Email marketing is often overlooked by gaming companies — mostly, as we said before, because other industry-specific platforms for gaining traffic and downloads are seen as more relevant. That’s why, when it comes to email campaigns, game developers run them on the leftover principle. It means that gaming emails are sent too often and offer mostly salesy content. As a result, gaming emails have one of the lowest open and click rates compared to other industries.
So, should you bother? Actually, yes. These statistics shouldn’t discourage you from starting a newsletter to promote your game — here’s why:
Finally, emails can be more effective than industry-specific promotional channels. Here’s a great example from Chris Zukowski’s lecture at the Game Developer Conference. He mentioned Butterscotch Shenanigans, a gaming company that created a secret unlockable side quest to draw attention to their older and less popular game. The team ran an A/B test on two channels to attract players to the offer: push notifications and emails. It turned out that emailed players were 2.8 times more likely to play the game! By the way, this is what the email looked like:
It’s not a fancily designed email, it doesn’t even have buttons, only links — but it worked better than push notifications! This is solid proof that gaming emails work if you do them with the right strategies in mind.
Still not convinced that emails will do any good for your gaming business? Here are some of the benefits of email marketing for video games:
This is an example of the latter. The Far Cry 6 email went viral on Reddit and received 4.5k upvotes. Even though it’s not a good email — as you can see, it has a typo — it turned out effective.
Now that you know the benefits of email marketing in game development, let’s learn how to make it work. We’ll tackle all the aspects of an email marketing strategy from building the list to optimizing emails to the moon.
There are many ways to build an email list — for example, including a pop-up on your website, adding a link on your Steam page, or collecting email addresses on social media. But even if you craft the best pop-up form ever, people won’t have an incentive to enter your mailing list. What do you do? Offer a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is a freebie that you give in exchange for subscribing to your list. It’s used in many businesses — for example, Selzy offers expert tips for list growth when users subscribe to the blog digest. In the case of the gaming industry, your lead magnet can be:
These are just the basic ideas — feel free to brainstorm your own. In this example, the company uses in-game content as a lead magnet:
You can’t send bulk promotional emails using regular free email clients like Google or Outlook — to do this, you need email marketing software. Aside from the mass mailing feature, here are other benefits:
There are many offers out there, differing in pricing and unique features. It’s okay if you get a little lost while doing research on your own. Here’s a helping hand — we wrote a guide on how to find the best email marketing service. You can also check out the comparisons of some of the popular email platforms.
The first thing to remember while implementing email marketing in any industry, including gaming, is that you’re not writing emails for yourself. You need to create content that is worth subscribing to and brings value to the users in your contact list. Here are some examples of how your email content can be valuable:
Here’s a brilliant example of a tutorial email from Two Dots. Notice how you don’t have to send a 20-page manual to make it work. This guide is short, beautifully illustrated, and fulfills its purpose in the blink of an eye. The email also has a button that redirects subscribers to the game so they can test it out.
Here’s an example of the latter. Walker Creek Broadcast Station is an alternate reality game focused on a small town in America where uncanny things are happening. Its main medium is the YouTube channel where a guy named Daniel posts digitalized VHS recordings from the local TV broadcast. But there’s more to it — the game had a newsletter disguised as updates from the official Walker Creek Tourism Bureau. It gave the players more information on what was really wrong with Walker Creek and created an ominous atmosphere.
The content “value” can also be just entertainment. For example, in their newsletter, Square Enix provides a selection of game soundtracks every month. Take a look at this January 2024 issue:
So, you’ve already sent out several email marketing campaigns but you discovered the performance of your emails is below desirable. Don’t rage quit email marketing yet — optimization can help! Email marketing optimization is improving your campaign metrics by tweaking different email elements. It helps you get the most out of your emails, boost ROI, and decrease unsubscribe rate — the latter is especially important. Here are some optimization ideas to try out:
Let’s take a look at the example of the latter. Notice how well-crafted visuals elevate even the simplest and shortest message — in this case, it’s “Our game is out now”.
Remember when we said that it’s better to use email marketing software instead of regular email clients to send emails? Here’s one more benefit for you: email automation. Automated email marketing campaigns save you time and ease the email marketing management process — you only need to set them up once and they’ll keep running until the end of the world. Automated emails also mimic the feeling of live and real communication since they’re sent in response to user actions or after a certain time has passed.
Here’s an example of an automated welcome email sequence for an indie game development company, as told by Chris Zukowski in the book “Email Marketing Basics for Video Games”:
Keep in mind that it’s only an example — you can tweak this sequence to fit your email marketing objectives. The point is, selling all you have at once is a frequent mistake: don’t throw sales pitches until you established a rapport with your subscribers.
