How we got 11k fans on Facebook (and 10k+ reactions on a Facebook post) IN A DAY thanks to redirecting traffic

Managing an app’s social media means that you have an interesting situation. Often times, the app’s user base may be considered as a huge (figurative) bucket of prospects, who’d be willing to engage with you outside of it – in social media, namely. There are many ways of letting them know that you’re doing something on, say, Facebook. There are pop-ups, buttons linked to your profiles and so on. They usually provide a constant and healthy stream of new followers. However, it’s always nice to witness a peak in the number of new followers, isn’t it? You know, a big influx of new people. And in May, we did just that. Here’s how it happened.

Importance of cooperation

Frankly, the idea behind the post wasn’t too wild. A lottery which was born in the mind of a LiveOps engineer who asked my supervisor for cooperation. I get to work with people from different teams often, however this time I felt it could be something big. I am grateful that he reached out to us and that we were able to plan everything as well as possible. We both had some capabilities to reach people, which combined led to great effects. I was in charge of the Facebook page, which wasn’t little at the time by any means, and he had an ability to control a key feature in the game, which proved to be a phenomenal redirecting tool. The good old inbox message system.

Inbox system

Messaging systems have been used, be it in apps or in real life, for as long as it gets. Instead of talking about the famous Marathon runner, importance of modern postal services, emrgence of emails and whatnot, I’ll make a cut straight to how we used a specially prepared message.

The inbox in Fishing Clash is an interesting one. Mostly because players can’t send messages, nor respond to us. It’s more of a bulletin board than an inbox at its core. However, we don’t really use it that often. And there’s one more thing, which helped us quite a lot.

We have an option to insert a button into a message and it can be linked to a site on the internet. Of course, we decided to link the lottery post.

The lottery itself

The lottery was planned to be a part of an event revolving around great white sharks. Honestly, I can’t remember the details of the event and I’d say they are not important at this moment in time. When deciding what were going to be the prizes, I wanted to go all out and I suggested some extraordinary items. My proposition had to be toned down, but I kept pushing, because I knew that in order to make the lottery interesting, we had to top pretty much everything we’ve done in the past. And a giant lure pack, 100k gold coins and a 3* fishing rod did the trick (these items are worth quite a lot). The rewards had to be as exposed to the public as possible, so we listed them in the picture, in the message and in the copy of the Facebook post. We decided to grant these prizes to 20 people, who were to be chosen randomly from all of the comments (it was the sole condition of participation) – we asked them to leave their ID numbers down there, to make it easy and accesible.

I believe we hit the jackpot with the lottery. It had everything a good lottery should have:

• good prizes,
• easy entry,
• it was relevant to our users’ needs,
• it lasted for about 2 days, so the entrants perceived it as a limited opportunity.

I think that we also included an invitation to follow our Facebook page in the message. It’s been a while ago, though, so I don’t remember.

Execution

When the day came, I posted the picture with the copy to Fishing Clash’s Facebook page. I quickly copied the link and passed it to people responsible for operating the inbox system, so they could send the message to all of the players’ inboxes as rapidly as possible. Then, we waited. After the lottery was over, we posted a comment with winners listed and we sent out the prizes. Quite a simple process.

Effects

They were staggering. Usually, our Facebook page has a decent reach, decent activity on posts, high CTR, but this post, simply put, dwarfed every other organic post we had published.

Here are the most crucial informations:

• reach: 150k+ (I can’t share precise data, but it was way more than 150k),
• 26k+ comments,
• 10k+ reactions,
• 372 shares,
• 60k+ activities,
• 20% CTR,
• and 11k+ new fans on Facebook in a single day.

And we didn’t spend a dime (aside from distributing virtual goods, which do hold a monetary value, of course).

I guess there were things, which we could’ve done better when it comes to the execution of the idea, but it’s hard to pinpoint them, because it just did so well.

Conclusion

I do realize that the results of the lottery were so astounding, because Fishing Clash is the biggest fishing game in the world. I don’t have data how many people read the message we sent to their inboxes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were hundreds of thousands or more. It was also a great way of generating a huge peak in the number of our followers. What do you think about it? How have you been redirecting traffic from your app/products to your social media? Tell us your story in the comments below! I also believe that I should do more of these.

Thank you for reading, cheers.

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