Guest Post from Marco Minoli, marketing director of Slitherine Ltd.

Slitherine Ltd. and Matrix Games are video game publishers that specialize in strategy and war games such as “Field of Glory,” “Close Combat,” “War in the East” and many others. The two companies both develop for a growing gaming audience of currently 200,000 registered users, and over the years, the companies have grown tremendously. In fact, Slitherine recently launched its first Android game, “HISTORY Great Battles Medieval,’ which is also available on the iPad, iPhone, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, PlayStation3, Xbox360 and other major consoles.

Slitherine Ltd. started selling online digital content nearly 10 years ago, when the virtual market was nearly not as robust as it is today. As I mentioned above, we specialize in a niche market of gamers; therefore, it was important that we found a targeted approach to reaching them across the globe. Moreover, it was important to keep our small audience of gamers interested, having regular touchpoints with them to ensure happy (and returning) customers.

In late 2010, Matrix Games and Slitherine merged to create the world’s largest war gaming specialist publisher, with a combined portfolio of more than 150 games.  At Slitherine, we were thrilled with this merger and how it increased the reach of our gamers. We cautioned ourselves, however, with the understanding that it was going to be hard to keep our high customer approval rating and that we needed an easy-to-use processing platform.  Together our companies searched for a payments-processing solution that would meet the needs of our business model and reach our niche market. Through a rigorous search, we transferred our combined online game channels to the Plimus Inc. platform.

It only took 90 days for our investment with Plimus to pay off. We quickly realized the potential of our new storefront, increasing sales by 15 percent with elevated traffic and conversation rates. We attribute this success to a handful of key factors that no other vendor, currently on the market, offers. Plimus built us a customized storefront, offering a frictionless user experience, easy login process for both new and returning customers and helped us sustain our strong commitment to customer satisfaction.

We are now well into our sixth month after launch and numbers are still very healthy, mirroring the increase of the first three months. Now, we are ready for phase two of the process, where we start to implement new features, including push strategies for direct-to-consumer promotions and pre-orders for upcoming titles. The target is to increase average sales per customer, attract new audiences through word-of-mouth and increase profitability, all through a smoother buying experience and a clever approach to non-invasive marketing initiatives.

I would gladly give my seal of approval for Plimus. I urge any vendor looking for a credible, trustworthy payment solution to get in touch with Plimus. Simply, without a doubt, we are positive that Plimus is the right partner for us and we gladly invest in this relationship as much as Plimus has invested in the relationship with us.

To read more about our engagement with Plimus see the article written by Kristina Knight at BizrReport.com

http://www.bizreport.com/2011/05/slitherine-matrix-partnership-highlights-gaming-effectivenes.html