Guest Columns Archives - Mobile Marketing Magazine https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/category/guest-columns/ Mobile Marketing Magazine Mon, 12 Feb 2024 09:53:06 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/blog_img6.png Guest Columns Archives - Mobile Marketing Magazine https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/category/guest-columns/ 32 32 How Does SKAN Work? https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/how-does-skan-work/ Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:29:37 +0000 https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/?p=118431 Grant Simmons, VP, Kochava Foundry, explains how the firm’s Ultimate Marketer’s Guide to SKAdNetwork (SKAN) can help marketers navigate Apple privacy-centric ad attribution framework. In the evolving landscape of digital

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Grant Simmons, VP, Kochava Foundry, explains how the firm’s Ultimate Marketer’s Guide to SKAdNetwork (SKAN) can help marketers navigate Apple privacy-centric ad attribution framework.

In the evolving landscape of digital advertising, privacy has taken center stage. Apple’s SKAdNetwork (SKAN) framework is a testament to this shift, presenting new challenges and opportunities for marketers navigating the iOS ecosystem. As experts in data-driven marketing, Kochava Foundry is dedicated to guiding marketers through this new terrain, ensuring you can harness the power of SKAN to drive successful campaigns while respecting user privacy.

SKAN, Apple’s solution for privacy-centric ad attribution, has emerged as a crucial tool for marketers in the post-IDFA era. As a privacy-enhancing technology (PET), SKAN allows for campaign measurement that respects user privacy, offering a path forward in a world where traditional tracking methods are becoming less feasible. Understanding SKAN and integrating it into your marketing strategies is now more important than ever, but can be complicated without the right resources

The Ultimate Marketer’s Guide to SKAdNetwork (SKAN) was created by Kochava to offer a comprehensive overview of SKAN, from its inception to its latest updates. The free guide unpacks the complexities of SKAN, covering how it works, why it matters, and how to leverage it effectively. It takes you under the hood of SKAN, demystifying its mechanisms and showing you how to navigate its intricacies. We’ll dig into some of those answers below.

The question of how SKAN (SKAdNetwork) works is not an easy one to answer. In fact, the complexity of its functionality increases with each new version. However, by deconstructing its intricate processes into comprehensible steps, understanding how SKAN works becomes a little easier. The following flow diagrams will help you establish a robust grasp of SKAN’s operational framework, thereby enhancing your readiness to effectively harness this privacy-enhancing technology.

SKAN diagram 1: Ad Network serving an ad through a user’s first app launch

The left side of the diagram explains view-through attribution, when the user DOES NOT click on an ad. The right side explains click-through attribution, when the user DOES click on an ad.

As you can see, steps 1 and 2 of each flow start off the same – an ad network serves an ad, and the ad is presented in an app or website (starting with SKAN 4). Depending on the user’s action (no click or click), the attribution lookback window drastically changes. With a click, the user has a longer time (up to 30 days) to install the app, while they only have 24 hours if they only view the ad. The intent of a click holds a heavier weight and offers more time for attribution to be awarded.

If the app is installed within the attribution window, the user then has 60 days to launch the app for the app to call its first conversion value update.

Once the user launches the app for the first time, the process that follows is quite different between SKAN 2-3 vs SKAN 4. As such, we will unpack them differently.

SKAN diagram 2: Post app launch on SKAN 2-3
At this point, the app has been downloaded but has yet to be opened. For SKAN versions 2-3, when the user launches the app for the first time, a timer starts (24 hours). The left side flow demonstrates when no conversion takes place (eg, the user opens the app but does not complete any in-app action which results in a conversion value update). The right side shows when an in-app action takes place, triggering a conversion value update call. When this happens, the 24 hour timer restarts and will continue to reset until (A) a lack of user interaction, (B) an end of conversion value range, or (C) a forced stop in the app.

As soon as the second timer expires in either flow (left or right), the privacy threshold is applied and the install validation postback is sent to the ad network. When the ad network receives the postback, it is then forwarded to the advertised app’s mobile measurement partner (MMP) with any necessary campaign metadata mapping appended.


About SKAN timers
Apple uses timers in SKAN to randomize responses to ad networks and advertisers—a mechanism to obfuscate data and prevent re-identification of individual users or devices.

About SKAN privacy thresholds
To protect user privacy, Apple applies minimum privacy thresholds before sending any postbacks.

Additionally, Apple may redact certain values (e.g. source app ID, conversion value) from postbacks that are sent if a certain volume of conversions aren’t reached. The exact privacy thresholds are not publicly known.

About SKAN postbacks
Beginning in SKAN 3, Apple added the ability for influencing ad networks (not just the ad network that won attribution) to receive a postback. This enabled multi-touch attribution insights in SKAN for the first time. Additionally, Apple added the ability for advertisers to receive their own copy of postbacks, as opposed to the ad networks being the sole recipient.

About SKAN campaign metadata mapping
In SKAN versions 2-3, ad networks are confined to the use of campaign ID values (0-99). However, to gain a more detailed view beyond just campaign-level insights, ad groups, ad sets, and other campaign variables can be mapped to the different digits. This approach allows for a more granular understanding of campaign performance. An MMP plays a crucial role in this process by decoding this information across integrated partners, thereby enabling standardized reporting for the advertiser.

SKAN diagram 3: Post-app launch on SKAN 4+
The final diagram illustrates the post-app launch on SKAN version 4+. SKAN 4 brought forth several noteworthy updates for Apple, most notably the inclusion of multiple postbacks across three predetermined conversion windows. This extension offers ad networks and advertisers a substantially longer period to observe user behavior and assess post-installation quality. This stands in contrast to the single conversion postback option provided by SKAN versions 2-3.


Continue learning
SKAN is not an easy topic to digest and it becomes even more difficult when the mechanisms change with each new version. On SKAN 4+ in particular, crowd anonymity in conjunction with the conversion window, impacts several postback data points. These include:

  • Source App ID or Source Web Domain
  • Source Identifier
  • Conversion Value

There are also changes to the privacy thresholds with SKAN 4+. Similar to previous versions, an initial, minimum volume threshold must be reached to receive any postbacks. However, after that initial volume threshold is reached, postbacks will be received, but the granularity of data points included in the postback will be dependent on four tiers of crowd anonymity.

At Kochava Foundry, we believe in empowering marketers with the tools and knowledge they need to thrive in a privacy-first world. That’s why we offer SKAd Consult, a specialized service designed to help you optimize your SKAN setup. Our team of experts will provide you with a deep dive into your current SKAN model, events, and setup, identifying opportunities for optimization.

As the digital advertising landscape continues to evolve, the challenges posed by increasing privacy protections are likely to grow. Finding answers and achieving marketing success in this new environment may seem daunting. However, with the right guidance, these challenges can be transformed into opportunities for growth and innovation.

If you would like to learn more about these changes, gain more in-depth knowledge from The Ultimate Guide to SKAdNetwork (SKAN), free to download here.

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AVOW’s Dynamic Preloads Guide – A game-changer for mobile gaming developers, revolutionizing user acquisition in the mobile gaming industry https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/avows-dynamic-preloads-guide-a-game-changer-for-mobile-gaming-developers-revolutionizing-user-acquisition-in-the-mobile-gaming-industry/ Thu, 30 Nov 2023 10:26:37 +0000 https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/?p=118522 Robert Wildner, Co-founder and CEO at Avow,  explains why the company’s Dynamic Preloads Guide is a must-read for any brand looking to increase downloads of their mobile games. The mobile gaming

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Robert Wildner, Co-founder and CEO at Avow,  explains why the company’s Dynamic Preloads Guide is a must-read for any brand looking to increase downloads of their mobile games.

The mobile gaming industry, projected to reach an astounding $286bn in 2023, is more dynamic and competitive than ever. Amidst this fierce competition, AVOW, a global leader in mobile OEM advertising, has unveiled a groundbreaking resource: the Dynamic Preloads Guide, tailored specifically for the mobile gaming vertical.

Why this guide is a milestone
This guide is not just another addition to the plethora of resources available. It’s a manual designed to radically transform the way mobile gaming developers acquire users. This guide is a “paradigm-shifting text” offering invaluable insights and strategies that have already resulted in an average 1000 per cent increase in installs for AVOW’s gaming clients.

Dynamic Preloads: A game-changing strategy


The Dynamic Preloads Guide introduces developers and marketers to a powerful user acquisition tool. With the mobile gaming industry being more lucrative than Hollywood and music streaming combined, traditional user acquisition channels are saturated. This guide offers an effective alternative, enabling developers to leverage the vast reach of mobile OEMs like Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, and Transsion.
Colin Wei, Head of Global Ads Business Development for Oppo, realme and OnePlus, emphasizes the power of dynamic preloads, stating: “The best relationships start with great first impressions. With Dynamic Preloads, apps have a chance to make that impression memorable”

Key highlights of the Guide

Optimized for Success: Tailored for the unique challenges in the mobile gaming vertical, the guide provides expert advice on utilizing dynamic preloads to gain a competitive edge.

Advantages of Dynamic Preloads: Learn how dynamic preloads operate on a cost-per-install (CPI) model for flexibility in pricing, paying only for actual installations, along with a host of other benefits

Mobile Gaming and mobile OEMs: The guide delves into how mobile OEMs have become indispensable in the gaming sector.

Interactive, Data-driven Insights: It offers data in an interactive and colorful manner, ripe for revealing insights into our proprietary data, as well as curated data on mobile gamers’ preferences, from game design and in-game ads, to in-app purchases.

In a nutshell
The Dynamic Preloads Guide by AVOW is more than just a resource; it’s a beacon for mobile gaming developers navigating the complex waters of user acquisition. In an era where data drives decisions and visibility is key, this guide offers an unprecedented opportunity for developers to not just compete but excel in the highly competitive mobile gaming industry.

Dive into the Dynamic Preloads Guide to learn more about how AVOW and mobile OEMs are shaping the future of mobile gaming user acquisition.

A continuation of AVOW’s mission
This guide is not just a standalone initiative but a part of AVOW’s larger mission to educate mobile marketers about the potential of mobile OEMs in the marketing mix. It builds on the success of our previous Mobile OEM Guide, released earlier this year.

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How Warrior unlocked a new revenue channel https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/how-warrior-unlocked-a-new-revenue-channel/ Fri, 24 Nov 2023 14:23:00 +0000 https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/?p=118062 Adam Aubrey, Head of e-Commerce at KBF Enterprises, home of sports nutrition brand, Warrior, examines how it overhauled its mobile marketing strategy. Warrior is one of the fastest-growing supplement businesses

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Adam Aubrey, Head of e-Commerce at KBF Enterprises, home of sports nutrition brand, Warrior, examines how it overhauled its mobile marketing strategy.

Warrior is one of the fastest-growing supplement businesses in the world and we sell one of our bestselling Warrior Crunch bars every two seconds across the globe.

But with ambitious growth targets of becoming a £100m business by 2026, we knew we needed to find a way to acquire new customers and drive sales within a short period of time.

We turned towards our mobile marketing approach to re-examine where we could enhance our strategy to reach more highly targeted customer segments, generating stronger connectivity and boost revenue – keeping personalised customer communications at the forefront.

The challenge
The challenge was creating tailored and targeted one-on-one communications to nurture customers on their shopping journey, drive loyalty and turn them into lifelong advocates of the Warrior range of sports nutrition products, in a highly-competitive sports nutrition marketplace.

We identified SMS marketing early on as the way to reach a large volume of customers at the same time, getting the Warrior brand and product offering to the right audience, exactly when we wanted to.

We partnered with conversational marketing platform, Attentive, to examine our shopper profile, including behaviour vs. demographic; see where they are up to in their shopping journey; and look at how we can nurture the lifetime value of product groups by creating cohorts and monitoring them over time.

The solution
Working closely with the Attentive team, we embarked upon an SMS campaign with personalised customer communications at the heart of the strategy. We did this in the following ways:

Growth of subscriber list:

  • A two tap opt in was designed to support UK GDPR compliance
  • Custom attributes were obtained during the sign ups process to deliver more tailored experiences (conversion rate on birthday messages is greater than 40 per cent and click through rate over 15 per cent)

Easy to set up automated journeys

Loyalty and referral program integrations

  • Referral (via Mention Me) to encourage customers to share referral links with friends to support new customer acquisition

When a customer signed up using Attentive’s patented two-tap pop-up, the Warrior team drove personalisation by collecting zero-party data at sign up. Customer behaviour was then studied to create hyper-targeted segments that powered cross-sell, upsell, replenishment, and reengagement campaigns.

SMS was also used for referral programme messages through an integration with Mention Me, further building that all-important customer base.

Strategy
We developed a customer-centric segmentation strategy to make sure our messages resonated with Warrior customers and importantly, drove action. This included using customer cohorts based on product groups to nurture any underperforming cohorts through setting up automations through post purchase journeys.

We also employed hypertargeting, looking at our stickiness index for our product groups and looking at customers falling outside of our typical re-buy rate. We would then factor in a relevant discount based on the expected margin of the particular product gap.

We created affinity segments for product groups to up and cross-sell. And we graduated to advanced segmentation strategies, Category Viewed and Engaged vs Not Engaged. These experiments led us to understand what our best performing segments were which included our VIP customers – those who’ve purchased four or more times – and customers who hadn’t recently made a purchase. These segments are our primary targets, receiving frequent communications and oftentimes we reward them with higher, time-limited offers, while sprinkling in occasional full-list sends to ensure that customers don’t lose engagement.

Results
SMS proved to be a powerful channel for the Warrior brand, growing the subscriber base to 45,000 and generating £907,000 of incremental revenue in the first year. The programme achieved 17x ROI.

Not only that, but SMS also drove 21 per cent more revenue than our email channel – revolutionising our eCommerce strategy, and unlocking a new revenue channel. Messages sent to Attentive subscribers outperformed those sent to previous subscribers by 63 per cent.

SMS marketing allowed us to experience greater connectivity with our customers than ever before, successfully increasing customer lifetime value and taking us one step closer to achieving our ambitious business goals.

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Leverage the Holiday Shopping Season: A Strategy Guide for mobile marketers https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/leverage-the-holiday-shopping-season-a-strategy-guide-for-mobile-marketers/ Wed, 22 Nov 2023 11:37:46 +0000 https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/?p=118005 Robert Wildner, Co-founder and CEO at Avow, offers a guide to major end-of-year Shopping Seasons, and explains how brands can leverage them to best effect.  The holiday season, filled with

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Robert Wildner, Co-founder and CEO at Avow, offers a guide to major end-of-year Shopping Seasons, and explains how brands can leverage them to best effect. 

The holiday season, filled with festivals and shopping bonanzas, provides an unmissable opportunity for marketers to amplify their brand presence and boost sales. With the proliferation of mobile usage, marketers are increasingly leaning towards mobile platforms to launch their campaigns and promotions. This article sheds light on how mobile marketers can harness the potential of the holiday shopping season by engaging with customers during major events and holidays such as Singles Day Black Friday & Cyber Monday, and Christmas.

Understanding the major end-of-year Shopping Seasons

Black Friday & Cyber Monday: Originating from the United States but celebrated globally, these events signal the onset of the Christmas shopping season. Steep discounts and colossal sales are emblematic of this period, urging marketers to deploy strategies that harness the buying fervor of the masses.

Singles Day (11.11): Known as “11.11” or “Double Eleven”, is a large online shopping event, taking place annually on 11 November. It originated in China as a celebration for single individuals, with the number “1” representing that individual, and was popularized by the eCommerce giant, Alibaba, in 2009 as a shopping holiday. Since then ,it has grown exponentially and has been embraced by numerous eCommerce platforms and retailers, not only in China but globally.

Christmas: A globally celebrated holiday, Christmas not only signifies joy and togetherness, but also stands out as a prominent shopping festival, with consumers actively seeking gifts and special offers.

Seasonal Shopping in the Mobile Era
During Black Friday in the United States, a significant 40 per cent of purchases in 2022 were facilitated through mobile interfaces, a proportion expected to balloon to 50 per cent by the subsequent year. Even the quintessentially global festival of Christmas observes a similar trend. The yuletide season of 2022 experienced 35 per cent of all US Christmas purchases through mobile channels, with anticipated growth nudging this figure towards 40 per cent by 2023.

Singles Day has steadily grown into one of the largest shopping events not just in China but in the world, with sales estimated at $157bn in 2022. In 13 years, Singles Day has seen overwhelming growth to the tune of 10,000 times, making Singles Day sales volume dwarf that of Black Friday in the US 10 times over.

On a broader scale, the global canvas of mobile shopping sales reached an astonishing $3.5 trillion in 2022, with forecasts predicting a surge to $5.4 trillion by 2026. Indeed, mobile shopping, representing 70 per cent of all global eCommerce sales, has permeated various product domains with electronics, fashion, and home goods emerging as preeminent categories. Particularly noteworthy is its adoption in emerging markets like India and LATAM where it constitutes the majority of all eCommerce sales. Retailers, confronted with these staggering numbers, recognize that a premium, user-centric mobile shopping experience is not just beneficial but indispensable, especially during pinnacle periods like Black Friday and Christmas.

In Brazil, 2022 saw black Friday sales hit a staggering $1.2bn , indicating just how large a shopping event it is in LATAM’s largest economy. Thus, ensuring the mobile user journey is seamless, intuitive, and festively engaging becomes imperative for brands aiming to capitalize on the colossal waves of the holiday shopping season.

Partnering with Mobile OEMs and Alternative App Stores

Provide Exclusive Offers
Collaborate with mobile Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) such as Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, OnePlus, realme, Itel, Tecno and Infinix to offer exclusive deals and promotions on their platforms. Special app bundles, exclusive in-app purchases, or early access to sales for specific device users can amplify customer acquisition.

Optimize App Store Listings (ASO)
Optimize app listings on alternative app stores by focusing on keywords and descriptions that align with holiday shopping trends. An effective ASO strategy, complemented by compelling visuals and app store featuring, can enhance app visibility and downloads.

Prominent Placement in App Stores
Get your app featured on the alternative app stores through special mobile OEM collaborations. This could be a banner featuring your app on the main page, your app appearing as a recommended or featured app, or even as a special featuring of your app as part of the holiday or sale season.

Co-branded campaigns
Engage in co-branded campaigns with mobile OEMs to harness their user base. Crafting campaigns that intertwine your brand’s offerings with the OEM’s products can create a mutually beneficial marketing dynamic.

Strategies to Optimize Mobile Marketing During the Holiday Season

Festive app design: engaging content and user-friendly interfaces
Develop an app that resonates with the festive mood by incorporating thematic designs, user-friendly interfaces, and festive content. Tailoring app experiences to the specificities of each holiday (e.g., incorporating Diwali-themed visuals or Christmas-inspired interfaces) can augment user engagement.

Promote holiday spirit with personalized push notifications
Deploy personalized push notifications that align with the holiday theme. Messages highlighting limited-time offers, exclusive discounts, or special holiday bundles can induce urgency among consumers and drive app engagements and purchases.

Reach the right audience by utilizing geotargeting strategies
Employ geotargeting to send location-specific offers and promotions. This strategy is particularly crucial during Christmas, where regional variations in celebrations might necessitate tailored marketing approaches.

Data-driven marketing: harnessing insights for effective campaigns
Leverage data analytics to comprehend user behavior and purchasing patterns. Insights derived from user data can inform marketing strategies, enabling marketers to craft campaigns that are resonant and effective. This is where a trusted partner working with mobile OEMs is crucial. At AVOW, we don’t just speak data, but breathe it. To that end, our proprietary technology AVOW Intelligence captures and aggregates data from each mobile OEM we work with, painting a holistic picture from which we can draw insights, make optimisations, and clue you in on the best way to make your holiday shopping campaign work for you.

Mobile OEMs: paving the way for future success
One client who has seen the power mobile OEMs can bring to the table is Brazilian retail giant Magalu, which operates 1,113 stores in 819 cities. “Black Friday is a whirlwind of deals and discounts, and using mobile OEMs allows us to cut through the noise and connect with customers in a more direct and impactful way. After observing its value in our campaigns last year, we expect it to be a game-changer not only for our holiday sales but to also strengthen our brand in the minds of consumers,” remarked Diogo Lacerda, Senior Coordinator for Marketing Ecommerce-App at Magalu.

The amalgamation of strategic mobile marketing initiatives, collaborations with mobile OEMs, and a keen understanding of the holiday shopping seasons can create a mélange that propels brand visibility and user engagement. By combining the festive spirit with robust mobile marketing strategies, brands can etch memorable imprints on consumers, not just during the holiday season but beyond.

Mobile marketers, while embedding their strategies within the cultural and emotional contexts of Black Friday & Cyber Monday, and Christmas, should underscore values of joy, togetherness, and generosity, ultimately forging deeper connections with consumers and navigating them towards meaningful engagements and conversions.

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Four risks Wizz took to grow its app to 16m users – and why they keep coming back https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/four-risks-wizz-took-to-grow-its-app-to-16m-users-and-why-they-keep-coming-back/ Tue, 21 Nov 2023 15:51:38 +0000 https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/?p=117986 Wizz CEO, Aymeric Roffé, says that if you want to keep your app users coming back, it’s important to find out what they like, and don’t like, about the app

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Wizz CEO, Aymeric Roffé, says that if you want to keep your app users coming back, it’s important to find out what they like, and don’t like, about the app experience. 

The TLDR version of this article? The secret to growing an app to 16m users is by focusing on the users.
It was not long after we  launched Wizz, a social discovery app where teens meet and connect with friends around the world, that we decided to ask our users to tell us about their best experience using the app. It was a simple way for us to start collecting their input and getting to know them, and we started receiving user feedback by the thousands.

Users shared anecdotes about how the app had affected their lives – things like overcoming social anxiety, finding new friends after moving to a new city, becoming more confident, feeling less lonely, and so on. They also shared things about the app that they really liked or didn’t like.

Users were not only willing to talk to us, they actually wanted to. They had a lot to say and wanted to be heard.

This realization has since inspired what has become a fairly radical and user-centric approach to growing the app and keeping users interested in coming back again and again.

Here are four takeaways from our journey to growing from 0 to 16m users, recently achieving 1.5m daily active users, and securing Wizz a spot as one of the App Store’s top 10 social networking apps.

1. Collaborate directly with users they have a lot to say and love to be heard
It’s not enough to passively interact with users, say, by scouring social media and the internet to see what they’re saying about you. And things like sentiment scores are more like a thermometer than a clear sense of how they actually feel about you. Even looking at things like usage and behavioral trends doesn’t explain the “why” behind what users are doing.

So, we started working directly with our users. After seeing how much our users had to say in our initial survey, we introduced a number of ways to formalize our interactions with our audience of mostly teenagers.

One way we do this is by regularly  bringing in dozens of teenagers into the office, to understand how they think. What we’ve found is that 100 per cent of them share naturally when asked for feedback.

It’s important to note that we don’t only talk to current Wizz users; we also include people who have never heard of or used the app before. Our goal is to get their perspective on everything from Wizz’s features to their day-to-day lives, and where the app fits in (or might).

A lot of what we’ve learned from these conversations has directly influenced the app. One of the biggest takeaways that’s shaped Wizz’s community is the importance of having someone to talk to. For teenagers especially, having someone to consistently communicate with is essential. We’re currently exploring a number of different communication formats – from one-on-one chats to larger group chats–to match the different preferences users shared with us.

Imagine being in high school – but instead of social anxiety and self-doubt, users have a safe space to connect and build their social skills.

2. Get rid of features/functions that aren’t creating engagement
It’s easy to fall into the trap of adding new features into your app because they’re trending elsewhere. Or integrating as many features and functions as you can so there’s something for everyone in your app. But more features don’t necessarily lead to more engagement.

Our approach to new features and updates is exactly the opposite. We only want features in our app that drive engagement from our users. To accomplish this, we’re constantly testing new things from games, graphics, comments and video to small chats, big group chats, interfaces and monetization models.

We’ll start out by releasing a new feature to a small group of users. If this group reacts positively, we’ll go wider with it. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll quickly kill it.

With this approach, we’re ensuring that our app is built specifically for our users and the app experience they want, rather than one that’s based on the idea of downloads and daily active users alone. While a trending feature may result in a quick influx of downloads – if it’s not something that your core user base is engaging with, it won’t drive retention.

While it may seem like a radical approach to innovation, it has helped us to build and retain our 16m users.

3. Attract users by meeting them where they already are
The users that join – and stay – on our app are those that are seeking a community to develop new friendships and identify Wizz as the place to do just that.

That’s why we’ve focused on creating opportunities for Wizz to be found organically on the platforms where users already are. For example, we make it easy for users to download content they’ve created on Wizz – so they can post it to TikTok and other social profiles. This creates visibility for Wizz and can also allow users to develop new connections on the app.

We work with nano-influencers as part of this. We’ve found that users feel a greater connection to these type of influencers, because they’re like a friend with similar interests and hobbies, rather than an influencer with a large following that feels like an out-of-reach celebrity.

We also host in-person events so we can connect with existing and new users and they can discover the power of our community in real-life.

4. Contrary to popular opinion, content moderation and other safety measures can lead to more opportunities for self-expression
For any apps that foster a community where users are interacting with one another, determining what is and is not tolerable is arguably the most difficult task.

Because our user base is primarily 13-21 year olds, we’re particularly conscious of users’ emotional safety. We take an aggressive approach to content moderation and other safety measures, because we’d rather be more aggressive than not enough. While this approach is risky because it can mean some lost users upfront, it results in better retention in the long run.

On Wizz, content or comments that are bullying, humiliating, mean, insulting or include defamation, profanity or hate speech will result in temporary or permanent suspension. We don’t allow pictures, videos or comments that are violent, are against the law (such as drug use), or sexually-oriented. And we’ve banned any behaviours intended to harass or threaten users, as well as pretending to be someone else or lying about your age.

Verifying users’ age is especially critical because of our younger audience. We pair our teen users with people no more than one year younger or older than them. For instance, a 15-year-old can only interact with people between 14 and 16 years old. We go a step beyond simply asking users their age by using  facial age estimation technology, Yoti. Users take a selfie during the app onboarding process and the technology then compares their facial features to patterns across millions of images to determine with precision accuracy whether or not ‘this pattern is what 14-year olds (or whatever age) usually look like.’

We also work with AI moderation technologies, Besedo, and Sight Engine, which flag and disable offending content before it’s distributed. We’ve put all of these features in place so our users can feel safe and secure in expressing themselves and engaging with others on the app.

Wizz was built by taking many risks – and it’s resulted in a community that 16m users feel comfortable to connect and grow in. A big part of this was by making sure we had an app for our users, that was created in large part by our users and we continue to grow the app with them at the forefront of our innovation.

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Usability in martech: Making a marketer’s life easier https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/usability-in-martech-making-a-marketers-life-easier/ Thu, 09 Nov 2023 15:59:22 +0000 On World Usability Day ,Katerina Matthaiou, Head of Product and Growth at Upstream, discusses seven components that make  a martech platform’s User Experience stand out. The slogan of November 9th,

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On World Usability Day ,Katerina Matthaiou, Head of Product and Growth at Upstream, discusses seven components that make  a martech platform’s User Experience stand out.

The slogan of November 9th, World Usability Day, is “make life easy”. And when we talk about easy things in life, we are talking about those that don’t require time, thinking and effort. One of the holy grails for usability experts across the world is Steve Krug’s book, “Don’t Make Me Think”. And therein lies the essence for most successful products. They shouldn’t make their users think. Everything should be familiar and ignite the product’s purpose to be realized in a natural way.

When it comes to martech platforms it is all the same. Marketers want to use technology that won’t only make their campaigns’ performance better, but will also make their jobs easier. So, what are those components a martech platform ought to have, to realize this?

1. Familiarity and Ease of Learning: The ideal martech platform is one that users can dive into without the need for a steep learning curve. Universally recognized actions like drag and drop make the onboarding process smoother, allowing users to quickly familiarize themselves with the platform’s capabilities.

2. Automation: Digital marketers might need to run tens or hundreds of different campaigns at the same time. Even when it comes to one campaign, they might need to cater to multiple audiences and use different content and channels according to customers’ behavior. In such a busy environment, automation is not a luxury but a necessity. Marketing teams simply can’t afford the time and mental workload required to set up every campaign manually. Implementing automated triggered communications eases the burden and significantly boosts productivity.

3. Implementation and Integration: In the business world time is money. Prolonged setup and integration processes are red flags for clients. A user-friendly platform should prioritize ease of implementation and seamless integration with existing systems, ensuring a swift transition for marketing teams.

4. Unified User Interface: If a martech platform specializes in multichannel marketing, then the central idea should be “one UI to rule all the channels”.  Simplicity is key. Users don’t want to get lost in the shuffle. A single, cohesive user interface to manage various marketing channels streamlines workflow and enhances productivity. It also facilitates maintaining brand and messaging consistency across the different channels.

5. Responsive Customer Support: Even with a user-friendly platform, problems may arise. Platform users don’t want to spend time thinking of solutions themselves. Here’s where responsive and effective customer support comes into play. This is a pain point for many of the digital industry’s giants, as quite often users report late and ineffective customer service. Therefore, having a dedicated support team ready to resolve issues and even provide training, when needed, is a crucial differentiator in a competitive SaaS market.

6. Streamlining the Virtuous Cycle of User-Centered Design: The virtuous cycle of user-centered design requires a continuous loop of designing and gathering feedback from the audience. In practice, many brands neglect this due to the time and effort getting and analyzing feedback requires. Methods like automated split testing can expedite the process, enabling marketers to make data-driven decisions and deploy the designs and messaging that work best with the end users in terms of performance.

7. Audience Management: What is a good user experience for one person, may be a bad user experience for another. Recognizing that user experiences can vary widely, martech platforms must offer robust audience management capabilities. This allows marketers to tailor their campaigns and content to different segments, ensuring a personalized experience for a diverse audience.

Everyone wants to think as little as possible during their everyday activities. Professionals in digital and performance marketing are no different. By focusing on intuitive design, automation, ease of implementation, responsive support, and a user-centered approach, martech platforms can deliver a superior user experience and drive success for marketers and their campaigns. We have seen this in practice with our own martech platform, Grow, deployed by mobile operators, eCommerce brands and advertisers in some of the world’s most rapidly growing markets, like Brazil and South Africa.

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Why you need a user acquisition audit for your mobile app in 2023 https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/why-you-need-a-user-acquisition-audit-for-your-mobile-app-in-2023/ Thu, 02 Nov 2023 15:43:15 +0000 Luisa Ronchi, Director of App Store Optimisation (ASO) and User Acquisition at ConsultMyApp, explains how a user acquisition audit can evaluate the effectiveness of current strategies and identify opportunities to boost

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Luisa Ronchi, Director of App Store Optimisation (ASO) and User Acquisition at ConsultMyApp, explains how a user acquisition audit can evaluate the effectiveness of current strategies and identify opportunities to boost performance.

User acquisition for mobile apps is a challenging endeavour, where mistakes can carry a heavy cost. Early-stage startups commonly budget $50,000-$100,000 (£41,000 – £82,000) monthly for user acquisition efforts. As apps mature, monthly spending sometimes reaches over $1 million.

According to research from AppsFlyer, global spending on app-install advertising is projected to hit $94.9 billion by 2025 – a 20 per cent increase from 2023. With millions of apps battling it out for users in major app stores, an inefficient strategy can waste substantial funds.

When key metrics like CVR, and ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) start to decline while CAC keeps growing, it may indicate your user acquisition approach needs optimization. A user acquisition audit evaluates the effectiveness of current strategies and identifies opportunities to boost performance.

