Ive been slowly putting together some content updates for my existing Marketplace packages and ive come across a small problem. Editing my content on the Marketplace is easy enough, but how do i notify my clients that there is new content for the packages they have already bought?
They could be missing out on some rather important or dare I say EPIC new content
Having forum threads for Marketplace packages is great, it enables you to reach people that use the forums regularly at least until your thread gets buried again but what about those that dont use the forums that often, or even at all? How do i reach those people.
So onto my feature request. It would be fantastic if as a Marketplace Seller I could reach my customer base via some means (probably email) to be able to announce things like new content updates for existing packages.
Ive talked to a few people on Unreal Slackers about this and they think it would be a great idea.
Of course this would be an Opt in style situation, possibly where by when a user purchases a new package they can select a check box to receive notifications from the package creator.
My thoughts were that perhaps on the Seller Portal there is a form that a Seller could input like a newsletter style announcement which when submitted gets pushed to all their clients anonymously. Obvious Epic would handle it all behind the scenes and no information about Email Addresses would ever change hands between the clients and sellers.
Im really interested to hear other peoples thoughts on this as i believe it could be a powerful tool.
This would be a very useful way to communicate with customers, and would allow for them to hear about bug fixes, updates, sequel packages, you name it. There is a very large group of folks out there that don’t use the forums, and as of now we have no way to contact those users. This feature would be awesome to have, and I look forward to hearing about what the marketplace team thinks
I agree this is something that would be awesome. Though I think buyers should be able to opt into it when purchasing a pack so that way they aren’t swarmed with emails without consent. Something like “check here if you would like to receive notifications of updates, sales or more regarding these assets”.
You may want to throw this into the Feedback section with the marketplace tag, as the staff seems to be moving these sorts of threads there rather than here. =)
Not so much an issue of it being in the wrong place, as it is whether they will see the feedback here or are reading that forum exclusively. I think this is something they should definitely look into. =) There was also a request the other day that sort of coincides with this, in that sellers would be able to see the list of those who purchased their assets. That way they can verify purchases themselves for the purpose of providing content support, rather than having to email the marketplace staff every time someone is looking for support.
Thank you for your kind words Franktech! I strive to be fair in everything I do, and a big part of that is putting myself in the shoes of the buyer. That is what guides a lot of my decisions. Though to be fair, it seems DevilsD included that suggestion in his original post as well. I must have missed it in my initial reading. =)
While opt in would be nice for others, it would still have the similar issues as forum threads. Some people (like me) don’t really care to get any more emails for these kind of things, so there still would be a group left out who doesn’t know what has been updated.
There’s a whole lot better solution to this all and it would help both existing customers and new people more! If we had an obligatory changelist on marketplace items, we’d see what has been changed in the past too. Such list would have dates and description of the updates in short readable form. Now customers have very little clue when the asset has been updated or for what reasons. If customers could always see, even before buying the item what kind of maintenance the asset has had, they could get all the information they’d need. It would also solve the issue with feedback partially too as now new customers will read even negative feedback but can’t tell it is been solved or not as they don’t get dates and descriptions of the updates (unless the seller responds all those messages individually).
I get my suggestion is not necessarily something that sellers would want but I’m all in for transparency which has been lacking on certain marketplace sellers (not pointing anyone on this thread, just a general observation). Having only emails to existing customers will not help this situation. As a side note, I do wish every marketplace item would automatically have “official” thread on the forums as it can serve a purpose for potential new customers as well.
There’s also a third option and that’s having a messaging system inside the marketplace/launcher that would drop you a small note what has been updates on your bought assets. Unity Asset Store implements both changelist and that messaging system btw, but I personally never read those messages even there, I’m just grateful it doesn’t spam my email inbox with those.
Well email lists aren’t only useful for an opt in update notification system, but also for confirming purchases manually rather than having to go through Epic to confirm the Order ID and Epic ID to ensure you aren’t providing support to someone who may have pirated your assets. I agree with your sentiments regarding unending emails though, which was why I suggested an opt in. But I rather like your idea even better, having it handled via a launcher messaging system.
With regards to change lists, I don’t think it’s an issue of sellers not wanting to be transparent. At the moment there isn’t really any official change list feature, which is something I and others requested a while back. You can simulate one through your description, but it can get quite messy. It would be better to have a tab akin to the “additional details” which shows a detailed account of what was changed in x update. Those are just my thoughts anyway. =)
One of the glaring issues with my feature request is its problem of potential “overuse”. The suggestion of it being email based was simply that, a suggestion, i should have made it more clear that i was leaving this open to better or alternative solutions. The requirement that it be opt-in only was to attempt to mitigate the problem. Email was at the time being the cleanest/easiest to implement solution in my opinion.
However 0lento after suggesting an In-Launcher messaging system that would approach the aim of this feature request which is to notify existing customers of updated content i believe that would be a more appropriate system to tackle the issue.
This thread wasnt opened to discuss the problem of transparency with quality of content or its version history, that can easily be handled in its own thread, i was more concerned with reaching existing customers for the sole purpose of ensuring that they arent missing out on possible important content updates to their bought packages. I fully agree that transparency with QA and version history is an important topic and I as a marketplace creator strive for the best of both.
Thank you DevilsD! This is very great feedback from you guys! Once everyone is back in the office next year, we will forward this info with our team to consider these changes to the Sellers Portal.
