For a long time, we've been aware of a wealth of lapsed players on our Facebook page, who often bounce because they find it difficult to keep up to date with the sheer amount of content within a 19-year-old MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) - so we needed a tool to help onboard and support new and lapsed players through the funnel and onwards to downloading/playing/purchasing. Hence, the RuneScape companion bot was born.
Its objectives were:
- Support the release of RuneScape’s biggest pieces of in-game content; and our company initiatives (RS Mobile, RuneFest, Twitch Prime)
- Efficiently onboard new players who might feel overwhelmed with 19 years’ worth of content (225+ quests, 27 skills, 150+ locations, 40+ bosses)
- Drive Engagement on our main social platforms with community incentives (exclusive competitions, offers, reminders for in-game and IRL events)
- Drive Conversion towards our game, suite of websites, and downloads of RuneScape Mobile
- Provide an alternative way for our UA team to onboard and retain players to the game
- Facilitate access to our Player Support pipeline
- Be a fun and innovative way for our players to experience RuneScape’s unique identity
We built out a network of touchpoints and communications, covering everything from Player Support to hyping new content updates, all dedicated to ensuring players could have answers or next points for all of their queries, and thus retained within our community.
- Launch involved coordinated actions from Community, Social, Digital Marketing, PR and CRM teams: news post on runescape.com, posts on our main social channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), announcement in our weekly Twitch stream, press release, segment in monthly newsletter, FB Messenger Ads. Specific Bot interactions were created for each point of entry to make sure users are onboarded with tailored messaging.
- The Bot is built with pre-defined pathways and keyword-triggered messages to ensure that users find what they’re looking for as easy and quickly as possible. High quality and exclusive visual content (GIFs, short videos, photo carrousels) maintains an overall enjoyable experience and minimizes dropouts from bored users.
- Experience is enriched by the Bot’s tone of voice, written like one of our in-game NPCs: a balance of serious and humorous replies, with tie-ins to the RuneScape Lore.
- Conversion is driven by CTAs (Links in text, Image Cards) and a system of targeted FB notifications: we segment audiences based on paths they take within the Bot, and offer opt-ins to community reminders – both in-game (Game Update, Double XP event, etc) and IRL (start of our weekly Twitch stream, Month Ahead video launched on YouTube, launch of a membership offer, RS Mobile available on Android Play Store).
- As most of our players reach out on our page for a Support request, the FB Bot integrates a dedicated experience for it: users are first taken through a series of questions to identify their need, and are then redirected to specific pages in the ticket creation system of our Support Website.
- Interactions also consider the possibility for players to mess up with the Bot. Lifelike answers to the most obvious queries and a series of randomized answers maximizes time spent by users having fun.
- Subscriptions to tailored notifications provided us with an opted-in group of players we could service messaging to when something of interest to them had been updated or released - providing us a captive audience for notifications!
Since launch, the FB Bot performed very well against the objectives set during build of the campaign. Latest numbers (July 1st 2020 - Jan 1st 2020):
- 56,689 Total Interactions (20.1% above target)
- Avg 17.53 Interactions Per User (46.4% above target)
- 44.2% of Users converted into Subscribers
- FB broadcasts received a 72% Avg. Open Rate
- 19% Avg. CTR
The FB Bot has proven to be an efficient way to support our in-game campaigns when compared to our organic actions on Facebook, and wider marketing initiatives. During game content launch periods, it has shown more interactions on pathways relating to these updates than organic posts on our page feed.
On a non-campaign specific level, the FB Bot shows significant potential to answer Player Support queries from players who come seeking help on our channel.
