When do you email inactive members?

[Sim]

How often do you email your inactive members? How often should you typical email them before removing them from database or stop notifying them they have been inactive?

 

[Marek]

You probably have to take into account how long the user has been active. A user who logged in once and never again probably doesn't even remember signing up, while for a user who has player for a year, they are unlikely to have forgotten about it after a month.

Web marketing people will probably tell you that a targeted email list is one of the most valuable things you can have, and that you should keep investing in your inactive users because it takes a lot less effort to keep them playing than it takes to get new users.

I played EVE Online for a month once, and I still get newsletters and crap from them. But they send me valuable "come back" discounts, so I can see the value. The point is that if you're making money from your game, then chances are it'll never be worth it to completely deactivate an account because there's always the chance that a user will come back and spend some more.

I think 3 months would be a good minimum wait time before sending a reminder email, and if you really have to delete them for inactivity, 6 months would be a good wait period. But compared to minute cost of keeping inactive users in the database, I don't think it should ever be a necessity to remove users (unless the number of inactive users affects gameplay, but even then you can use an inactivity flag rather than deletion)

[cylentwolf]

I agree with Marek on not deleting and just making them inactive. 

Also I would use them as a first step to conversion.  I mean they already logged into your game at least once. 

Include them on the emails that blast out to everyone when you do a great new feature or you added some new challenge.

[Mutant]

I email out announcements every time I do a release (about once a month). This goes to everyone who's signed up, whether active or inactive. At this frequency, people don't tend to get too annoyed, especially if you're saying "look a this new stuff you might be interested in" rather than "please come back!".

Obviously, they have the option to turn off the emails (which is a couple of clicks), or delete themselves from the database completely (which requires a login). If they've requested never to receive emails (which they can do when they are active) they never get them. I think this is all you need to comply with the anti-spam laws in most countries.

[hiigara]

I don't respect games that send me inactive reminders. If they send too many I click the spam button immediatly.
In my opinion if a game is fun the player does not need reminders to enjoy himself, that's something he will do naturally.

[Sim]

Thanks everyone for the responses.

[verynotbad]

Just be careful of spam traps and people flagging you as spam. I think you should email all members often but do figure in a cutoff time when a member is basically dead to you. You do have deliverability issues to worry about which is based on your reputation level and the number of spam complaints against the IP you are sending from. Too many and you could see your emails never make it to your members inbox. Whatever you do, just make sure you track that.

[pampa]

Hello all, here is my own experience

I like get active players at the expense of the total number of users.

About my persistent sport game i use two different systems in order to delete inactive users:
1) those who register but do not perform any login for 6 days, will be deleted without reminder
2) who does not login for 23 days (*) receives a reminder, and if he don't comes back in 1 week, he will be deleted.

I never sent emails to deleted users, i do not keep their own addresses ... perhaps would it also illegal?


(*) is it too early?

[Chris]

(*) is it too early?

Yes. These are insanely too early numbers (you should rather use inactive for X months, not X days). Most games simply don't delete inactives (many of those who were doing it in the past stopped). The cost of acquiring a player is simply too high nowadays and the hardware costs are too low to delete your precious players. You could use various tricks to get rid of/hide inactives without deleting the player's account.