How Kayzr grew its user base by 350% while cutting retention costs by gamifying the user experience
How Kayzr grew its user base by 350% while cutting retention costs by gamifying the user experience
Scroll down and find out the secret behind the product gamification success 👇
350%
more users since the launch of Kayzr 4.0
60%
increase in daily active users
1 year
of 24/7 eyeball time in a day
1.5h
average session time per user per day
As the largest esports online gaming platform in the BENELUX region, Kayzr helps brands reach the millennials and generation Z target group where eyeballs and engagement are more concentrated than ever. Gamers can create an account on Kayzr free of charge, and get prize rewards to participate in tournaments of their favorite games. For a seamless experience, each tournament takes place only in the afternoon under the supervision of a moderator provided by Kayzr. In an effort to level-up the gamers’ experience and delight, but cap the costs of rewards and support as the platform scaled, Kayzr turned to StriveCloud.
It is not uncommon for a digital platform to provide prize rewards to attract and activate user behavior. Kayzr gamers are incentivized to participate in tournaments by winning Kayzr coins which they can spend on real-life items in the online shop. But as the platform scales, the cost of organizing tournaments and motivate gamers’ participation scales with it.
In an effort to solve this seemingly complex problem, Kayzr’s commercial team researched potential solutions to incentivize gamers to participate in competitions that roll 24/7 at no additional cost, and ultimately offer sponsor visibility over a scalable audience.
Kayzr selected StriveCloud as a partner that they could work with to create a scalable reward and support system, without compromising the user experience in the new platform release: Kayzr 4.0.
Since going live with Kayzr 4.0 and StriveCloud, the Kayzr community has been growing week after week with an average of weekly growth of 20% in both registrations as well as tournaments played. In the weeks following the COVID-19 lockdown, the numbers grew even faster.
Why StriveCloud?
So why did the Kayzr team decide to work with StriveCloud to gamify the experience on Kayzr 4.0?
There were 3 objectives:
We first analyzed the reward and support system in place on Kayzr, to understand what drives engagement and what opportunities there are to improve without compromising the experience of the existing user base
We conceptualized the gamification strategy to deliver 24/7 engagement without increasing the cost of support and prize rewards
We ran a technical feasibility test and moved Kayzr 4.0 under development
We launched Kayzr 4.0 successfully and sparked organic engagement within weeks of activation
Moving to a league system, Kayzr’s “big opportunity”
Before Kayzr 4.0 tournaments were organized only in the evenings. It required the presence of a moderator to start the tournament and solve disputes.
“There was too much manual work to keep people on the platform. Too many community managers that needed to do custom support for each tournament.” said Pieter Verheye, the Community Manager @Kayzr
“There was too much manual work to keep people on the platform. Too many community managers that needed to do custom support for each tournament.” said Pieter Verheye, the Community Manager @Kayzr
Besides the manual work, the tournament system limited engagement on the platform. Gamers could enroll in fixed tournaments and wait sometimes days for the competition to start, and in some cases, participants were not showing at all. The Kayzr team knew they needed to make improvements to the tournament system. But creating a flawless new system can take time, and Kayzr was looking for a solution that could quickly drive 24/7 engagement on the platform. The team realized that with a league system, gamers could play all week, get points for each game, and compete against each other in leaderboards for bigger prizes, while moderators could limit their assistance.
“For tournaments you need to be there at a fixed time, with a new league system we could have 24/7 competitions with limited support” added Pieter.
“For tournaments, you need to be there at a fixed time, with a new league system we could have 24/7 competitions with limited support” added Pieter.
But from a players’ perspective, switching to a league system was not as fun. In the tournament system, every time a player participated in a tournament, got a standard amount of virtual coins to spend in the online shop. In the league system, players would get less virtual coins for participation, but they could win bigger prizes overall.
To help Kayzr not compromise its gamers’ experience, StriveCloud decided on a set of gamification techniques designed to supercharge the fun element and spark the gamers’ intrinsic motivation to participate in competitions.
On the long run, people prefer moments of excitement over standard prize rewards
Creating success with StriveCloud required making the league system fun to play. To achieve that we used gamification mechanisms to make the experience more competitive. We decide to focus on elements of empowerment, unpredictability, and surprise to spark users’ motivation to participate on Kayzr 4.0.
“People are coming for the rewards, but if you take them away engagement suffers. With StriveCloud’s help we created a new reward system focused on moments of surprise and user empowerment, and engagement is higher than ever.” Pieter Verheye, Community Manager @Kayzr
“People are coming for the rewards, but if you take them away engagement suffers. With StriveCloud’s help, we created a new reward system focused on moments of surprise and user empowerment, and engagement is higher than ever.” Pieter Verheye, Community Manager @Kayzr
Results recap:
Results recap:
👉 350% more users since the launch of Kayzr 4.0
👉 60% more daily active users
👉 1 year of 24/7 eyeball time in a day
👉 1.5h average session time per user per day