Cross-border Game Industry Customer Case

A well-known mobile game is a small-to-medium-sized Chinese game development company established in 2022. Its core product is a well-known mobile game, primarily targeting European and American markets (US, Germany, France) and Southeast Asian markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand). Initially promoted through Facebook and TikTok advertising, it has accumulated over 8 million registered users with a payment rate of about 6.8% and an average order value of $120. In Q3 2024, the product faced four core operational pain points that directly affected player retention and payment conversion:

• Inefficient Verification Code Delivery: Initially relied on email + app push notifications for registration verification. Push notification blocking rates exceeded 40% in Southeast Asia, while email open rates in Europe and America were below 15%, resulting in a 32% new user registration loss rate. Some players abandoned login directly because they didn't receive verification codes.
• Frequent Account Security Complaints: Game accounts have high value, with frequent issues like remote logins, password tampering, and delayed payment receipts. Existing notification channels had delayed responses (average 15-minute delay), with account security-related complaints accounting for 58% of all complaints, increasing the risk of losing core paying players.
• Difficult Player Retention and Activation: With a long game lifecycle requiring continuous engagement to maintain activity, customer acquisition costs (CAC) have risen annually to $35, while dormant player (7 days not logged in) reactivation rates were only 8%, lacking low-cost, high-reach wake-up channels.
• Multi-region Compliance Risk: Significant differences in regulatory requirements across markets. The EU requires compliance with GDPR privacy regulations, the US requires 10DLC qualification registration, and Indonesia mandates Sender ID registration. Initially, SMS delivery success rates were below 60% due to unregistered templates, posing account suspension risks.

To address the above challenges, the well-known mobile game partnered with global cloud communication service Yaning AI in October 2024 to build an international SMS operation system covering the entire player lifecycle. The core requirements include improving delivery stability, reducing security complaints, activating dormant players, and achieving multi-region compliance operations.

1. Registration Login Period: Rapid Verification, Reducing New User Loss

Optimizing the verification process for verification code delivery challenges, adapting to network characteristics in different regions:

• Instant Verification Code SMS: SMS triggered within 5 seconds after player enters phone number, sent via local operator channels with automatic country code recognition and number formatting (such as US +1 202-123-4567, Thailand +66 91-234-5678). Built-in risk control logic includes 60-second resend limit and 3 daily request maximum per device to prevent malicious code harvesting. European and American region template: "Your verification code for Empire Era is 6392. Valid for 5 mins. Reply STOP to unsubscribe."
• Registration Guidance Backup Delivery: For users with first-time verification failures, SMS sent after 3 minutes with simple troubleshooting guides (such as checking SMS blocking, confirming number location), with simultaneous support for Indonesian and Malay bilingual templates in Southeast Asia to improve user understanding.

2. Game Active Period: Security Protection, Strengthening Player Trust

Connecting the game backend with the SMS system, triggering instant notifications for key account operations while supporting two-way interaction:

• Security Warning Notifications: When players trigger operations such as remote login, password changes, device binding changes, or single payments over $50, instant SMS alerts are sent with risk verification links. Players can reply "VERIFY" for quick confirmation to avoid account theft. For example: "Alert: Your Empire Era account logged in from Los Angeles (IP: 192.168.XX.XX) at 14:30. Reply VERIFY to confirm, or reply BLOCK to lock account."
• Payment Arrival Notifications: Addressing cross-border payment arrival delay anxiety, instant arrival alerts are sent after successful payments, including order numbers and item details. Players can reply "NOT RECEIVED" to initiate customer service tickets, with 24/7 customer service response handling.

3. Operation Promotion Period: Precise Delivery, Activating Player Vitality

Based on player behavior data (login frequency, payment level, level progress), operation SMS are pushed by scenario to balance conversion and user experience:

• Event Pre-warming Notifications: 3 days before server launches and festivals (such as Christmas in Europe and America, Eid in Southeast Asia), event previews are pushed to active players with exclusive gift codes to encourage early preparation. German market German template: "Neuer Server eröffnet am 25.12.! Nutzen Sie den Code WEIHNACHTEN24, um exklusive Belohnungen zu erhalten. Jetzt einloggen und bereit machen!"
• Dormant Player Reactivation: Building a loss prediction model to send staged reactivation SMS to regular players who haven't logged in for 3 consecutive days and paying players who haven't logged in for 7 consecutive days. Regular player template: "We miss you! Log back into Empire Era within 48hrs to claim 1000 gems and a rare hero. Click here to return: [Link]"; Paying players receive additional exclusive customer service follow-up SMS to improve reactivation success rates.

4. Compliance and Technical Support: Adapting to Multi-market Regulatory Requirements

The service provider offers full-process compliance support and technical empowerment to avoid operational risks: First, assisting with multi-region registration including EU GDPR user authorization registration, US 10DLC qualification registration, and Indonesian Sender ID registration to ensure SMS delivery compliance; Second, built-in multi-language sensitive word filtering system blocking religious, political, violent, and other illegal content to adapt to Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern regulatory requirements; Third, building a global node network with SMS average delivery time ≤1.2 seconds, core market delivery rates reaching 98.2% or above, while providing data dashboards for real-time monitoring of delivery rates, reply rates, conversion rates and other metrics to facilitate strategy optimization; Fourth, encrypting player data transmission through TLS1.3, implementing data desensitization processing to meet cross-border data flow compliance standards.

• ✓ New User Conversion: Registration verification success rate increased from 68% to 96.5%, new user 24-hour retention rate increased from 45% to 62%, reducing monthly user loss due to verification issues by over 200,000.
• ✓ Account Security: Account security-related complaints decreased from 58% to 16%, core paying player loss rate decreased by 42%, and player satisfaction scores for account security reached 4.7 points (out of 5).
• ✓ Player Activation: Dormant player reactivation rate increased from 8% to 22.3%, with paying player reactivation rate reaching 38.5%, festival event SMS response rate at 18.2%, driving a 35% increase in payment revenue during events.
• ✓ Cost Control: International SMS single delivery cost reduced to $0.15-0.3 (by market), reducing single customer reactivation costs by 68% compared to social media advertising, and reducing operational labor costs by 65% due to automated triggering.

Mr. Zhang, Operations Director of the well-known mobile game said: "The core competitiveness of the well-known mobile game lies in long-term player retention, and stable communication delivery is the foundation of retention. Xunlian Global's international SMS solution not only solved our cross-market verification code and security notification pain points, but also activated many dormant players through precise operation SMS. Especially its professional compliance adaptation capability allows us to operate in European, American, and Southeast Asian markets without worrying about regulatory risks. SMS has become the core infrastructure for our game industry, providing strong support for long-term product growth."