5 Mobile Game Retention Strategies Every Developer Needs to Adopt

The most important metric to gauge the success of the mobile game is the number of downloads, Right?

Indeed, it is as it signifies how users are compelled enough to install your game. But that’s not all, the relatively underrated, Game Retention Rate is equally a crucial indicator. It tells the number of users returning to play the game over again even after a certain period from the install date. Generally, the intervals discussed here from the date of install are Day 1, Day 7, and Day 30.

The recurring users in the longer-run are the backbone of free-to-play games as they directly add to the Lifetime Value (LTV) users put in from the install date.

How to Calculate Mobile Game Retention?

Game Retention = Number of User Still Playing Game After (N) Time / Total Users Installed Game at the Launch Date x 100

The ‘N’ here signifies the number of days from the game launch date with respect to the user still playing the game. Meanwhile, the user uninstalling or not playing the game for one or another reason is known as the Churn Rate, which is the exact opposite of the Retention Rate.

The churn rate asserts how a user isn’t fond of the game anymore after several days of playing or even opting out on the same date of install. Whilst, the retention rate is about the user loving the game to an extent playing it again and again even after several days or weeks.

Impact of Mobile Game Retention on Game Monetization

Monetizing your Mobile Game isn’t that easy there are already tons of similar category games facing off in the App and Play Store. The developers facing the beat are always on the hunt to get effective yet easy to execute strategies to maximize their Ad revenue.

Improving Mobile Game retention has a real-time impact on revenue, especially when developers count on in-App advertising as their major monetization strategy. User retention not only leads to quality engagement but also helps in designing the user-acquisition and retargeting process. Other than that, it also boosts the CPM and engagement, which easily translates into higher revenue.

5 Proven Mobile Game Retention Strategies for Developers

Personalized & Actionable Push Notifications

Push Notifications are intrusive and annoying at times – but this only happens when they are not well-directed and are pushed at a very wrong time. Imagine, getting notified about the morning walk at 2 am from the healthcare App you downloaded last week. So, the best practice to direct push notification is to interact with the user in a personalized way and make it actionable for a user to start playing the game again as early as possible.

Cohort Analysis Right from the Start

Cohort Analysis is the tool that keeps track of the number of active users from time to time and the quality of engagement as well. It indicates that user acquisition is important, but retaining the users to play the game for a longer time is not less important than anything. Cohort Analysis with active user data right from the date of launch let game developers understand the player behavior and make effective and timely changes accordingly.

Offer Incentives & Initiate Reward Program

The active players of your game are ambassadors in one or another way. Apart from playing it frequently, they spread the word too within their friends and family or even on social media at times. All this little love works wonder as word-of-mouth is a force to reckon with. In a gesture to give it back to your loyal users and ensure retention in the longer-run, game developers should introduce reward programs or incentives that might only be used within the game.

Stay Active Across Social Media

Whether you’re a business or a celebrity, opting out of social media won’t be the wisest of the moves. People talk, share, or even vent on social media and that’s your chance to engage, entertain or educate them. Staying active on all social mediums maximize your chance to acquire or retain users. The user who has forgotten to play the game after installing might revert after seeing your posts and Ads on social media, and that’s when retention will work your way.

Keep Improving UX

You can’t negate the User Experience these days as bad UX means user uninstalling your game right away. In contrary to that, if the user experience is great and so is the overall functionality of the game, there’s nothing that would stop the user from playing the game again and again. Another thing to keep noted here is keep improving your game’s UX now and then while keeping the user behavior and data in check.

There are dozens of ways ensuring mobile game retention, but some of them backfire as they are too pushy or costs the developer an arm and a leg. So, rather than over-optimizing or going out of the box for no good, keeping up with the above-mentioned modest yet effective strategies is a better choice.