Raising the dead: 5 techniques for bringing back inactive players

In the war for the dollars and souls of players in mobile gaming, major publishers fight epic battles. Beautiful women lead troops to battle, master assassins are betrayed and seek revenge and candies are crushed with reckless abandon. Millions of dollars are tossed into the fray. For the smaller developer, stepping on the battlefield is a daunting and almost hopeless task. In the face of such overwhelming odds, developers must seize every advantage, which is why they should turn to the dark arts and call upon the undead to raise an army.

Dramatic metaphors aside, developers are in a massive fight – to find profitable users that are lifetime value positive (LTV). With many games having LTVs in the $20 dollar range, developers can afford high cost per installs (CPI) to capture users. These high CPI bids bump ads to the top of the networks, making it increasingly difficult  for smaller developers to bring in traffic. One often overlooked solution for developers is to re-engage “dead” users, that have used and abandoned the app