How do you acclimate newcomers so they become loyal users?

Frontier needed to make their game seem less daunting

Elite Dangerous, a simulation without a linear narrative, offers incredible depth and freedom of choice. But to get to the full experience, players had to understand a number of complex systems that work in tandem. New and inexperienced players could find themselves overwhelmed from the outset, causing them to quickly lose interest. Fronter needed to promote long-term game loyalty by nurturing new players.

They used Adestra to create a series of tailored emails

Frontier implemented an automated onboarding journey to help new players integrate into complex, multi-player world of Elite Dangerous. They created user personas and tailored content for each one, helping to significantly increase the number of gameplay sessions and total game time for new players during the first thirty days, which can make or break a player’s loyalty to the game.

The onboarding campaign got new users up and running

By creating an automated onboarding journey, the Frontier team helped guide new players and increased their game time.

By analyzing player data, Frontier identified three segments or ‘personas’ amongst new players; those who were struggling to get going and had only played a few hours in their first week; those who were still finding their feet; and players who had hit the ground running, having invested many hours into the game already.

Frontier developed tailored content for each of the three personas, pitched at the right level depending on how long they had played. This content was designed to help them progress and encourage them to experiment with more gameplay choices. For example, people who have played for less than two hours will get tips on how to fly their ship, while adept pilots receive information on improving their trading, charting systems for exploration, and arming for combat.

To test the effectiveness of this strategy, Frontier used the Split Path functionality within Adestra’s Automation Program Builder to separate a control group who received a generic (non-tailored) journey.

Not only did play time double thanks to the onboarding journey, but Frontier achieved some incredible results. Read the full case study below.

Download the case study