Effective Online Gaming Customer Retention Strategies to Boost Player Loyalty

Customers are the cornerstone of every industry, but gaming companies have a particular relationship with their audience. They create traction and popularity, thrive in communities, and determine market trends. And it pays off, too: in 2023, online gaming reached $26.14 billion worldwide and is expected to grow to $32.56 billion in 2027. Competition has put an additional obstacle to the success of every online gaming business, whether it’s a casino or an MMORPG. This brings us to the goal of this article and a noticeable pain point for many: online gaming customer retention. 

It’s not enough to have a great game and an appealing platform to attract new users while preserving your relationship with the old ones. It requires understanding what your audience needs and how to remain on top despite industry changes. 

Why You Should Pay Attention to Customer Retention

Sure, retaining customers is vital, but not every company wants to adjust its strategy and existing mechanics and spend more resources to explore customer retention on something that already works. So here’s why it is worth the cost. 

• Proactive threat prevention. By paying attention to trends in your customer groups, you become more aware of the risks and needs as they emerge. This approach grants you more control over your games’ quality and gives you a view from a user’s perspective. 
• Tapping into the trends. Gamers’ preferences change every now and then, even if they prefer the same genre or type of game, and so your ability to identify what they want and give it to them is your key advantage. 
• Revenue growth. This one’s a no-brainer: the size of your customer base directly affects your revenue. Companies that repeatedly ignore what their target audiences need always face backlash and/or financial loss. 
• Stronger brand image. A satisfied user base will boost your business and emphasize your success on social media and in the gaming communities. As more companies seek to become more ethical and responsive to emerging needs, efficient retention strategies will demonstrate the readiness to change and adapt. 
• Identifying niches. Regardless of how much data you collect, your customers will always have insights that you don’t. When you proactively study improvements to help you retain existing customers, you also identify areas where you might expand. 
• Improved audience stress tolerance. If your audience is loyal, it’s less likely to feel displeased in situations of crisis. There will be times when something goes wrong. Still, a transparent company that maintains trustworthy relationships with its audience will receive a much smaller backlash compared to businesses that don’t work on their customer relationships. 

Strategies for Customer Retention

Time for action — here are our tips to keep up with your audience and be their favorite online gaming company. 

Online gaming is all about entertainment and receiving rewards. Companies that provide some advantages or perks in exchange for payment or only challenging achievements may notice a dropping level of players over time. Diversify them. For example, offer rewards for random actions within the game, such as visiting a new location or playing a particular casino game many times in a row. These will boost gaming and boost positive responses without too much commitment. Some rewards should be welcoming, just for beginners, to keep them engaged. Based on your game mechanics, it can be a time boost, free drop, or anything else. Include rare rewards for those dedicated gamers who want to showcase their skill. 

Users love feeling seen. If you’re a company with several games and want to encourage them to buy and play more, give them the option to customize their gaming profile and offer step-by-step instructions through your customer service guide. Look at Steam: this platform rewards every purchase or in-game achievement and allows them to turn into customizable profile features. Gaming isn’t impersonal; many individuals want their profiles and gaming experiences to reflect their personalities. While it won’t work for every gaming company, it’s a viable strategy for most. 

While some might hold a misconception that loyalty programs only work for physical stores, gaming can hop on the train and join the trend. Offering your gamers loyalty programs based on how long they have played your game will encourage them to remain with you. This can include discounts for certain products or in-game purchases or higher-level customer service — everything depends on your game type. Collaborating with an affiliates company can also enhance the reach and effectiveness of your loyalty programs, ensuring greater player engagement.

Gaming has multiple data sources that can introduce you to your customer profile, payment tendencies, preferences, service gaps, or game bugs. Collect information from the payment process, login, interactions with your agents, and behavior in the game. It’ll allow you to introduce games based on users’ interests or get insights about your target audience. On top of that, businesses find out about the previously overlooked challenges that could have potentially affected their popularity. 

No one wants to spend time figuring out how to pay for something. If the payment process is difficult, users won’t go ahead and will abandon the game. In case your product requires any sort of input, especially regularly, make the entire procedure possible in a few clicks. Train your customer service specialists to provide help with payments and solve emerging requests quickly.

Recently, the gaming community has grown resentful of the overemphasis on monetization of every aspect of the game, particularly how every action requires in-game purchases. This trend has been on the rise for the last several years as many types of digital entertainment have been shifting from owning products to “renting” them from companies. Although online gaming depends on continual purchases, companies should strive to provide valuable content even without it, as it demonstrates integrity and keeps more people engaged. 

Timely and understanding customer support can be a decisive factor. Online gaming typically operates within time constraints, meaning the potential bugs or crashes within the game must be solved quickly. Unlike customer service, where sending tickets can be sufficient, online gaming is different. This calls for 24/7 customer support via chat and phone, at the very least. But since social media is a widely used communication channel that can make or break a company’s reputation, agents should be present there as well. Plus, gaming requires your team to know the game mechanics and slang. 

The gaming community is a useful marketing force due to word of mouth and its members’ endless ability to generate game-based content. However, it’s the business’s responsibility to give it the first triggering push to start the movement. Once the community is functioning, give it a voice and be an active participant: today, the company is one with its gamers, and they appreciate the involvement. 

Takeaways

Your online gaming customer retention strategies heavily rely on the type of gaming company you are, your team size, and your budget. Most of the aforementioned tips will work for every team, but you better understand what is possible. 

The bottom line is similar regardless: your customers are the heart of your company, and you have to make it possible for them to reach out to you and explore the products you have created. 

❤︎ Like it? — Share: Share on LinkedIn or Share on Facebook