As a technology company that has an operational base and huge app user base in the MENA region, we recognise and celebrate the holiest month of Ramadan in the Islamic calendar and mould our social networking and gaming offering to coincide with how our users’ habits may change during this period.
Ramadan represents a period of fasting from dawn until dusk, therefore breaking the fast after the sun sets, while enjoying family and community time late into the night. This period is also a significant seasonal engagement window for the WOLF Qanawat app, when our loyal users enjoy gaming, entertainment and community engagement from late and often into the early hours of the morning.
As part of this period of heightened engagement, at the start of Ramadan this year we decided to activate a strategy to enhance our gaming and entertainment offering, drive platform participation and deepen community bonds. We were also curious to see how new features would perform during this period.
Therefore, WOLF launched four new app activations, including:
Ramadan evenings – registering Ramadan themed events, with Channel Owners earning 50% of the gift value as reputation points
Ramadan calendar Charms – Verified Channels competing on total Charm value gifted during Ramadan
WOLF building council – the Gaming Channels’ ‘Bot Gift Challenge’ seeing users accumulate gift value from Challenge Bots, unlocking revenue share and reputation points
Ramadan Carrom challenges – live gaming and the launch of the spectating feature, where the top three members per channel won prizes and the top 50 spectators were rewarded.
These features were brand new to the WOLF Qanawat app and launched with the clear objectives of keeping the channels active during Ramadan, providing relevant and curated entertainment, enhancing the gaming offering with new mechanics and features, and incentivising gifting and Charm purchases that converted engagement into revenue.
Importantly, for our increasingly popular Gaming Hub, Ramadan was chosen for the launch of the exciting new spectating feature in Carrom Challenges, linking viewership to rewards and thereby helping embed this behaviour in the verified gaming channel community.
The period also allowed users to discover new app features, including Ramadan-themed events in Ramadan Evenings and the Ramadan Carrom gaming challenges that would engage existing audiences, but perhaps more importantly, capture new audiences in app, thus whetting the appetite of platform-wide users for the myriad of app entertainment available.
Once the Holy Month of Ramadan had finished, we were able to assess the benefits gained by launching new features during this period. It was evident that Ramadan activations successfully drove monetisation, generating significant revenue through gifting competitions and in-bot purchases.
These new elements also attracted high participation, resulting in numerous shows hosted, unique listeners, and thousands of matches spectated across the challenges, with total gifting for shows in this period increasing by 49.88%.
What’s more, the activations successfully delivered on all four programme objectives: engagement retention, entertainment value, gaming community growth, and revenue stimulation. The decision to activate new offerings across events, gifting and gaming ensured that no community was left without a relevant activation, while the tiered reward structures created sustained motivation across the full month rather than a single spike.
As gaming becomes ever-more popular in-app, it was great to see the Carrom Challenges stand out as the most multi-dimensional activation, combining live gaming, spectating rewards, and in-app discoverability in a format that we can scale and repeat in future seasons. Ramadan also proved to be the right window to drive the spectating feature adoption; users loved it and it will now be incorporated into future feature releases.
The strategy, to enhance user and app experience with new launches during Ramadan, was executed successfully for both the WOLF business and the WOLF Qanawat community alike. This latest campaign demonstrates the value of structured, community-specific seasonal programming – and provides a strong foundation for further investment in programme activations across upcoming seasonal windows in the future.
