Segmenting players to plan acquisition and engagement

The question

The company had segmented the people already playing its games. To plan its marketing and product, it needed a picture of every mobile gamer, including the many who didn’t play with it yet.

Its market research team wanted that picture so marketing could decide whom to win and keep, and product could decide what to build for them.

Our approach

We built the segmentation from the outside in. Before writing the main survey, we reviewed the segmentations already in use, the company’s own player types among them, and gathered the full range of attitudes in people’s own words.

A survey of thousands of mobile gamers then grouped players by more than how much they play: by what draws them to a game, what keeps them there and what they’d spend. We sized every group, so the team could weigh each one by what it was worth.

With the priority groups agreed with the team, we went back to people in each, players and non-players alike, in online discussions and interviews, to show who they are in their own words.

What the team came away with

A sized segmentation of the market’s mobile gamers, with a small set of priority groups for marketing and product to focus on.

For each priority group, a profile, personas and a playbook on how to reach them, from the messages and features that matter to the channels that find them.