Nordeus: Measure everything that happens in your game

The Appintop podcast interviewed Nebojša Radović, marketing manager at Nordeus, the authors of one of the most popular mobile football games – Top Eleven. The printed version of the conversation with the kind permission of the podcast we publish on App2Top.ru .

Hi! What is the monthly audience of active users in iOS and Android apps today?

Hi! We usually don’t disclose such information, but I can say that both of these segments are growing, and the web as a whole is in decline. Android is taking an increasing share, outside of Europe and the USA — in Asia — its popularity is very high. In some countries, such as Korea, the penetration of Android devices reaches 80-90%. 

Do you think it’s better to bet on Android outside of the United States?

There is a big difference between the web and mobile platforms. The web is more viral, but on Android it is easier to attract users to improve positions. There are a lot of opportunities in terms of improving the rating.

iOS users are much more expensive, and it is more difficult to increase their number. Maybe Android is growing faster simply because more devices are running on it.

You buy a lot of advertising: could you distribute paid channels in terms of their importance, volume and profitability?

The Top Eleven game started on Facebook in 2010. After that, entering mobile platforms was a logical step — the mobile market grew. We still value Facebook because it has given us all the necessary knowledge and know-how to make a successful mobile game. That’s why we rely on Facebook even in mobile.

We use Facebook to attract new players and that’s why we invest a lot in it. In addition, we are constantly testing various mobile advertising networks, as well as working at Google. To get the best result, you need to try and test everything.

Are you getting a return on your investment?

Definitely. It also depends on the country. Some countries are more expensive than others. Somewhere users are more viral, invite friends, because they like to play with them. When you paint everything on paper and try to calculate the real cost of attraction, you realize that advertising certainly makes sense. That’s why we have so much of it.

How does your partnership program with football clubs work?

To build a successful sports brand, it is necessary to work with football clubs. People can buy all the official products of these clubs right in our game, they appreciate this opportunity as another way to demonstrate their passion.

Revenue may vary from country to country, but this is an important part of the strategy, although perhaps not as profitable as other features.

How do you deal with copyrights? Are you paying for them?

We work with clubs directly, which means that all issues are resolved directly with the club. There are certain rules to follow. For example, you cannot work with more than two clubs in the same country. Sometimes it’s income sharing, sometimes you pay a fixed amount, and then at the end of the year it’s easy to calculate how much money was earned in the game on items with official symbols.

And what benefits do you bring to the club?

We try to maintain a very close relationship. For example, when they release a new set of jerseys, these products are advertised in the game. The monthly audience exceeds 12 million people, so the clubs only benefit from this. On the other hand, they advertise us, because the more players buy, the more the club will earn. It’s a mutual interest, that’s why we love working with clubs so much.

Let’s talk about cross-marketing: how to move the audience from the web to mobile and back?

Usually people who play the game on multiple platforms are more enthusiastic and spend more money. If you are a developer, it is important for you to understand this and make every effort to get such a loyal audience.

Top Eleven is a game for Facebook. If Facebook social graph is used, you can find out if your Facebook users use the mobile version. If not, you should invite them to play on the phone.

Why is this important?

For example, everyone is on vacation, and you want people to play your game even on holidays — it is important to be able to move users to a mobile platform so that they can play every day.

On the other hand, if your game is implemented on a mobile platform, and you want to move users to the web, you can integrate their Facebook accounts and send notifications inviting them to play on the web. In this regard, Facebook is very useful, and developers should definitely invest as much effort as possible in this direction.

How much research have you done to find out if your users are interested in switching between mobile and the web?

We had this idea from the very beginning. Top Eleven was one of the first games for mobile platforms that managed to find a simple way to solve this problem. Players can easily switch between platforms using their Facebook accounts.

We wanted to expand our user base by giving the opportunity to play to those who do not use Facebook. We also wanted existing users to play all the time, which meant that we had to go to mobile. We are still trying to bring players who play on the web to mobile, and to pull out those who are limited to mobile platforms so far.

Which platforms are most important for Top Eleven at the moment? What is your priority: Android, iOS or Facebook?

It depends on the country. If your target audience is in the USA, you need to focus your efforts on iOS. On the other hand, it is necessary to be present on Android. For example, in Korea, a lot of people prefer Android.

In short, Android is important to us in Asia and partly in Europe, and iOS is important in developed countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia and some European countries, for example, in Germany and the UK.

Now the mobile sphere is showing the greatest growth, which is why we spend a lot of time improving the game for mobile customers, but this does not mean that we do not care about Facebook. Facebook users are monetized very well: some players have been with us for more than 4 years, this is not so easy to achieve in mobile. That is why it is necessary to distribute efforts between all three platforms in order to get the most out of them.

You mentioned that Australia and Canada are key countries for you, but they are usually not associated with a large number of football fans, so why are these markets so important to you?

In fact, we cannot say that they are key, but these countries really occupy an important place. There are a lot of iOS users out there who are usually better monetized. For example, the USA is not a very football country, but there are more than three hundred million inhabitants there. Even if only 10% of them like football, it still turns out more than in European countries.

When people say: “We won’t go to the USA because there aren’t as many football fans there as in Germany,” they overlook a huge number of players who love football and spend money on it. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to these countries.

Which three countries bring you the most income?

In this regard, Top Eleven is not unique: countries such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland bring decent income. Asia is a separate story, these markets are a little more difficult to stake out, you will have to change tactics for this, but the efforts are fully justified: Japanese and Korean players willingly part with money.

30% of your audience are teenagers. How do you have a relationship with them?

Young users, of course, cannot spend as much money as adults spend, and they do not have their own bank cards. But they have much more time than the older generation. Adults spend money on “pumping” the team, and young people train more, they like to share their successes, compete with friends. Therefore, their importance should not be underestimated.

You sell branding and product placement; can you name at least one example of successful branding?

Advertising is not the last place in the game. We worked with Gillette in Turkey. We are currently working with Google. You can play the Champions League on Google Play or participate in Google-branded tournaments.

And how does this affect profits?

This type of monetization works only once, but in the first 2-3 months it can serve as a serious income item. As a rule, you can get more in this way than with the help of standard advertising inside the application or through the placement of offervols inside the game.

What types of payments are most often made by users?

I may be wrong, but in my opinion, the first place is the purchase of tokens for new players. The second number is the development of facilities: if you want a large stadium or some other game object, the easiest way is to buy it in the game. And number three is buying club paraphernalia: users want to show that they are passionate about a certain topic. People like to show that they support Arsenal, Real Madrid or another club — this is a huge source of income for us.

Your international expansion is impressive — Top Eleven has been translated into 38 languages. Why are you localizing the game in languages that are not even available in the App Store?

I’m from Serbia, where the only way to buy an iPhone is to go to the USA for it. At the same time, 350 thousand people in Serbia have an iPhone, and this should be taken into account when creating a game. Maybe the Serbs don’t have their own app store, but there are people who want to play games and spend some money on them.

From the outside, it may seem that translating into so many languages requires too much time and effort. But when you have a translated game, it’s much easier to attract users to it.

What about countries where payment systems are not developed or charge large fees? Are you localized in such countries just for more coverage?

Even in a small country there are real fans who are ready to spend some time translating the game and making it available in their own language.

Do you think this is important even in countries like Thailand or Indonesia?

Football is very popular in these countries as well. In Thailand, for example, people wait until two in the morning to watch a Champions League match, they are really passionate about football. 

You have a powerful team of analysts, how do you work with them?

We have established the interaction of a team of analysts, marketing and business development. This allows us to detect in time that in some country, for example, there are 10 thousand players who are very passionate about the game and spend a lot of money on it.

And then what happens?

We discuss this with a team of analysts and ask the marketing team to find out what the cost of attracting in this particular country is, whether it is too high or, conversely, it is worth investing more money in this market.

After that, we communicate with the business development team. For example, we analyze what will happen in a particular country if we invest 10% more, whether traffic will grow by 10% or 15%, or maybe only 5%. We always strive to track these correlations, and our analysts are very strong in this.

If we talk about the marketing of sports games, what three tips could you give to developers?

Measure everything that happens in your game. Without this, it is very difficult to do something meaningful. After that, you can move forward, which means spending more money. If you don’t have money, you need to understand which channels give the greatest natural growth, bring the highest quality users. If all the analytics processes are set up, you will build a truly successful game. The second tip is specifically for those developers who have to operate on a limited budget. Focus on virality, use various social networks, increase your rating in the App Store by increasing the number of reviews, work with all sites that are ready to publish such reviews, bring as many users as possible. Then you will be able to understand their behavior. And then, when your budget increases, you will be able to spend it much smarter and attract even more users.

As the wisdom says, love what you do, and you won’t have to work a single day in your life!

Thanks for the interview!

You can listen to the original podcast here.