Altima and Ubisoft

In the course of this presentation, Clément Tardy and Perrine Dewally discuss the collaboration of their respective companies, Ubisoft Store and Altima. The idea is to show how they managed to capitalize on the Ubisoft marketing ecosystem to implement ongoing activation-oriented approaches. It is also a question of answering the problems of acquisition and retention that it is possible to find on Ubisoft Store, and to present the challenges of the moment such as the exploitation of data tech.

Ubisoft Store and Altima

Ubisoft Store is a live video game sales platform for consumers, launched in 2015. E-commerce has always been a kind of newborn with top management at Ubisoft, at least relatively young on an older group 35 years old. Ubisoft Store is composed of a team of fifteen people and is experiencing the growth of a start-up by doubling its turnover (turnover).

The collaboration with Altima began in December 2016, as it was necessary for them to have an experienced e-commerce agency. The focus was on the digital marketing part, and Altima helped Ubisoft Store define their e-commerce and digital marketing strategy, as well as their implementation capacity.

Today's goals are to sell games and make money while offering brand experiences and engaging players.

What is the strategy put in place?

A customer "centric strategy" has been put in place based essentially on three fundamental pillars: customer experience, data tech and organizational constraints.

Today, the customer journey is very fragmented, because a Ubisoft customer does not necessarily buy from the brand. He turns to distributors such as Amazon or Steam.

It is therefore not obvious to know his career. In addition, the course is also fragmented by the organization of Ubisoft, with development services that focus on gaming experience and commercial services that target turnover. The idea was to build the most integrated experience possible.

Data tech is the foundation for implementing these strategies. When collaboration between the two companies started, the IT roadmap was overloaded and no team had the bandwidth to implement the e-marketing and e-commerceoptimizations needed to perform. Exploiting data tech requires finding tips to get around this problem, especially by launching good projects with IT.

In addition, Ubisoft data tech tools are group data tech tools, not always configured to serve e-commerce issues. It is therefore necessary to understand the data tech and exploit it in an e-commerce part, as well as to leave the tools of the group to identify new ones.

In addition to data tech, Ubisoft has organizational constraints, so it takes time to federate teams that are not necessarily experts in e-commerce today to design the experience of tomorrow.

How to prioritize the tasks to be implemented?

To prioritize effectively, it is necessary to put in place a list of identified actions as well as a scoring to evaluate what can be put in place immediately:

Potential: the expected impact of the actions carried out. What is put in place can it address CA issues?
Importance in terms of business: we do not always have the data to determine if the action will work. But if it's a business priority, you have to work on it immediately.
Deployment: do we have the necessary data and do we have the right tools for the manager? Is there also human capacity to deploy the device?

The collaboration between Ubisoft Store and Altima has led to the implementation of an approach allowing to be constantly in a process of activation.

How did it materialize for E3?

The E3 is a big gathering taking place every year in June in Los Angeles. This is the most anticipated event in the video game world, as publishers present their latest news. It is the equivalent of Apple's keynote across the world's largest entertainment industry. Once the games are announced, the pre-orders are launched six months before the release. The challenge in terms of e-commerce is therefore very important.

To gain visibility, offer customer experience and highlight products, Ubisoft has set targets for commitment, performance and loyalty. And this, through three levers in the company of Altima:

One week before E3: a review of the home page to provide a satisfying mobile experience and make it responsive, as well as SEO optimization. The content was designed to be both e-commerce efficient and to ensure that Ubisoft's affiliates redirect their traffic to Ubisoft Store. A countdown was set up before E3, the latest games and those coming out just after the event was put forward to capitalize on this traffic. The engagement goals were achieved by putting videos and content referring to the previous year. To retain customers, a page listing the benefits offered by the brand has been created.
During the conference: The conference presenting all the games was broadcast on the home page. The group's subsidiaries have returned all their media traffic to Ubisoft Store.
After the E3: the games have been put forward via the creation of many landing pages. The goal was to redirect all traffic flows, in order to have a functional mobile experience, to offer the right information and comparison elements on games where pre-orders were announced, as well as those for which none pre-order was available (the idea being to push customers to return to the store to learn and retain).

The E3 was the biggest day of the year for the site, allowing it to double its turnover and generate a high engagement rate on landing pages.

What are the challenges of the moment?

Personalization is at the heart of the issues. It is essential and the data is available since Ubisoft Store knows who plays what, alone or with others and how long. The challenge is how to exploit this data for example stop promoting a game that the player has acquired just two days earlier, or offer to buy additional content.

The brand also wants to better visualize the acquisition and better understand all the levers to make the right decisions without thinking that the machine will be able to do the media mix instead of the workforce.

In conclusion, the key success factors are to understand the marketing ecosystem, namely the data tech base, align all services around a common goal, immediate activation and continuous learning.

Speaker:Clément TARDY, UBISOFT STORE and Perrine DEWALLY, ALTIMA

Program

Altima and Ubisoft: Data tech, customer experience, organizational constraints