Create incentives with Facebook Credits

deal united extends its portfolio by Credits Rewards. As of today with Credits Rewards online service providers can offer their customers Facebook Credits also outside the social network. Credits Rewards, in its turn, provides the technical realization.

Credits Rewards enables online providers to use Facebook Credits as an incentive to make purchases, competitions, surveys and user registrations more attractive to customers. The promotion can be implemented in a multitude of ways, such as directly via Facebook, on company websites and through newsletters. Credits Rewards ensures the prompt delivery of Facebook Credits to the actual Facebook customer account.

As an official distributer of Facebook Credits deal united is one of only three dealers worldwide. In Germany deal united is currently the only authorised provider to supply online service provider with Facebook Credits for their customers.

Together with the launch of Credits Rewards, the official homepage www.creditsrewards.com will go live today as well. The homepage contains all important information about the product. At the same time online service providers will be able to get in touch with the Credits Rewards team.

Dr. Jarg Temme, CEO at deal united, says “The demand for Facebook Credits is immense. Opportunities for users to purchase virtual currency by using Facebook Credits are on the rise. We are very proud to be the only German distributor of Facebook Credits. Our product Credits Rewards enables online service providers to be a part of the increasing Facebook Credits trend worldwide.”

Facebook Credits are used as a virtual currency on the social network Facebook. Currently, Facebook Credits can be used for purchasing virtual products such as online games currency, music downloads, gift cards, tickets and coupons only. Nevertheless, additional applications for Facebook Credits such as watching concerts online or customer lotteries continue to increase.

This time deal united is a Premium sponsor of Affiliate NetworxX in Munich. Affiliate NetworkxX is a special networking event on affiliate marketing. The purpose of the event is to exchange online marketing info, make new contacts or share experience with partners in relaxed and informal atmosphere.

With over 700 participants each year, this event is the largest one of its kind in Germany. The participants are mainly agencies, affiliate networks, affiliates and merchants. The event will be held on 06.10.2011 at 18.30 at Airbräu-Tenne at the Munich airport. This is located in the central area of Munich Airport, between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2.

Come and join us there! We will be excited to meet you!

Digital media professionals are gathering once again at Online-Stammtisch München 3.0 on June 1 – and deal united is a proud sponsor.

 

The one-of-a-kind event brings together active players from all areas of digital media, including online marketing, advertising and eCommerce, and provides an unconventional atmosphere for networking and personal interaction.

deal united is sponsoring one of the highlights of the evening, a SpeedNETworking round that gives attendees face time with other like-minded professionals in a chance to meet and form contacts efficiently. It’s the speed dating of the digital media world!

If the sold-out success of OSM 2.0 is any indication, OSM 3.0 should be a hit. We hope to see you there next Wednesday at 19:00!

This Thursday, March 24, deal united will be rubbing elbows with other movers and shakers from the online and media industries at the Online-Stammtisch München 2.0 (OSM). The meet-and-greet will throw together digital media executives and expertsfor a chance to exchange insights on current and ongoing hot topics in the field.

When we’re not listening to presentations from industry professionals or casually discussing online marketing and e-commerce, deal united will do some “speed networking,” in which participants rotate among potential contacts, chatting in 3-minute stints.

As a sponsor of Thursday’s OSM event, deal united will be represented by members of our Sales, Marketing and Product Management teams. If you’re heading out to the OSM this Thursday, we’ll see you there!

deal united’s PAY.BY.SHOPPING is an alternative payment method for monetizing digital and virtual goods. Integrating PAY.BY.SHOPPING is even easier now with the new Offer Wall Converter.

• Easier integration of the PAY.BY.SHOPPING alternative payment method for games and online services

• $50,000 US sign-up bonus for the first 10 online games using Offer Wall Converter

At this year’s Virtual Goods Summit on October 12th and 13th in San Francisco, deal united will introduce our new Offer Wall Converter, which makes it even easier for online games to integrate PAY.BY.SHOPPING if they already use other providers. If a game already uses Tapjoy (former Offerpal), for example, the Offer Wall Converter takes their API and converts it for deal united’s alternative payment method. In this way, integration becomes painless and problem-free for publishers.

