AppBoy, the leading platform for mobile relationship management (MRM), announces today its support for Unity, the internationally popular gaming development platform. Unity boasts a thriving community of over two million game developers, who use it to "author once, deploy everywhere" on multiple operating systems. This exciting and vital new integration comes on the heels of Appboy's $7.6 million Series A financing, further strengthening the company's vision to lead the way in MRM, particularly in the mobile gaming sector. Appboy is the first MRM platform to support Unity and joins the ranks of Facebook which recently integrated with the platform.
This news is a boon to mobile gaming and arrives at a crucial moment. The number of mobile gamers in the U.S. will double to an estimated 191.3 million by 2017, and the industry currently constitutes 72% of all app store revenue. With in-app purchases acting as the primary driver of mobile monetization (accounting for 92%), a shift in focus from app install to engagement is necessary to maximize revenue per user. Appboy is set to empower gaming companies to increase mobile ROI with tools to manage the full lifecycle of their audience.
GSN Games comes on board as the first client to implement Appboy's Unity SDK. With multi-screen gaming content enjoyed by a subscriber base of over 80 million, GSN is rapidly evolving to serve its growing mobile needs. Joining Appboy's growing roster of over 1,000 clients was therefore a natural next step.
"To complement Unity's flexibility, we were looking for a mobile relationship platform that would not only be adaptable to our needs, but also strengthen our app portfolio," said Eyal Grundstein, Head of Mobile Marketing at GSN Games. "Appboy's Success Squad has proactively worked with us to help us develop best practices using its automated marketing tools like in-app messaging and customer support to greatly improve our interactions with customers."
The first game developed under this new platform was Cordy 2, released last week, with other games currently in the works. GSN Games can now take advantage of features such as user segmentation and targeted multi-channel messaging, which help re-engage lost users, increase awareness and drive in-app purchases. The platform also provides detailed usage data and programmatic feedback, which enables developers to understand how their audience is interacting with the app in terms of game time, engagement and spending.
"As the industry leader in mobile marketing automation, Appboy is constantly expanding the reach and robustness of our multi-platform SDK and the marketing tools we provide to the developer community," said Bill Magnuson, CTO of Appboy. "We're excited to work with an innovative mobile gaming company like GSN Games to support their incredibly popular games, which are played on mobile devices across the globe."
