Swrve’s predictive marketing boosts mobile gaming play by 28%

A new service could help your mobile game hold on to players — and make more money.

Swrve unveiled its predictive marketing for games today. The mobile game marketing firm said an initial study showed it increased playtime by 28 percent and reduced churn, or the loss of players, by 11 percent. The firm said that its capability to predict what gamers will do and target them with the right promotions and messages helps companies engage, retain, and monetize players. Its predictive marketing increased the number of sessions played by 18 percent and improved revenue for a targeted group of players by 50 percent, according to Swrve.

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These kinds of results are critical for improving monetization in free-to-play games, as getting and holding on to gamers is the key challenge facing mobile publishers and developers today in what market research Newzoo estimates is a $30 billion market this year.

The San Francisco-based Swrve is working with game companies such as Electronic Arts, Sony, Warner Bros., and Backflip Studios. It unveiled the new service at the Gamescom 2015 event in Cologne, Germany.

This uses predictive analytics, which builds behavioral profiles of players and anticipates what they will do next. Marketers can use the tool to target groups of players with messages that reduce churn. They can, for instance, focus on players who are about to quit with a special offer that will get the players back into the game.

“Predictive marketing has proven to be a highly effective tool for our mobile gaming customers, leading to higher rates of player engagement, retention and conversion,” said Swrve CEO Christopher Dean in a statement. “Predictive analytics are far superior to conventional analytics, which only look at people’s past behavior. With Swrve’s Predictive Marketing for Games, mobile gaming companies are able to interact with players at the exact moment it’s necessary to engage.”

Swrve said it has delivered more than 1 billion mobile messages to users to date, and every single day, Swrve processes more than 6 billion events.