The first 10 online game publishers to use deal united’s Offer Wall Converter will receive $ 5,000 as a special sign-up bonus. To be eligible, a publisher must generate a minimum revenue of $5,000 per month in the first three months after going live.

“deal united’s alternative payment solution PAY.BY.SHOPPING focuses on different high quality shopping deals, making it a perfect extension of classical offer wall business,” says Jarg Temme, CEO of deal united. “With our new Offer Wall Converter, game publishers are able to quickly and easily begin providing players with our alternative payment solution.” In this way, game publishers can give their players the optimal opportunity to combine shopping needs with free virtual currency.

Publishers or journalists interested in finding out more about deal united and the new Offer Wall Converter can always stop by at booth 11 at the Virtual Goods Summit for further information.

a4uexpo is Europe’s largest Performance Marketing Conference with over 1,000 delegates, 48 conference sessions, an all-inclusive middle evening party, a pre- and post-event networking bash and a buzzing expo hall — all for the leading entrepreneurs and players within the dynamic £10bn Affiliate & Performance Marketing industry.

deal united will be present at the conference in London on October 12th and 13th, 2010.  Markus Steiner (Head of Advertiser Marketing) and Veronika Beuschel (Junior Marketing Manager) will attend the conference, so if you’d like to meet with them or make an appointment beforehand, please contact advertiser@dealunited.

The Virtual Goods Summit West 2010 will take place at the Moscone West Conference Hall in San Francisco on October 12th and 13th. Several experts will present and discuss the future of virtual goods.

deal united is a sponsor for the event, which Jürgen Weichert (CSO), Daniel Shefer (Head of US Business Development) and Torsten Bongartz (Senior Sales Manager) will attend. If you’d like to meet with them, please visit our booth No. 11 or to make an appointment beforehand, contact merchant@dealunited.com or call +1 (650) 241-9120 (USA) /+49 (0) 89 381 535 860 (Germany).

The Game Developers Conference Online will take place from October 5-8, 2010 in Austin, Texas. The conference focuses on connected games including casual, MMOs, virtual worlds and social networking games. More than 120 sessions will address the most pressing development challenges for connected games with tracks related to Business and Marketing, Design, Production, Programming and going Live. In addition to the return of a robust expo floor and four full days of content, GDC Online will also feature one- and two-day summits including Game Narrative Summit, iPhone Games Summit, iPad Gaming Summit and 3D Stereoscopic Games Summit.

This year, deal united will also attend the Games Developers Conference 2010 in Austin, Texas. Torsten Bongartz (Senior Sales Manager) and Daniel Shefer (Head of US Business Development) will be there from October 5-8. To make an appointement beforehand, please contact merchant@dealunited.com or call +1 (650) 241-9120 (USA) /+49 (0) 89 381 535 860 (Germany).

Free2Play browser games, massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) and social games are still a growing market. But since high user numbers don’t automatically generate revenue, the problem that almost every game publisher faces nowadays is how to monetize users.

Most players are not willing to spend money on virtual currency or premium features, the source of revenue for game publishers. Many Free2Play online games try to get as many players as possible to generate advertising revenue by clicking on ads. This strategy works only short-term though, and is not the best method of achieving successful monetization.

Customer Care – What do I know about my players?
Every game publisher should be able to answer the following questions about their users:
How did the player find out about my game?
How often does he play?
Which features does he use frequently?
Has he ever paid for additional features?

The key to successful monetization is not high user numbers, but rather active customer support, which involves three crucial steps:

1. Continually acquire new players
2. Draw players’ attention to your products
3. Convert your registered users into paying customers

The more you get to know your players, the better you can respond to their needs. If players feel like they are addressed personally, they will respond by developing a more stable and intensive relationship with your game. This approach is based on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which is used in eCommerce: The “customer life cycle,” the click rates and the customer value analysis are used by online traders to get to know online shoppers better. These methods can also be adopted by game publishers.

The Five Phases of a “Customer Life Cycle“
The customer life cycle goes through five phases. Game publishers should adjust marketing measures according to these:

1. Awareness of the Product
The user hears about your game but has not yet registered. Your goal is to get the user to sign up via various marketing and sales measures.

2. Registration
In phase two, the interested user creates an account on your game site and starts playing. As a publisher, you’ll create incentives to keep the player playing your game. Now is the time to get to know your new player in terms of preferences and future behavior.

3. Identifaction
A new player who identifies him or herself with your game will become a regular user now. This is the phase in which you can get your player to pay for features and to reward them with special items.

4. Retirement
In this phase, the player retires from your game and might even go to a competitor, often due to a change of interests. Active CRM can prevent a player from leaving and never returning to your game or brand.

5. Inactive Player
The player still has an account but does not use your game anymore. In this fifth phase, you might be able to reactivate your player by offering vouchers or benefits.

Players in phase 3 bring the company the most revenue. These players know the game, talk about it, recommend it and are most likely to spend money on additional features. Another thing that gaming can learn from Ecommerce has to do with RFM: Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value. High user numbers usually generate huge databases, but there are better ways than selling data and risking disgruntled users who never come back. Analyze your databases and find out what your players do:

Recency:
Did the player buy something? When was the last time he or she did?

Frequency:
How often does the user play and which features does he/she use?

Monetary Value:
How much money has the player already spent on additional features?

These questions allow you to divide your users into two categories:

1. “More valuable” — players who have already paid for additional features once or do so regularly.
2. “Less valuable” —  players that never spend money on additional features.

You as a publisher need to know these categories in order to address the players. If you pinpoint a person in your database (e.g. through calculations) who is likely to do something, what will be your part in it? Contact that person.

Knowing what your players do while playing your game is the first step in monetizing them. If you are aware of their preferences in the game, you can act on them, and if the player  feels like they are appreciated, they will bound with your game and stay. The next step is to realize that your players have a life outside of your game — one you should think about as well!

Sucessfull advertising on the internet has become more and more difficult. Internet users tend to simply ignore banner promotions and close pop-ups and pop-unders without bothering to read them. As a result, companies are now approaching potential customers with guerilla-like marketing strategies: video commercials laid over the largest part of the website or hidden close buttons on pop-ups that force users to click on the advertisement, not to mention the seemingly infinite range of ads that flash, blink, vibrate and somersault around the user’s browser window.

While those kinds of advertising grab attention, they fail to leave a positive impression. Why? Because watching and listening to those ads is truly annoying for the users who are forced to do so against their will. Even if many companies think differently, the benefit is not worth angering most of the potential customers: If you put a big ad in front of 100 people, you will might get 2 of them to click on it. If you make it emit annoying sounds and hide the close button, it might get 5 clicks — or you might lose users who migrate to sites that don’t bombard them with frustrating ads. As a company you should ask yourself: is it really worth it to spend a ton of money on a marketing strategy that may get 10% of the users to click while 90 % of them leave angry and annoyed?

A completely different approach to address users comes from offline retail: advertising at the point of transaction. In every supermarket or shop selling physical goods (books, clothing, electronics and so on), the customer is presented with a range of products displayed near the check-out. Everyone has seen the sweets, packages of batteries, beauty products and various accessories, and everyone has been lured in by the strategically placed candy and last-minute oh-I-forgot-that items. Why shouldn’t eCommerce adopt this strategy, too?

deal united’s PAY.BY.SHOPPING allows online shops and services to advertise at the point of transaction. How? PAY.BY.SHOPPING is a cross selling marketing solution: Customers, like players of online games, can get virtual currency for free if they make a purchase at one of the advertising partners’ shops. To take part in the offer, the player goes to the payment section of the game, clicks the button for deal united, is presented with a range of advertising partners and selects one of them.

It’s a lot like what stores do at the check-out, but instead of goods, users are presented a wide range of shops. They have already selected a product (free virtual currency/software) and in order to redeem it, they go shopping in an online store that has no connection to the original business (gaming, software, online services). Imagine standing in an electronics store and someone offers you a free coffee machine if you buy a book at the store across the street!

All deal united campaigns are based on CPO (cost per order). This means that every advertising partner only pays for customers who really come into their online shops through a deal united campaign and actually buys something. No money is exchanged when someone simply clicks on the displayed advertisement.