We discussed how to build an email marketing strategy for promoting video games. Now, let’s talk about how to improve it using best email marketing practices. Save this list to make your emails truly work!
Email list segmentation is the practice of sending tailored content to certain groups of subscribers. You can create these groups based on demographic or behavioral characteristics — check out our guide on email segmentation ideas to learn more.
Segmentation is a great way to send more relevant emails and “work” with certain groups of people, as in:
One of the ways to implement segmentation right away is by doing it in the subscription form. For example, Thunderful Games invites you to set up which kind of email content you prefer:
Interactive elements in emails are the future of email marketing. They can vastly improve email engagement metrics and are just entertaining. These include GIFs, embedded clickable content like videos, and even built-in games and surveys. Here are some ideas on what interactive content may benefit your gaming emails:
Here’s a great example from Square Enix. In one of their newsletter issues, the gaming company included a one-question “Choose your fighter” survey with several characters from the Foamstars game. It’s simple, well-designed, frictionless for users, and general survey stats create a sense of community.
A street team is a separate, smaller email list of devoted fans who get exclusive insider updates, more personal content to get to know you as a developer, the freshest news, an opportunity to get in touch directly with you, and a lot more. It’s like different levels of a Patreon subscription but free for users. How is that profitable to you though?
The thing is, you can ask your street team for favors. These may include leaving a review, asking their favorite streamers to play your game, taking part in a UGC campaign, and so on. It doesn’t mean you can’t ask the rest of the subscribers to do so. However, your street team is in a way closer relationship with you, so they’re more likely to do a favor.
As we mentioned before, the current problem with gaming emails is that they are too salesy — they mostly promote new offers, Steam discounts, or in-game bonuses, while disregarding users’ interests. And, as we mentioned before as well, email marketing can go far beyond being a digital coupon journal. So, one way to stand out on the gaming industry email scene is by personalizing content.
Email personalization can take many forms and it’s not just limited to addressing your subscribers by first names. This includes using location, behavioral, and other data to create content like recommendations. You can also use gaming data (for example, hours played or the current level) for personalized tutorials. However, the most popular personalization strategy in gaming emails is stats. Here’s a great example from Far Cry 6. As you can see, not all of their emails have typos and go viral on Reddit.
And here’s a much simpler personalization example from Blizzard. They only included the player’s moniker in the opening line of the email, and it’s already become a bit more personal:
Not all your emails should be salesy — but some of them have to. One way to make your promotional emails more effective is to create a sense of urgency in your subscribers. This can be achieved in many ways, for example, by creating limited-time offers and setting up deadlines to make a decision.
For example, this email from Twitch promotes Cyberpunk 2077 and also in-game outfit drops that are available for a small amount of time. As you can see, the deadline is clearly stated, and the offers are under a red headline with multiple “Attention” signs:
Want a more direct method? Countdown timers work wonders for creating urgency when you promote events. Here’s an awesome example from Square Enix:
You can use these and other strategies to create a sense of urgency and boost the efficiency of your promotional email marketing campaigns.
Since you’re not writing for yourself, you need to speak the language your audience understands. In this case, one way to win the hearts of your subscribers is by using gaming slang, memes, and so on. Since you’re in the industry, you probably know the specific jargon better than us, so we won’t pretend we’re experts. The only advice is: don’t overdo it with the memes, or subscribers will see you like this:
Here’s a great example from Ubisoft. Here, gaming language like “loot” is used to describe specific phenomena related to games, which makes the copy clearer for a certain audience:
You can also use the language specific to your game and its lore. Here’s another great example from Ubisoft. Here, by “alliance” they mean a phenomenon that exists within the Assassin’s Creed series:
As we mentioned earlier, the abundance of explicitly salesy emails is the reason why the general benchmarks for gaming emails are worse compared to many other industries. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sell via emails — it’s a tool for generating revenue, after all. But there’s a difference between selling and being an intrusive salesman.
Here’s a great example. This email from Chess.com is what your promotional emails can (and, honestly, should) look like. Notice how clearly all the benefits are explained to a subscriber. If you follow the same tactic, your potential customers will think of buying something from you as a win-win deal, not a “just give me cash” situation.
If you’re a game developer looking for ways to promote the fruit of your labor, don’t neglect emails as a channel! Even though gaming emails have low benchmarks on engagement metrics, they still can work wonders for your game development project — if done right. Here’s how to start:
