Roblox X Monstercat
Often businesses build their core product and then utilize a network (Social media or advertising) to drive potential customers to consume it. Your reach and relevance dwindle the more you rely on these networks to take groups of fans and convert them to your product causing a long-term sustainability risk for your business. This is why Monstercat builds communities not customers.
Forge lasting Bonds instead of pushing ads
We’ve been developing one of Monstercat’s newest communities inside of Roblox. With over 70 million daily users Roblox has a massive user base but making something that they love takes an adaptability of your product. Original we launched our experience for Music fans to listen to their favourite tracks, interact with artists, and have a social place to talk about our music. This is not dissimilar from our Discord or other channels we’ve built in the past to give fans exclusive access to our product, but in 2023 we relaunched with a focus to grow listeners by offering players what they really want.
In-game items called UGC are essential Roblox and users love to customize their avatars. Monstercat began our reboot by reaching out to the top-rated creators and brokering custom partnerships with these creators to develop in-experience UGC drops and giveaways. All of these creators primarily existed within Twitter so we spun up a new account to tease and reveal a weekly series of these UGC items from a monthly rotating creator. A long-standing tactic in game design to create demand and exclusivity is creating rarer items for passionate users to yearn over. Passionate interaction within a new community is key to success so we structure our drops to have tiers of UGC. Some days included rarer paid limited items and others included free giveaways.
Not only limiting the drops but adding surprise drops announced 3 minutes prior to their release made users need to follow our accounts for alerts on these exclusive drops. As the account grew we made sure to curate content that spoke directly to the wants and interests of our emerging community.
The Shoulder Plushie
In August we launched one of our first key items to our community, the Monstercat plushie. Based on a post’s shares and engagement, we would mint a specific number of exclusive memberships to be held within the experience. The limited free item had a stock of 106,495 and users would have to simply have to be within our experience and listen to our music for 30 minutes. User-generated content within YouTube began to spread the message as users flooded the servers.
From here out access to these drops becomes increasingly exclusive as the shoulder plushie gives you access to a restricted VIP area to get free and limited drops. All UGC items have a 30 period until they can be resold, when this shoulder plushie went to resale it skyrocketed to a value sold for 7,832 RBX or $15.87 USD. The next drops with @RealYourius generated continued attention as we launched exclusive codes on printed cards to be handed out in person at a yearly Roblox conference.
As we began to tease our next month’s creator series with another top UGC creator @Junozy we also began to work on our 1 of1 series with @whoseTrade https://twitter.com/WhoseTrade
This soon-to-be-record-breaking collection consisted of 4
Ruby Description:
Crafted with shadowy chains and ignited by a fiery ruby heart, this pendant captures the night's allure and the fervour of twilight. A singular masterpiece, dark yet radiant, yearning for its chosen owner.
This volatile item was only the beginning of our community as we followed up by launching a series of exclusive 1 of 1 products with renowned creator @WhoseTrade Only one of these ugc items were going to ever be made and when they went up for sale the prices not only shocked the community, but got the attention of Roblox itself.
emerald = 75,000 RBX
amethyst = 95,00 RBX
spinel = 115,000 RBX
topaz = 135,000 RBX
diamond = 155,000 RBX
ruby = 1,000,001 RBX
The Ruby pendant sold for 1,000,001 RBX that’s the equivalent of $10,000 USD breaking the record for the highest single item’s initial sale price. For Comparison the Gucci Dionysus bag originally sold for the price of 475 Roblox. Roblox featured us in their yearly fashion report, causing our attention reach and hype to reach new markets.
As part of our core Music label offerings, we develop merch drops to sell the brands lifestyle. The next phase of our Community was to create items that had both a physical and digital relationship to one another creating cross-promotion but also driving demand. Our shoulder plushie drove sales of our Monstercat Plushie to increase in sales by 50% YTD. We launched Digital and IRL collections simultaneously like the Pocket Pal. And captured keywords of items that didn’t yet exist in the Roblox marketplace by further selling some of our core items.
Through UGC giveaways we’re able to draw fans to our discord and directly engage further with them about Monstercat music releases and gaming hangouts. We also began our next phase of building up our community demand for UGC with our collector’s score system. In experience, users would have a score displayed above their avatar showing off the clout they owned based on their UGC items collection. The hirer your score the more rewards you were given including exclusive access to drops and bragging rights.
As the current experience thrives, we are continuing the drop of limiteds and creator collections while we are developing a new gamified experience to launch early next year.
