Until recently, video game developer Telltale Games was working with an internally built email system. This was all well and good, but it didn’t have the “playability” the San Rafael, CA-based digital publisher needed.
To improve its ability to segment messages to different fractions of its gaming audience, Telltale has begin working with Knotice. It’s email marketing efforts were previously managed with a “homebrewed” solution, built with open source software and programs designed by the in-house engineering team.
“We didn’t have the dashboards we needed, ” says Steven Allison, senior vice president of marketing at Telltale Games. “The Knotice solution takes the pain away for us. Having all of our customer profiles stored in one central location helps us easily target and segment our emails. “
The 7-year-old company was founded by veterans of LucasArts, with a vision of creating episodic games to be sold digitally. The company is focused working with licenses where stories can spin out of the characters easily, such as Wallace & Gromit, Bone, Sam & Max, Back to the Future and The Walking Dead. Telltale has sold over 5 million episodes of 35 different published game releases since 2005. The company currently develops and publishes games for PlayStation3, Xbox 360, Wii, PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone.
The majority of Telltale’s games are exclusively digital, although the company has done a lot of retail deals outside of North and South America. Worldwide, three years ago the gaming market was 4% digital, 96% retail, but that’s moving more towards a 50/50 split. One big license, Jurassic Park, will launch for Xbox in the fall.
Public relations efforts drive the bulk of the traffic to the company’s site, usually started three to four months before a game’s launch.
Telltale has an email database of about 2 million names, about a quarter of which are active. The majority are opted-in to receive any type of communication from the company, although certain people do opt-in to only hear about specific games.
Once a month, Telltale publishes “The Interloper,” a newsletter catering to what Allison describes as a strong fanbase. “We do our own editorial, including videos, to keep fans up to speed. And we also send promotional offers to folks who opted-in to receive them.”
Once someone has purchased a “season” of a game—typically 5 episodes, released on per month—they can opt-in to receive update about future editions of games featuring those characters. And as the frequency of new game releases from Telltale increase, so will the frequency of email newsletters, with multiple weekly blasts being created to cater to different fanbases.
Telltale is also active in social media. Over 10,000 Facebook members have “liked” Telltale’s official page, while over 18,000 follow them on Twitter. The company also has Twitter accounts for specific products, where people can get updates about the software.
On the company’s main site, a blog and a store are featured to promote the games. Offline, while Telltale doesn’t buy a lot of print, it does do television selectively for products with a natural synergy, such as “The Walking Dead.” Outdoor media like billboards is also used for some game titles.
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