How to Do Pre-Launch for a Mobile Game Right
Lina Danilchik 
Lina Danilchik Pre-Launch Game App Strategy for x15 lower CPI
Launching a new mobile app or game and bringing it to the market can be quite challenging. Mobile app developers have to risk their time and budgets on creating a concept and developing a top-rated mobile app. So building a brand-new app or game implies certain risks that mobile developers can mitigate by doing proper research and go-to-market strategy validation before launching the product.
One of SplitMetrics’ clients – a word game developer – turned to our experts with a request to validate the go-to-market fit for a mobile game they were working on before its launch, and also cut costs for scaling the app in the US – their target market.
Mobile app launch includes a few phases:
- Pre-launch which includes technical launch (checking server load, bugs, etc.) and soft-launch (tracking audience behavior: retention, conversion, etc., and analyzing monetization.)
- Launch which includes reaching target countries and scaling globally.
SplitMetrics Agency experts addressed this challenge at the stage of the app pre-launch marketing and conducted marketing research to identify countries with the most relevant target audience for the mobile game’s technical launch (Indonesia, Philippines).
This research helped acquire target traffic in the non-target market at a much lower CPI ($0.08 -0.13 compared to $1.5 -2.0 per install in the US). SplitMetrics Agency gained 1000 installs for the technical launch in the test markets with an overall spend of $100, which helped save more than $1400 compared to a situation where the app would be released in the US immediately.
Once SplitMetrics’ experts implemented the technical check for the mobile game at the pre-launch stage, they moved to the soft-launch phase.
We added a few more target and lucrative countries to check the retention rate and revenue. We compared the retention with industry benchmarks and could craft out the next steps: introducing integration which helped to hit the target retention rate.
Day 1 – 23% (benchmark 35-40%)
Day 3 – 7.6% (benchmark 20%)
Day 7 – 5% (benchmark 15%)
App pre-launch services and the in-depth marketing analysis by SplitMetrics Agency helped the Client successfully identify the best markets to test viability and get insights into audience behavior at a minimal cost at the mobile game pre-launch stage. This helped to improve cost-efficiency and develop a more successful app scaling strategy for the highly-competitive US market.
