between-monetization-and-retention/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Danika Wilkinson is a product marketer at Social Point, where she is responsible for the overall, high level marketing strategy of one of their games. She strategises all aspects of game marketing, and guides UA specialists in performance analysis and optimisations.

Today’s conversation is an update on a topic that we discussed with Danika the last time we spoke with her on the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Today we talk about how she and her team completely  revamped  their creative process – and broke out of a creative rut.

We go in depth about what inspired them to hit the reset button, what the elements of the reset looked like, what some of their challenges were, and how Danika brought different teams together to work towards a single goal to revamp their creative process. 

There are so many insights in this conversation for those of us that are often hesitant to bring about big changes in workflow, and for those of us wanting to unlock new creative winners for their marketing – and I highly recommend this.

Key Highlights

💡 The inspiration behind resetting Social Point’s creative process

🏆 Creative winners are usually the result of a process and not ideas 

🏃🏽‍♀️ The new framework for ideating new concepts

📆 The testing process had a fixed timeline that all members were aware of

🎤 How Danika’s team overcame the miscommunication between the creative and UA teams through data literacy

🏄‍♀️ The different challenges and biases in creative testing

🚗 Moving from an IPM centric testing to a CPI centric

📱 How has the testing process changed for iOS post ATT

🎭 How company culture influences changes in workflow

Creative diversity reduces the risk of losing profitability 

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Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-break-out-of-a-creative-rut-by-resetting-your-processes-with-danika-wilkinson-product-marketing-manager-social-point/

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Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

LTV: a metric that is central to marketing decisioning. While it is an important metric to decide further budget allocations, it’s important to understand that there is no one single objective way to define this. 

In this short episode, we outline the different ways in which LTV can be defined - there is no one single correct way, and why it’s important to be clear about exactly what definition we’re talking about. 

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Check out the show notes here: https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/why-your-ltv-might-differ-from-your-analysts-ltv/

**

Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

In today’s episode, we’re in conversation with Jerome Turnbull. Jerome is Vice President of Growth at AppLovin where he helps fuel user acquisition and ad monetization for the games made by AppLovin's partner studios. Jerome played a key role during the launch of Project Makeover- a game that topped the charts in just 4 days of launching with over 5 million downloads. 

Today, we deconstruct how Jerome and his team mapped out the launch strategy for Project Makeover, especially in a time of significant inflexion with Apple’s privacy policy changes on the horizon - and during the hyper-competitive Q4.There are so many learnings and gems in here - not only about launching, but also about launching and growing an app in an uncertain, challenging time: and I’m excited to present this episode to you.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS
🕹 How metrics differ for hyper casual games vs. match-3 games

🔧 The benefits of fine-tuning during the pre-launch phase 

📆 The impact of the hyper-competitive Q4 when launching an app

📣 Is cross promotion within and across other studios beneficial?

🏃🏽‍♀️Player motives that were tested out before launch of Project Makeover

👥 The team structure during the launch of Project Makeover

**
Check out the show notes here:
https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-anatomy-of-a-breakout-launch-learnings-from-project-makeover-with-jerome-turnbull-vp-of-growth-applovin/
 
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Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:
http://RocketShipHQ.com
http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog