32.5% — conversion of pre-registrations to installations from the Infinity Ops shooter (Azur Games case and Zorka.Mobi )

In April of this year, Azur Games conducted an experiment. She built part of the Infinity Ops shooter advertising campaign on pre-registration and working with video bloggers through an agency Zorka.Mobi . About the results of the experiment — in our material.

Infinity OpsPre-registration

The essence of pre-registration is to place the application page in the mobile store without the ability to install or buy it. Instead, the user can mark on the page by clicking on the “Register” button that he is interested in the project. Activating the button ensures that as soon as the game is released, the user will receive a notification.

The advantages of pre-registration are obvious. The tool even before the project is launched allows you to:

• assess demand;
• tell the target audience about the game at an early stage;
• convert pre-marketing activities to users;
• and, most importantly, to guarantee a certain number of downloads at the start.

However, despite this, as well as the fact that Google introduced the pre—registration functionality into its mobile store three years ago, and Apple a year ago, the tool cannot yet be called very popular with game developers. However, the situation is changing now. Large companies (at the level of Supercell, Electronic Arts and Bethesda) are increasingly resorting to it.

Blizzard has also launched pre-registration for its new mobile game

This spring, Azur Games decided to try to launch the game, before opening a pre-registration for it. She viewed this activity primarily as an experiment. The company was interested in how influencer marketing and performance marketing work at the pre-registration stage of the game, as well as what the conversion from registrations to installations will be.

Preparations and promotion

The experiment was conducted on the Infinity Ops freetuplane shooter, which is being prepared for a worldwide release * on Google Play**. His pre-registration page appeared two weeks before the launch of the game on April 18.

* excluding the CIS, where the project had already been released by that time, and China.
** now the game is already available on iOS.

With the launch of the game page, Azur Games launched a marketing campaign, the purpose of which was to form a user base of 1 million pre-registrations on Google Play by the time the game was launched.

The attraction went in two directions:

• performance marketing via Facebook;
• working with opinion leaders.

In the first case, the company worked independently. However, to build a campaign based on the influence of video bloggers, Azur Games contacted a marketing agency Zorka.Mobi .

The involvement of a third-party company can be explained by the fact that working with bloggers cannot be automated, its effectiveness is not always predicted. In other words, the customer needs to constantly negotiate with bloggers, coordinate creatives, monitor the production and release of commercials, while a significant effect will not always be. Therefore, it is cheaper and more efficient to give this work to a partner.

It was decided to make YouTube the main working platform for working with opinion leaders. It was also decided to shift the focus of promotion from the English-speaking world to Latin America, where most of the audience uses Android, not iOS. This was done in order to minimize the loss of traffic (viewers with Apple devices, which are widespread in the United States, if they liked the game, could not subscribe to it at that time, because the upcoming campaign was Android-oriented).

Then Zorka.Mobi I agreed with 13 bloggers, whose fans corresponded to the target audience of Infinity Ops, that everyone would shoot a video about the game, which they did.

Media plan with data on the audience of selected bloggers (as of 28.03.2018)Promotion results

As a result of the campaign (please note, we are talking about both performance marketing via Facebook and working with bloggers), the game had 1.3 million pre-registrations by the time of release. Zorka.Mobi He notes that the volume of traffic from the influencer campaign amounted to about 28% of the total number of pre-registrations.

However, the most important figure of the campaign is the conversion from pre—registrations to real installations. It was 32.5% in the case of Infinity Ops.

Azur Games note that they are satisfied with the case, however, it seems to us how profitable it is to promote pre—registration is still an open question, since the developer here pays not for downloading, but for sending a push about the release to a potentially interested user.

On the other hand, there are two points that speak in favor of using such a tool. The first: the cost of registration can be significantly lower than the cost of downloading, which will justify itself with a high conversion. Second: the push of installations, which leads to pre-registration on the release, increases the position of the game in the top, which means it additionally leads to new organics.

Also on the topic:

• How to Choose which game to develop — Azur Games story
• Brawl Stars scored 5 million pre-registrations in a day