Linden Lab was able to triple its return on investment (ROI) for marketing for the virtual world Second Life by targeting users with personalized pitches based on their preferences.
That’s normal for a lot of mobile app makers these days, but Linden Lab, which was born as a PC-focused startup in 1999 and launched Second Life in 2003, has been able to adapt to the world of targeted marketing in a partnership with Arm Treasure Data. During the past two years working with Arm Treasure Data, Linden Lab hit its marketing targets and cut its customer acquisition costs by 17%, claims Darren Helton, senior digital marketing manager at Linden Lab, in a statement.
Linden Lab tapped Arm Treasure Data’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), and it used CDP’s Customer Journey Orchestration early access program. Arm Treasure Data has new tools built into the latest version of the platform, such as an early access program to help companies launch new brand experiences and new security and administration features. The Arm Treasure Data CDP let Linden Lab use its data to more efficiently acquire and retain users, as well as implement remarketing strategies for deeper product engagement. That means reaching out to lapsed players to get them to come back. Leveraging the platform’s segmentation and personalization functionality, for example, Linden Lab ran hyper-customized email campaigns and more effectively engaged website visitors with finely tailored content.
Rob Parrish, a senior director of product management at Arm Treasure Data, said in a statement that longer and complex customer buying journeys are driving higher acquisition and retention costs. He said the combination of CDP capabilities for unifying data and journey orchestration tools enable companies to better manage customer touchpoints across the entire buying lifecycle through a single platform.
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Personalization at scale
Above: Second Life is finding ways to keep users coming in and coming back.
Linden Lab used CDP to consolidate its data and understand its player preferences. This has enabled Linden Lab to better connect and personalize its engagements with customers and improve marketing ROI by 300%.
Helton said that Second Life isn’t selling a single, traditional product, but rather many virtual experiences. And Linden Lab’s virtual world has hundreds of communities, so it can be challenging to reach exactly the right people with exactly the right message. Linden Lab had a lot of valuable data sitting in its data warehouse, but aside from being able to run limited ad-hoc analyses, the company wasn’t able to make use of it. Syncing an internal database to an email vendor was a nightmare manual process.
Through the Arm Treasure Data CDP and new Customer Journey Orchestration features, Linden Lab will be able to make purchasing journeys more actionable across the hundreds of touchpoints for thousands of players.
The platform now integrates incoming raw, non-personally identifying data such as locations visited in-world and time spent in various regions. These data sources, used for analysis, are exported to some 25 targets, including Mailchimp, Google Ads, Facebook, and other systems. Helton touts the solution’s abundance of prebuilt connectors, as well as the sophistication of data cleansing. He said Linden Lab vetted five different vendors in the market.
The result is that Linden Lab can run more and better campaigns, do more testing, leverage its most valuable marketing channels to their full potential, and connect more deeply and personally with users.
Helton said that Arm Treasure data gave his company a strategic advantage in segmenting, connecting, and personalizing the experience for users. He said the new Customer Journey Orchestration features will enable Linden Lab to better acquire and engage with new players and help focus marketing efforts.
Anheuser-Busch InBev also used CDP to improve its marketing ROI. The benefits of personalization are now more accessible across customers’ global operations with significant investments in new security and administration features. These allow Arm Treasure Data customers such as AB InBev to easily administer the platform for quicker adoption.
