GamesAnalytics rebrands as DeltaDNA to improve player engagement

Mobile-analytics firm GamesAnalytics is rebranding itself as DeltaDNA as it focuses on using mobile metrics to better personalize marketing messages for specific gamers.

The shift is aimed at helping game companies deal with soaring costs for acquiring new users at a time when there’s a flood of apps on the market.

Above: Mark Robinson of DeltaDNA

Image Credit: DeltaDNA

London-based DeltaDNA will still offer analytics for mobile-game developers and publishers. But it will also formalize its consulting business to help those companies market to their users, and it will automate the process in a self-serve platform, said Mark Robinson, the chief executive of DeltaDNA, in an interview with GamesBeat. It’s sort of like bringing “customer relationship management,” or CRM, to games in what Robinson calls “player relationship management.”

“We are developing techniques to really understand player behaviors,” Robinson said. “The industry is moving to a second phase of analytics, where we can deliver deeper insights from the data.”

Now the company will also offer an “insight module” and an “engage” module to go with its measurement. That will help developers and publishers get insights into their mobile gamers and then engage them better with personalized, real-time marketing messages. If someone’s about to leave a game, DeltaDNA will predict that and target the player with some free items so they stick around longer.

The company will compete with rivals like Playnomics and Ninja Metrics in its new business. DeltaDNA got $3 million in funding last summer, and it has used that to accelerate its transition. DeltaDNA focuses on a flexible toolkit that delves into a variety of issues that are specific to particular games, like players getting stuck on a mission.

“We have talked about it in a quiet way with clients for the past couple of months,” Robinson said. “We are looking forward to pushing this out in front of many people as possible now. We’re rebranding to signify to [the] market that our end-to-end platform is available. We use data-mining tools to help you understand why players are leaving a game and to pinpoint design improvements that will keep them.”

He said “analytics” conveyed the impression that the company provided “dashboards” of data. But now the company is providing tools to get players more engaged based on the data. DeltaDNA is targeting makers of free-to-play and social-casino games and real-money gambling companies. The analytics are free, but now the marketing tools are what it charges for.

By keeping players more engaged, companies can lift player retention and keep players for the long term. And that leads to higher lifetime value per user. With higher lifetime values, the amount of money that a company can spend in acquiring new users goes up, Robinson said. DeltaDNA has about 30 clients who are trying out the new system.

The company was founded in 2010, and it has 25 employees.