Jayne Peressini

This Q&A was conducted when Jayne was a Senior Director, Mobile Marketing and Growth at Electronic Arts. Currently, Jayne is a Advisor at Jetson and The World POG Federation.

Jayne Peressini is the Senior Director of Mobile Marketing and Growth at Electronic Arts. Jayne’s impressive career in digital marketing includes over eight years of driving growth at notable companies including DraftKings, MZ and Reddit. Her interest in mobile began at a young age when she first started porting mobile games in the pre-app store days. Jayne continues pursuing her passion in mobile by leading and managing user acquisition efforts at Electronic Arts.

In your own words, tell us about the apps that you manage?

I manage all Electronic Arts’ mobile titles globally.

How did you get started in mobile marketing?

My dad was the CFO of Glu Mobile back in the early 2000s and made my twin sister and I port mobile games in the pre-app store days (hello, Nokia 7650). I was the first person to pitch a blogger outreach program where gaming bloggers wrote reviews and linked our games. Afterward, I naturally gravitated towards roles in the sphere of mobile marketing and gaming.

What do you like most about mobile marketing?

Being able to tie revenue directly back to your efforts. It’s very gratifying. Also, being wrong a lot. It makes life a bit more light when data validates that your idea wasn’t great, but then you fix it and it works.

What does it take to succeed in mobile marketing?

To be successful in mobile marketing, you have to fail. And you must be gritty not to be defeated by such failures. I know the best mobile marketers who fail brilliantly and achieve more than someone who plays it safe. The mobile industry moves rapidly—once you understand the quirks, it shifts to the next big thing. Grit keeps you in the game and evolving with the industry.

Another important trait is empathy. I learned to be empathetic as I got older, as I started having kids, and as I realized that mental health directly impacted my ability to succeed in my career. Everyone goes through tough times, as well as good. This industry has empathetic people who wish to connect on that level, but there’s no secret to communicating like “hey, can we talk about some real stuff right now instead of CPIs?”

What strategies work best to convert installs into engaged app users?

Don’t focus on installs. Shoddy methods to acquire new users ultimately create expensive retention tactics. If you bring in unqualified, cheap users, you end up paying to retain them. That’s why I don’t ask my UA folks about their CPIs—I care about their contribution to the business, whether it’s acquiring high-value users or focusing on retaining them. User acquisition managers should set their sights on managing the funnel rather than acquiring users for the lowest CPI.

In the past year, what is one tip you can share which made the biggest performance difference for your UA strategy?

Failing. There isn’t a magic pill or a secret partner who drives all the traffic. It’s hard work and continuing to fail. Anyone on my team can tell you that I regularly fail; they call me out in meetings or tell me when I’m wrong. It’s healthy. A solution may not have been Plan A, but that doesn’t mean you stop trying to figure things out.

What advice can you offer marketers to re-engage mobile app users successfully?

Focus on the “why” messaging to bring users back. If you only focus on the who and how much, you end up driving non-incremental users back into your app. If you are retaining a user who consistently plays then are you trying to upsell? Cross-sell? They probably won’t care about a feature update if they play the game often, so don’t go vanilla on them. Instead, invest in really good dynamic creative and broadcast your offers well.

Also keep asking questions. Did the user churn because they had a bad experience in the game? Has customer experience (CX) reached out to them? Did you put a retargeting link in the outreach? These details add up and really matter when it comes to re-engagement.

What advice can you offer to help marketers combat mobile ad fraud?

Don’t run with many partners. Spreading your investment over a lot of partners is lazy. You can do better. Tighten the screws on a few good ones and figure out why your campaigns are working. When you do, you will uncover how to mitigate fraud by being overly inquisitive with your partners. Fraud is an advertiser-driven problem, so it’s yours to manage.