When we started working on Frenzy Games, over 6 years ago, Facebook had just crossed the 1 billion users mark. Aside from having a blog, a Facebook Page was at that time a good way to gather a community of people that want to stay up to date with our game. Over time, as we build more games, we added a Facebook page for each of the game.
Today, the 6 Facebook Pages of our games gathered around 6500 followers. In the meantime, Facebook crossed the 2 billion user mark and changed the way and to whom they display Pages content. Facebook switched to a model that requires paying for acquiring followers and for reaching those followers with each post.
The Problem
All our followers are organic, aside from around 50 followers as a result of a 10$ ad campaign experiment. We believe our followers are genuinely interested in our games and we would like to meet that expectation. Our social media content tries to reward that interest with regular campaigns and giveaways on top of the regular posts about new game features and help articles. Several years back it was enough to publish a post on Facebook to be sure that most of our followers will be reached. Now, that is no longer the case. Our Facebook posts reach only a fraction of our followers. To reach our entire audience, we would have to spend around 10$ for each post, even for the ones about giveaway content in our games.
For example, Facebook showed our recent giveaway post to less than 5% or our followers. For attempting to reach our entire audience with this post we would have to pay at least 10$.
Back to Basics
The main reason we directed our players to a Facebook Page was to establish a direct communication channel where we can easily and cheaply communicate with them. We no longer believe a Facebook Page can meet that goal. Instead we decided to start a monthly newsletter.
Our Goal
In the next 4 months, we plan to establish a direct communication channel to 1000 players via a monthly newsletter.
To reach our goal we decided on 4 milestones:
- Milestone I: 1 subscriber
- Milestone II: 10 subscribers
- Milestone III: 100 subscribers
- Milestone IV: 1000 subscribers
Our Strategy
1. Preparation
We began working on the newsletter by first gathering feedback about our idea.
- We emailed some of our customers directly asking them to participate in a survey about the newsletter and to optionally subscribe to our newsletter.
- We added a link for subscribing to our newsletter on the first page of our website.
- We changed our email signature to point to our newsletter sign up landing page.
- We enabled our players to sign up to our newsletter when creating a new game account.
2. Soft Launch: Issue #1, Milestone I
Tomorrow, 10th of March, we are sending our first issue of the newsletter, reaching Milestone I. Given our preparation, we managed to sign up several players and we were able to already gather feedback on what they expect from the newsletter.
3. Issue #2, Reach Milestone II
In April, we plan to send the second issue of the newsletter to at least 10 players. Based on the players’ reaction, we plan to improve the newsletter. We also plan to replace all Facebook Page references from our games and replace them with sign up forms for our newsletter.
4. Issue #3, Reach Milestone III
The third newsletter issue will be sent out in May and we plan to reach 100 subscribers. At this point, the newsletter will contain rewards, giveaways and links to campaigns for driving higher sign up numbers. We also plan to heavily promote our newsletter on social media, as the best way to stay up to date with relevant content from Frenzy Games.
5. Issue #4, Reach Milestone IV
In June, we plan to reach our ambitious target of sending the newsletter to 1000 subscribers. At this point, we will review our strategy, analyze our results and decide the next steps.
Social Media Presence
Frenzy Games will continue to engage with our audience as much as possible on social media. However, we believe that starting a newsletter will supplement and eventually replace most of our social media interactions and drive higher player engagement.
If you would like to receive monthly updates from us, subscribe to our newsletter.
If you are new to Frenzy Games, here are the links to all our games:
