When a marketing campaign can achieve the business goals desired for it and provide a healthy distraction from a global pandemic, it goes without saying that the campaign was successful. 

That was what WildTangent, a premium destination for discovering and playing PC casual games out of Seattle, Washington, achieved in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic kept many PC gamers stuck at home across the globe. 

WildTangent, an Exponea customer since late 2018, set out to give gamers a chance to play several PC games for free while many were trapped at home. Combining WildTangent’s creativity and elite timing with Exponea’s Customer Data & Experience Platform created a campaign that helped entertain consumers through the dog days of 2020. 

“We work with a lot of different partners to expand our user base and attract new interest,” said Monika Pin, Digital Marketing Manager for WildTangent. “Using Exponea allowed us to connect with users and guide them through the processes associated with this campaign. The Exponea tool helped make this campaign happen.”

WildTangent’s ‘six free games’ campaign

WildTangent had given away free games to returning customers and other members of its target audience in the past successfully. 

So why not see what happens when taking that up a notch? 

The ‘six free games’ campaign was born when WildTangent launched a unique promotion with a partner that allowed it to give away six free games, in the format of game codes, via email and in a service presentation to the partner’s customers. It is a completely automated promotion that is still active today and one of the highest converting campaigns for WildTangent and its partner. 

The promotion launched and directed users to WildTangent landing page with the six free games offer. Gamers across the United States got free access to full versions of PC games, including “Uncharted Tides: Port Royal” and “Runefall 2”. A perfect way for WildTangent to build positive brand awareness amongst members of its target audience.  

How exactly did WildTangent do this? Good question. It truly got the most out of Exponea’s product, using multiple different features. Let’s start with the vouchers tool. 

Exponea’s vouchers tool can be a tool to convert curious onlookers into paying customers or members. WildTangent discovered this firsthand.

Vouchers are simple text codes that customers can use to redeem discounts or other special offers. In this case, the voucher was WildTangent’s game code and it unlocked each free game that WildTangent offered. 

Businesses typically communicate these codes to customers through an Exponea email campaign. Exponea’s vouchers feature allows you to load a pool of vouchers into Exponea, insert them into any campaign, and track how and/or when they are redeemed. 

But it wasn’t just the vouchers feature that WildTangent used. It was the combination of Exponea’s email campaigns, scenarios, weblayers, and experiments functions that allowed this campaign to soar the way it did. 

WildTangent carefully crafted its Exponea scenario to optimally serve customers receiving game codes. In order to offer multiple game codes, six different voucher lists were connected into a single Exponea scenario.   

An event for each game code was recorded, enabling WildTangent to run many voucher campaigns without having to create new customer attributes each time. 

After initially experiencing issues with game codes that weren’t immediately redeemable, the scenario was tweaked to include data checks and delays to allow time for data processing before moving to the next step. This tweak greatly reduced customer service tickets and got customers their games more smoothly. 

The adjustment to the scenario showed WildTangent’s dedication to providing an elite customer experience and the flexibility of Exponea scenarios. 

WildTangent already has plans to upgrade this campaign’s functionality in the future. The company is discussing adding an Exponea webhook to the mix to provide an even more user-friendly interface to customers. 

“We will definitely take components of what has been built here and apply to other aspects of the business,” said Lonnie Radford, Vice President of Customer Experience for WildTangent. “We have found success in terms of how to manage the Exponea data flow and how to do checks and balances to ensure that things in a scenario are done correctly before the next step occurs. That type of thinking and logic will be used in all sorts of things that are unrelated to this campaign.”

The campaign’s impressive results 

Thanks to a fantastic offer and ironing out the kinks of the scenario, WildTangent increased its voucher code redemption rate to 47% from 5% through the use of emails and on-site messaging encouraging users to redeem their game codes. That led to increased engagement in the site and playing more games. 

The uplift in voucher redemption rate was not the only recognition WildTangent received from this campaign. 

The ‘six free games’ campaign won an Exponie award for Exponential Effect. The Exponie Awards highlight and showcase teams that drive positive business outcomes by putting their customers first. 

Matt Denton, the Head of E-commerce at HSS Hire and a judge for The Exponies, was thoroughly impressed with WildTangent’s work. 

“The campaign had a bit of everything from Exponea: scenarios, weblayers, vouchers and experiments,” Denton said. “I also like how they implemented the campaign, identified an issue, and adapted by adding rule sets to delay sends to allow the data to flow. The use of weblayers to prompt customers who had a free game to unlock was a great way to reinforce the message across the journey. Overall, it was very impressive.”

WildTangent used Exponea to increase brand awareness and create a high-performance campaign that drove new gamers to its website. All sorts of different features of Exponea’s Customer Data & Experience Platform were used to best serve WildTangent’s audience. 

WildTangent’s campaign was special, but allowing companies to deliver exceptional campaign results is nothing new to Exponea. Schedule a demo today to learn more about how Exponea can transform your business’ marketing strategies and allow best usage of all of your customer data.