Where app metrics and my imagination collided with game changing impact.
As Director of Product Growth at StoryArc Media in 2016, I led the company’s transition to a mobile-first kids education and entertainment company months after its spin-off from Pearson. In so doing, I…
Modernized the company's nascent analytics and web development capabilities
Forged strategic partnerships and directed acquisition and engagement marketing efforts across its games and books portfolio
Orchestrated the company's market launch and unveiled its new corporate identity
Analytics
I architected a robust analytics framework for mobile and web games, cutting operational costs by 40% while enabling smarter, data-driven decisions and ensuring scalability as metrics capabilities expanded.
With help from a data analyst I hired, R and Tableau were introduced to perform statistical analysis, visualize KPIs and generate custom reports on games across the portfolio. Highlights from the reports were incorporated into monthly leadership updates and company board meetings.
In collaboration with back-end engineers and the BI lead, I optimized avatar tracking in the Poptropica web game by narrowing the focus to meaningful user interactions. This reduced API calls by 2 million daily and lowered Google Analytics expenses.
For the Adventure Pig mobile game's soft launch, I collaborated with internal and external developers to implement Kochava for event tracking, including ROI-LTV. We created custom event funnels to comprehensively track paid user acquisition, app engagement and user retention.
To coincide with StoryArc media’s rebrand, I designed and developed a modular HTML5 website in three weeks. Soon after, I migrated it to Drupal to empower more efficient and cost-effective in-house content updates.
Web development
Guided by insights from Poptropica traffic analysis, I revamped the game’s membership page UI and messaging to better sell subscription offerings to its 10.6M registered players from 250 countries. These changes helped stabilize conversion rates.
Weekly contests, quests and other events I promoted on the game’s landing page that I’d designed to be responsive increased session lengths 5% to 20%.
Strategic partnerships
Comprehensive metrics tracking and highly scalable marketing strategies would not have been possible without partnerships with Unity Analytics, Google Analytics and Kochava; as well ad networks AdMob and AppLovin.
These partnerships ensured cost-effective user acquisition campaigns that helped enrich ever-evolving product creative and messaging.
My efforts also extended to crafting persuasive pitch decks and co-presenting them with the VP of Product Development to Apple and Google, helping secure high-profile publishing support from both.
Performance marketing
I advised engineering teams on implementing UpSight's ad serving technology to enhance in-app engagement and cross-promotional marketing capabilities.
For Poptropica, I developed targeted advertising assets and messaging for "Feats of Speed" racing contests, driving a 5-20% increase in average session length within a single month.
My acquisition strategies demonstrated exceptional performance, achieving click-through rates (CTRs) of 19% on iOS and 9% on Android — substantially exceeding industry benchmarks — while maintaining cost-efficient acquisition metrics as low as $1.35 per install (eCPI).
During Adventure Pig's soft launch, I produced comprehensive marketing collateral, including compelling video trailers and ad creatives distributed across paid media networks.
This meticulous approach to performance marketing ensured not just strong engagement metrics, but also positioned StoryArc’s games for sustainable growth and future success.
Brand building and promotion
The StoryArc media re-brand campaign I led in partnership with a public relations and integrated marketing company generated an impressive 635M media impressions, boosting a Poptropica graphic novel to The New York Times bestseller list while simultaneously driving a 20% increase in user engagement.
I mobilized targeted media outreach and brand storytelling that secured high-profile features in premier publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Fox & Friends and VentureBeat, effectively amplifying StoryArc's visibility and communicating its vision to diverse audiences.
Staging multi-channel promotional campaigns for Poptropica and Galactic Hot Dogs, I carried out strategies that integrated social media outreach, in-game advertising and strategic partnerships with publishers like Abrams and Simon & Schuster. These initiatives not only attracted millions of impressions but also cultivated deep brand loyalty and fostered equally-deep user engagement.
Other notable KPIs
5M+ Galactic Hot Dog Island visits on Poptropica
500K previews of the Galactic Hot Dogs book sequel
Top 5 ranking among most-read books on Funbrain (a sister site)
Technologies
• Unity • RESTFUL APIs • Drupal • HTML5 • R • Tableau • Google Analytics • Kochava • Facebook Ads • UpSight • SEO/ASO • Apple and Google developer consoles • YouTube Studio