ReadyUp launches Discord app for event discovery and engagement

ReadyUp, which helps game companies organize fan communities, has launched a Discord app to help companies with customer growth.

ReadyUp launched an app for discovery and engagement for Discord communities, said Roderick Alemania, CEO of ReadyUp, in an interview with GamesBeat. The app enables publishers, creators, and event organizers to grow, engage and monetize their communities by publishing immersive content directly into Discord’s Scheduled Event system.

With gaming and entertainment being a direct-to-consumer service, publishers, creators, and event organizers package their content using “events” as a point of sale.

“We’ve created a customer growth platform that isn’t reliant on third-party data because you know, that is like the anti-ad platform,” Alemania said. “Think about the Warriors basketball games. I was searching for anything that was Warriors related. It was something I wanted to consume more. So people will engage with content, and they don’t like advertising.”

Discord’s Scheduled Events system enables scheduled events to be published in servers ahead of time so communities can learn about and be notified when events are occurring and when the event is live. To use this system, the event has to be entered manually each time for every server promoting the event; and, if there are changes, they have to be manually updated.

ReadyUp’s Discord app simplifies the process. Discord admins enter their events into ReadyUp, can publish to an unlimited number of Discord servers, and make changes or updates at any time. Additionally, they can attach Calls to Action (CTAs) to drive event engagement like join, subscribe, register, or buy, and enable Discord notifications or calendar notifications for Apple and Google as reminders.

“Discord has over 6.7 million servers, 150 million monthly active users, and builds a community experience not interrupted by advertising,” said Alemania. “ReadyUp’s approach of using content to engage consumers enables Discord for customer growth.”

Given the rise of creator communities coupled with privacy regulation and consumers’ disdain for advertising, ReadyUp’s SaaS platform takes a novel approach of using events and content to drive customer growth, Alemania said. This means marketers are adding value to the community experience–not interrupting it with advertising, creators are authentically engaging their fans, and communities discover content that fuels their passion.

“This is about a new model of doing business with the end consumer,” Alemania said. “The old model was let’s bombard them with ads and hope they click this. In our case, we give people what they want, which is content. And then they find that valuable, and they’re going to want to transact with that content as opposed to ignore it. And you know, the data supports that story.”

“Events like EGF Disney National High School Esports Championships culminate our season with over 800 teams competing. Each team has a fan base spread across multiple Discord, Twitch, and other Web Communities,” said Eric Johnson, CEO of Electronic Gaming Federation (EGF), in a statement. “ReadyUp enables us to programmatically activate event participants’ and partners’ communities as a massive content distribution network.”

ReadyUp’s Discord App incrementally adds to the platform’s existing ability to publish into an unlimited number of Twitch communities using a Twitch approved extension and Web simultaneously. Businesses of any size from publishers to creators to event organizers can use ReadyUp to drive customer growth. From sign-up to publishing across Discord, Twitch and Web, and Social, the entire process takes less than an hour to go live.

When you indicate that you like content, ReadyUp will help you engage with it by adding something related to it, like the next upcoming event, to your calendar. Or it will send you a notification on Discord that something is happening and you need to be reminded to engage with it. This is a lot more effective than you having to manually enter a calendar item to remind you of the upcoming event.

“What ReadyUp does is that when someone enters an event into the Discord app, it immediately publishes all of their events into Discord,” he said. “And if they change want to make changes, they make a change in ReadyUp, and it will automatically republish back into Discord. And you can manually enter these in if you only have one Discord channel. But if you’re dealing with multiple channels, you need something that can effectively, programmatically scale. So we’ve we built that. And what we’re enabling our customers to do is to start using Discord in a deliberate way for customer growth, whether it be acquiring new customers, or re-engaging existing customers.”

It’s all fed through an event system that Discor created, except now you don’t have to do manual entry. It’s an approved app as the company worked with Discord to build it. And Discord users such as content creators can now use it to get more organic customer engagement and growth.

Platform Conversion Rates

As a customer growth platform, community marketers often evaluate ReadyUp against digital advertising conversion. Alemania said average advertising click-through rates (CTR) range from 0.10% to 0.25% in terms of impressions.

ReadyUp sees average CTR rates of 0.50% and its conversion rates are based on the reach to unique users (not impressions). ReadyUp’s CTR increase of 0.25% to 0.40% relative to ads creates meaningful value: with many communities reaching 10 million people, it represents 25,000 to 40,000 more responses per every 10 million vs ads.

“When you look at the click-through rates, advertising is probably less than a quarter of or a tenth of a percent. And what we’re seeing in ReadyUp, we’re doing a half of a percent for the click-through rate. And it’s because we’re putting content that communities actually want to discover and engage in,” Alemania said. “If you are a Rolling Stones fan, you will go to a web site and consumer anything that is related tot he Rolling Stones.”

Alemania said it’s working so well that the sales cycle for selling ReadyUp to customers has shrunk to less than 30 days.

“You’re not trying to sell me ads, people tell me,” he said. “You’re helping me get new customers, and retain existing customers. And you’re helping me find my existing customers in places that I normally wouldn’t be able to play in.”

Alemania believes advertisers usually pay $2 or more for costs per click. But ReadyUp’s service pricing plans average 35 cents in terms of cost per click.

“I’ve been in the advertising and marketing side for 25 years. Given where people are on privacy and hating ads, this is how customer acquisition should be done,” Alemania said. “It should be done through content, not through advertising. You can make it a win-win, where it’s about adding value to everyone’s experience, whether it be the marketer, the creator, or the the community itself.”

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz