EMAIL-VILLE: Social Gaming Companies Set to Take Plunge into Email CRM

Author:

Scott Hardigree

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Tired of getting notifications about lost black sheep from distant cousins and ex-girlfriends from high school on Facebook? Don’t even trip. All notifications will be going away (both app-to-user and user-to-user) within the next month as Facebook revamps its platform.
 
But what does this mean for juggernaut social gaming developers like Zynga (Mafia Wars, Farmville) and Playfish (Restaurant City, Pet Society) who’ve been relying on notifications to communicate with users? According to Jon Wirt, Marketing Product Manager at The Casual Collective, social games generated $835 million last year and will rely heavily on email marketing going forward.
 
Jon states, “Facebook has already begun prompting users to opt-in on application pages [see image below] and will continue to do so as the notifications are phased out. The big question from a CRM standpoint, however, is how good of a job will the ...