Background
Baazi Games set out to bring a unique approach to online gaming in India starting in 2014. Today, they are one of the leading players in the Indian online gaming industry with a reputation for a secure and fair gaming experience.
They operate several popular online platforms including PokerBaazi (their flagship product), BalleBaazi, and CardBaazi — all catering to different types of gamers.
The brand’s massive success can be attributed to the rewards of real money and player-centric experiences coupled with growth marketing campaigns that instantly grab the audience’s attention.
Baazi Games has a multi-pronged approach to marketing — they leverage social media to build an online presence, feature celebrities on their mobile app and website, partner with influencers, and run paid ads on OTT platforms during popular shows and sports events.
Challenge
Baazi Games’ omni-channel marketing strategy typically focuses on user acquisition across their various mobile apps. However, they needed a better, more precise way to capture attribution data across their different apps, platforms, and campaigns.
Before using Branch, they were experimenting with a bunch of separate traditional performance marketing tools, including Google Analytics, to measure campaign performance. But these platforms lacked the level of granular data and visibility the team needed to make data-driven decisions that would power their mobile app growth, improve spending decisions, and drive revenue.
As a result, they weren’t able to truly optimize ROI for their growth marketing campaigns.
Solution
Baazi Games zeroed in on Branch as the ideal mobile linking platform (MLP) to enhance their pre- and post-install customer experience across owned and earned channels. In addition, they leveraged Branch as their mobile measurement partner (MMP), allowing them to accurately understand complex user journeys and get unbiased data insights across their paid ad marketing efforts.
“I think Branch has some very good use cases covering all marketing channels, especially for the RMG in the gaming industry, so it was a no-brainer for us to rely on Branch. Our goal was to optimize the infrastructure in place as soon as possible so we could be laser-focused on a robust strategy for growth. That’s where Branch played a really critical role for us.”
Jaskaran Singh, AVP Growth
Baazi Games
Leveraging reliable deep links
PokerBaazi uses Branch deep links across all of their customer-facing marketing campaigns so they can route users to specific in-app content, even after the app install. This also helps them deliver a seamless user experience that drives engagement and conversions.
Once PokerBaazi integrated deep links in their marketing tech stack, their CRM team began observing an upward revenue trend. This came as a result of reducing friction points in the user journey and quickly routing customers to the desired in-app content page.
The team also integrated Branch into their existing email service provider (ESP) for a powerful email user experience, seamlessly routing users who installed their mobile app to relevant, personalized, in-app content. Integrating Branch with their ESP also provides attribution for in-app events coming from email, enabling them to measure the effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns and optimize budgets to drive higher ROI.
Poker tournaments being one of the USPs, PokerBaazi hosts a variety of tournaments that occur on a daily and weekly basis. PokerBaazi also hosts some of the biggest poker tournaments in India such as End Boss (5 Cr prize money guaranteed) & GOAT (8 Cr prize money guaranteed). These are held yearly alongside one of the biggest tournament series – the National Poker series (25+ Cr prize money guaranteed). Branch deep links are used across all tournament-based communication in acquisition and retention cohorts. This enables PokerBaazi to route users to specific tournament-based in-app sections to drive tournament registrations and subsequent revenue growth.
Capturing accurate measurement data
Branch’s mobile measurement solution gives Baazi Games a cross-platform, cross-device, and cross-channel view of their attribution data from paid, owned, and earned channels. It acts as the final, complete layer of attribution so Baazi Games can make better, more informed decisions.
Branch’s reports and data insights are powerful yet very accessible with user-friendly functionality so different teams can easily access and understand reports. They are a key component of Baazi Games’ internal data pipelines where Branch’s data fuels different reports for different teams.
Using Branch’s MMP, Baazi Games also identified a good performance marketing mix for growth with Facebook as one of the key drivers among Apple search ads, affiliates, and OTT inventories. As a result, they doubled down on display ads and have been able to create a highly effective pipeline for growth using Branch.
To overcome measurement challenges and identify the platforms and campaigns truly driving their success, Baazi Games switched from Google Analytics to Branch. This gave them a cross-platform, cross-device view of all their attribution data from paid, owned, and earned channels to make better, more informed decisions.
For example, Branch helped them identify Facebook as one of their most mature channels from a user acquisition standpoint. So, they doubled down on Facebook display ads and have been able to create a highly effective pipeline for growth using Branch.
“We’ve seen considerably good results with Branch. It has impacted our ROI level attribution and has given us a very clear picture of how ROI is actually going based on the last-click attribution. This is critical to our marketing efforts because we’re an ROI-led business. We have witnessed an increase in quality installs by 25% YoY (aligning a good quality performance marketing mix) which has led to growth in DAUs by 50%. Additionally, our conversion volumes are up by 1.5X considerably in comparison to last year and the overall quality of the mix has improved. So, from a reporting and analytics perspective, Branch definitely played a very critical role for us to get the entire picture.”
Jaskaran Singh, AVP Growth
Baazi Games
Baazi Games also used Branch to attribute the performance of their paid ad campaigns on OTT platforms. They displayed banners and video ads on OTT platforms like Hotstar, MX, and Sony Liv. They also used display ads on digital publisher networks like Money Control.
Baazi Games displays banner ads on Hotstar, a popular OTT platform.
Baazi Games video ads on MX, an OTT platform.
Baazi Games display ads on digital publisher networks, Money Control.
Results
Branch has become a trusted partner and is considered a source of truth for attribution across all of Baazi Games’ organic and paid marketing efforts. This helps them gather insights into their A/B testing and double down on what’s performing best for them from a conversion standpoint. All of the different teams — from marketing to data analytics — can now make business-critical decisions with reliable, scalable data and insights.
Branch has answered important questions for Baazi Games like, “Which channels are performing the best? Which ones drive the highest ROI? Which channels should they invest in more to accelerate revenue?” Co-founder and CMO Varun Ganjoo shared, “Branch has given us the visibility and transparency right to the levels of leadership to take very critical, strategic, high-level strategy decisions for the organization.”
- 25% increase in quality installs YoY
- 50% growth in DAUs
- 1.5X increase in conversion volumes from July 22 – June 23 as compared to last year
