Playdemic

Playdemic’s Secret Sauce To App Store Top 20

Playdemic - featured
Playdemic - Overview

Overview

Playdemic, a renowned game development company, soared to new heights with its engaging golf simulation game, Golf Clash. This game, designed to captivate players with its competitive PvP (Player vs. Player) format, has successfully tapped into the massive potential of social media to enhance player engagement and retention. By leveraging the advanced capabilities of Helpshift’s Campaigns feature, Playdemic was able to significantly increase its presence on social media platforms, particularly Facebook, which played a pivotal role in the game’s rapid ascent to the top 20 of the iTunes App Store within just four months of its release.

The Challenge

Despite Golf Clash’s well-designed gameplay and competitive atmosphere, Playdemic faced a common challenge in the gaming industry: maintaining and increasing player engagement and retention over time. Recognizing the importance of a robust social media presence to spread the word about the game and keep players involved, the company needed an effective way to direct players towards its social channels. Additionally, Playdemic aimed to enhance its player loyalty programs without overwhelming its development team with the technical demands of creating a new in-house messaging platform.
Playdemic - Challenge

The Solution

To address these challenges, Playdemic turned to Helpshift’s Campaigns feature, a proactive engagement and support tool designed to enable highly targeted push notifications to customizable subsets of players at specific times. This feature allowed Playdemic to communicate directly with players, inviting them to participate in special events and promotions, such as a tournament that coincided with the 2017 Masters Golf Tournament. The campaign’s feature was notably efficient, requiring minimal involvement from the development team, thereby allowing the live operations and community teams to take the lead in crafting and sending out messages.

The Results

The implementation of Helpshift’s Campaigns feature yielded impressive results for Playdemic. The first campaign, aimed at inviting players to a tournament, achieved a more than 20 percent conversion rate, with over 100,000 of the 500,000 recipients taking the next step to learn more. This strategic use of push notifications not only increased player engagement but also significantly boosted the game’s social media presence, resulting in a 4x increase in Facebook users. Moreover, the campaigns helped Playdemic to promote additional tournaments and enhance its player loyalty programs through targeted messaging, such as offering special golf balls for players who reached certain milestones. These efforts contributed to a growing return on investment (ROI) by increasing new user engagement, improving player retention, and introducing monetizable options in a manner that kept players eagerly anticipating what might come next.