How Middle East gaming companies can retain their customers

By Kunal Badiani, Regional Head, MoEngage – META

The gaming industry in the Middle East receives a major boost in meaningful engagement and retention with the advent of Insights-led Customer Engagement Platforms.

GGWP (Good game, well played)! 

A term used not only by gaming enthusiasts but also by gaming companies that are all smiles as they grow amid a welcome gaming storm. The gaming market in the Middle East is growing and is projected to increase to more than $5 billion by 2025, according to a RedSeer report. 

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are championing this growth in the region as they embrace an unprecedented surge in the number of players. In Saudi Arabia, deemed the gaming capital of the region, over 67% of the Arab population, totalling about 23.5 million gamers, are expected to contribute about $1.4 billion in revenues to the industry in 2022. 

In a UAE survey, nine out of ten adults said they were into gaming. This unprecedented market growth will be further fuelled by increased spending from existing gamers, more time spent by users, and surging advertisement revenues, points out the RedSeer report.

Interestingly, the region is seeing huge interest from female players and Gen Xers, who, so far, belonged to unengaged cohorts. Estimates say that female gamers (69%) have already raced ahead of their male counterparts (68%) in Saudi Arabia by a one percent margin. In the UAE, female gamers are catching up with their male peers, accounting for 58% of online adults compared to male gamers constituting 64%. 

What are they playing?

The Middle East has readily adopted the majority of gaming platforms available globally, with players across all age groups and levels displaying great interest in shooting and racing games as well as e-sports.  

Players in the region prefer to play on PCs, consoles (Xbox, Nintendo, PlayStation), and mobile phones, indicating a strong passion for gaming. Although women in the UAE are slow to adapt to consoles, they are quite skilled at PC games. However, both genders are equally happy with mobile gaming, owing to its accessibility. 

Mobile games such as Wild Rift, Valorant, PUBG, and Fortnite are wildly popular in the region driving gamers’ interest as well as the industry growth. AR-based apps and games are expected to create market opportunities over the next few years. 

What’s the secret to success?

With such a huge opportunity staring at them, gaming brands have to up their game to find new ways to engage players. Gaming companies are shunning simple generalized campaign trends as they are archaic and do not bring expected results. 

A recent survey conducted by MoEngage found that 26% of brands do not find their campaign insights impactful. To avoid a saturation stage, brands must collect customer feedback, draw insights from them and drive personalized campaigns. This will bring in higher retention rates for existing customers and at the same time, drive purchases for new customers, leading to higher revenue. In addition, there is a marked increase in the lifetime value of loyal customers, a critical factor in the long run. 

However, gaming brands that are seeing great engagement numbers have realized the need for and implemented an insights-led Customer Engagement Platform (CEP); which can help resolve tough engagement challenges by analyzing, segmenting, and optimizing campaigns that delight customers. 

Here are some of the additional benefits of a CEP, a gaming brand can utilize (to boost engagement and retention):  

• Creating a unique, 360-degree, customer view
  This gives marketers a single view of the customer (geographical, demographical, behavioral data) based on which they can design and monitor personalized customer engagement campaigns
• Orchestrating smart customer journeys with omnichannel campaigns
  Brands can design flows that are easy to visualize, create and deploy across channels. For example: from onboarding customers to earning referrals, the flows take care of all customer touchpoints
• Segmenting and creating personas to personalize communication
  The CEP’s advanced segmentation (RFM Analysis aka Recency, Frequency, Monetary) abilities can help marketers create a cohort of customers based on their likelihood to make a purchase, overall frequency, and the monetary value of purchases. The cohorts thus created  (‘loyalists’, ‘champions’, ‘about to go dormant’, etc.) enable marketers to create and run personalized communication boosting engagement and retention
• Make proactive predictions based on customer insights
  An insights-led CEP can take the gaming brand beyond past actions and current interest, to fully understand its customer’s future demands. AI-powered abilities of a CEP allows brands to develop strategies by anticipating the needs and wants of the customer and delivers those experiences. These could be forecasting conversion, churn, or dormancy of customers.  

The rewards will continue to come

All indicators point to the growth of the gaming segment in the Middle East. Brands, however, will need to further personalize their communications by building a holistic view of the customer and engaging with them proactively throughout their lifecycle. These crucial steps will allow brands to create specific incentives (for each customer), get positive reviews, and drive higher business growth.