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).

Halloween is just around the corner!

The gleeful sounds of “trick or treat!” will ring from neighborhoods everywhere once again on October 31^st. But it won’t just be constumed kids cleaning up this year — Halloween guarantees high turnover for offline retail. People spend a lot of money on costumes, Halloween make-up, movies and decorations every year.

With deal united’s alternative payment method PAY.BY.SHOPPING, game publishers, software vendors and online services can also benefit from the seasonal event. How? By activating players’ willingness to pay for Halloween-related products.

Most game publishers, software vendors and online services face the same problem: players and users are not willing to spend money on premium-version software, virtual currency or additional features. They do, however, enjoy online shopping and Halloween.

So why not make this user readiness work to your favor, while at the same time giving them a worthwhile deal? With PAY.BY.SHOPPING, you can offer them a bonus like software, virtual currency or a premium account free of charge if they shop at one of deal united’s partners. The bonus you give a way for free will be refinanced by our partner shops.

deal united only works with high-quality advertising partners like myToys and OTTO in Germany, Toys”R”Us and Spartoo in the UK and Priceminister and plusdemags in France, which enables you to present your users with attractive offers for Halloween while boosting your revenue.

 

The advantages of PAY.BY.SHOPPING for Halloween:

Monetization:
Activate your users’ desire to buy Halloween-related products like costumes and decoration articles.

Increased Revenue
With a Halloween campaign, you will generate incremental revenue by addressing your users with attractive offers.

Seasonal Event:
Benefit from Halloween even if your business is unrelated to the holiday.

Global Orientation:
PAY.BY.SHOPPING from deal united is available around the globe, currently focusing on the USA and Europe.

 

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!

The GamesClubCard is deal united’s new platform for monetizing virtual currency. It works like a virtual bonus card for online games: Players can collect points for their account and reedem them later for virtual currency or timecards in their favorite game.

How GamesClubCard works:

1. Register:
Players can create an account for free at www.gamesclubcard.com.

2. Collect Points:
By shopping at our renowned advertising partners websites (OTTO, Priceminister, Toys”R”Us), players collect points for their account.

3. Recommend Us:
GamesClubCard also encourages players to recommend the service to their friends. For every recommendation email sent from the platform, the player will receive points.

4. Buy Points:
In addition to the collection opportunities, the players can buy points in three packages: 100, 250 oder 500 points.

5. Redeem Points:
Collected points can later be redeemed for virtual currency in a Free2Play online game or timecards for a subscription Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG).

Advantages for Online Games with GamesClubCard:

Successful Monetization: Players create a GamesClubCard account because they are willing to pay for virtual currency.

Extended Range: Most users play several games but are only willing to spend money on a few of them. GamesClubCard is designed to enable monetization in several games since it offers the players not just one game, but a range of them.

Increased Turnover: The virtual currency / timecards offered at GamesClubCard are paid for by participating advertising partners.

No Costs, No Risks: An integration at GamesClubCard is completely free of charge for game publishers – like deal united’s proven marketing solution PAY.BY.SHOPPING (formely Pay4You).

Europe-Wide Orientation: Like the existing deal united services, GamesClubCard will soon be available in 11 countries.

Featured Games:

From August 18 to August 22, 2010 deal united presented the marketing solution PAY.BY.SHOPPING and the new platform GamesClubCard. Our booth A-013 in hall 4.2 was highly frequented and we met several new future business partners.

2010 was deal united’s first year having our own booth at Gamescom, and we were crossing our fingers that everything would work out. Sadly, our Carrera race track wasn’t appreciated as much as we hoped it would be, but despite that, the Gamescom 2010 was a great success for deal united and we will definitely come back in 2011.

deal united sends our a big thanks all partners who met with us at the Gamescom, as well as to Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and everyone who dropped by our booth. Hope to see you all next year!

Now Runes of Magic players can receive game diamonds for free when they shop online at renowned deal united partners like buecher.de, OTTO, myToys or Neckermann. deal united, the reward shopping platform for monetization of virtual and digital goods, is implementing this offer together with our partners and Frogster Interactive Picture AG, publisher of Free2play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG).

Runes of Magic is a free MMOG, in which gamers can purchase diamonds to open up additional features within the game such as mounts and potions. With deal united, gamers now receive 300 diamonds free (worth 15.- € or 12.50 £) for their online purchases.

More Fun with Diamonds
“This offer is aimed at giving our gamers the opportunity to test out the features in our diamond shop,” explains Björn Koschin, CEO at Frogster. “They receive the diamonds as a reward for shopping with our cooperation partners. This promotion is a fantastic opportunity to combine online shopping with great gaming!“

Online Shops Give Diamonds Away
“Online gamers can now literally dig for diamonds when they shop online,” says Jarg Temme, CEO at deal united. “Our advertising partners — the online shops — fund the campaign. They’re giving diamonds to everyone who finds their shop through the role playing game and makes a purchase.” deal united offers the rewards promotion to gamers from Germany, France, Great Britain and Spain.

Increased Turnover for Gaming Industry and  eCommerce
deal united is bringing games publishers and online shops together with the cross-selling solution Pay4You. Pay4You is aimed at rewarding gamers for their online purchases. The cross-selling concept is designed to boost turnover for products, digital goods, online services and software as part of seasonal events or over a longer period of time.

deal united at GamesCom
deal united is showcasing the concept to interested gamers and publishers at GamesCom from August 18 to 22 in Cologne (Hall 4.2, booth A-013). Interviews are also possible throughout the event on prior arrangement.

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.

• Double turnover: Clever cross-selling connects gaming and eCommerce
• deal united presents monetization concept at the GamesCom 2010 hall 4.2, booth A-013

How can online retail marketing be successfully combined with online gaming? At this year’s GamesCom in Cologne, deal united will present new marketing approaches for increasing profits in both business areas.

According to the study by greentube and gamematrix published in July, casual gamers don’t just congregate on the net to play games, but also to shop. deal united’s business model makes use of this fact — to the advantage of the eCommerce and gaming industries. PAY.BY.SHOPPING, the reward shopping platform for monetization of digital and virtual goods, develops cross-selling campaigns for games publishers in cooperation with renowned advertising partners such as buecher.de, OTTO and myToys. Gamers receive a fixed amount in virtual currency as a bonus for their respective online game when they shop with one of our partners. The virtual currency then allows them to buy additional functions for their characters.

Online Retailers Gain Customers

 

 

“Our advertising partners pr0vide the shopping deals. Every gamer who finds their way to the shops via an online game and makes a purchase and receives a bonus,” says Jarg Temme, CEO of deal united. The so-called PAY.BY.SHOPPING campaigns are intended to strengthen the bond between gamers and games while increasing profits in gaming and online retail. “Games offer great potential for growth in sales that has not yet been fully exploited by any means. Through the cooperation with well-known online shops, it is easier to get gamers interested in fee-based features in a game. At the same time, online retail acquires more new customers.”

In-game messages, pop-unders, banners and buttons grab gamers’ attention and notify them of the deals . PAY.BY.SHOPPING campaigns are an ideal long-term conversion solution and are particularly effective for garnering revenue during seasonal events like Mother’s Day and Christmas, allowing games publishers to profit from popular yet unrelated events.  “Special offers, for example for Mother’s Day or the summer sales season, are very popular. The games provider decides how long the cooperation with the advertising partners will last,” Temme explains further.

Conversations at GamesCom

deal united is presenting our marketing concepts for games publishers and online retailers from the August 18-22 at the GamesCom in Cologne (hall 4.2, stand A-013). Conversations and interviews are possible at any time upon agreement.

Company contact:
deal united
Daniela Reichert
daniela.reichert@dealunited.com
t: +49 (0) 89 381 535 868

PR agency contact:
Agentur Frische Fische
Anja Gorille
anja.gorille@frische-fische.com

E3 Expo, the world’s premiere trade show for computer and video games and related products, will take place from June 15-17, 2010 in the Los Angeles Convention Centre. The show is owned by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the U.S. association dedicated to serving the business and public affairs needs of companies that publish interactive games for video game consoles, handheld devices, personal computers and the Internet.

deal united senior sales manager Torsten Bongartz will be present on the event. To meet with him, please contact merchant@dealunited.com.

In the games industry, the term “conversion optimization” might sound pretty alien at first. “Conversion” is usually associated with web shops and usability, not with gamers and “free to play” games. In reality, however, the majority of browser games publishers overlook one important fact: It’s not the number of registered users that creates revenue that counts, but rather the amount of those players who are willing to pay for features like virtual currency or premium accounts.

Most browser games have minimalistic graphical details, require no software and are free to play. Gamers have the opportunity to ascend the levels faster or gain special equipment if they buy virtual currency with real money, but they don’t have to. For games publishers who have garnered a large, loyal playership, the need for revenue is the next hurdle, and one of the biggest questions is: how do I get players to pay for my features? Suddenly “conversion optimization” isn’t as alien to browser games as it might seem.

Studies show that the average conversion rate for web shops hovers at about two percent. That means that 98 percent of visitors leave the shop without making a purchase. As a similar rate is observed for software download portals, one would be within reason to assume that this average conversion rate applies to online games as well, especially since games publishers face practically the same problems as other online traders in different industries. So, what can be done?

 

4 ways browser games can increase conversion rates:

Know Your Audience

Take a look at your target customers. The average browser games player is about 20+ years old and plays while at work or university. Thus, most players use the game to escape from boredom, but don’t play it in their free time. This essentially means that they don’t want to spend extra time advancing through levels on online games — an unwillingness that can work in your favor if you suggest to your players that they can be more successful in a shorter amount of time by buying virtual currency.

Know Your Market

In order to bind users to your game, you have to make it interesting. For example, creating “military strategy game No. 1000″ is not really innovative. You’ll get players, but you won’t gain customers willing to spend money on that game. Again, know your audience: If you invent a new strategy game, why should players who probably have a Playstation with tons of games at home spend money on your game? Most of the successful browser games are those with a unique approach like building your own garden (Molehill Empire) or tending horses (Howrse).

Use Bonuses

Several studies show that most online shoppers are only satisfied if they are offered bonuses like vouchers, discounts and free products. Online games can easily adapt this marketing strategy by making special offers like free play time, discounts on virtual currency or in- and off-game competitions. With deal united’s concept, you can offer a lot of them for free and create incremental revenue as well.

Improve Usability

Web shops must be customer friendly to be successful. Confusing structures and blinking buttons never help; they just confuse, distract and annoy the user. The same applies for games. Make your website structure and menu as clear and easy-to-navigate as possible. If you have special offers, place them in a visible, prominent area and inform your users about every special event and campaign.