As experts who drive user acquisition for mobile apps globally, the ConsultMyApp team is here to share what a good user acquisition audit should look like and the main signs you need one.

Stagnant or declining mobile app performance indicators
To understand how your app is actually performing and make data-driven decisions, you should keep an eye on your most important metrics on the app side, like the number of app users, conversion rate (CR), click-hrough rate (CTR), installs, conversion to in-app events, subscriptions, and user lifetime value (LTV).

When these indicators start to plateau or decline, it’s a red flag that should trigger an audit. You might be acquiring the wrong audience, which doesn’t match your customer persona and thus doesn’t convert properly.

Inefficient allocation of budget for paid user acquisition and mobile advertising
A recent study by AppsFlyer revealed that the inefficiency of mobile app marketing has led to a 30 per cent waste in marketing budgets. Rising acquisition costs coupled with stagnant or declining ROAS/ROI metrics are red flags signalling inefficient spending.

Keep a close watch on key metrics like impressions, conversion rate (CR), clickthrough rate (CTR), customer acquisition cost (CAC), cost per install (CPI), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), install rate (IR), and impressions per million (IPM).

Having current benchmark data on hand can help determine if your acquisition strategy needs re-evaluation. According to SimplicityDX, customer acquisition costs (CAC) have risen by 60 per cent between 2017 and 2022 to an average of $29 per user.

Let’s look at how the average CAC varies depending on the region, app store, and app category:

  • Region – Based on the Business of Apps data, the average mobile app CPI ranges from $0.34 in Latin America to $0.93 in APAC, $1.03 in EMEA, and up to $5.28 in North America
  • App store – The CPI for iOS apps is traditionally higher than Android apps’ CPI, reaching $3.6 for iOS and $1.22 for Android
  • App category – CPI also varies dramatically between different types of apps. For example, the average CPI for gaming is reported to reach $1 in 2022/23. However, within the gaming category, there are significant differences between subcategories. Simulation games have the lowest average CPI at $0.59 per install (with iOS at $2.23 and Android at $0.63), while casual gaming apps have an average CPI of $0.98.

Major updates to product and app marketing
Whenever a significant update to the app is rolled out, it’s essential to ensure that the acquisition strategy is aligned with the new features and target audience. Such updates can introduce new features, functionalities, or target demographics that necessitate changes in how you acquire users.

According to Localytics, 21 per cent of users abandon an app after just one session, frequently because it fails to align with their needs. For instance, if a mobile banking app launches a new budgeting feature, its target audience may expand to include users with a particular interest in personal finance management.

Similarly, consider a fitness app that rolls out an update centred on nutrition and meal planning. Previously, the app’s user acquisition strategy was concentrated on reaching exercise enthusiasts, advertising heavily in workout-related channels. However, after expanding its capabilities to nutrition, failing to recalibrate acquisition to reach diet-focused users could render that marketing budget ineffective.

In fact, AppsFlyer found that aligning acquisition targeting with new product capabilities can improve retention by up to 30 per cent. In the fitness app example, broadening its focus to target health-conscious individuals interested in nutrition could have driven stronger retention of the new users onboarded. Apps with a narrow target audience that expand features without realigning acquisition stand to lose relevancy and increase spending.

Changes in the competitive landscape on the app store and user acquisition channels
The fast-moving mobile app market means the competitive landscape can shift rapidly. The entry of a notable competitor in your app category should trigger a re-evaluation of targeting and creatives.

Let’s suppose a new fitness app launches with advanced features like 1-on-1 virtual training and form-correction technology. An established app without these capabilities would need to expand acquisition beyond general fitness buffs. Targeting serious bodybuilders and powerlifters who value coaching could help minimize the churn of their power-user base.

Additionally, emerging consumer trends can rapidly change demand. When COVID-19 hit, downloads of virtual meeting apps like Zoom skyrocketed; meeting participants increased by 2900 per cent. Apps that digitized recreational activities also saw massive growth.

Regulatory and compliance risks
Changes in privacy regulations and compliance norms can profoundly impact user acquisition strategies for mobile apps, which forces app marketers to audit their user acquisition campaigns and adjust their tactics accordingly. According to a survey by Mobile Marketer, 68 per cent of advertisers expected to be affected by iOS 14’s ATT changes when they were just released.

iOS 14’s ATT requires app developers to ask users for permission to track them across apps and websites owned by other companies. This means that app marketers may lose access to the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), which is a unique code assigned to each iOS device that allows advertisers to target and measure users. Without IDFA, app marketers will face more difficult challenges in optimizing their campaigns, attributing conversions, and retargeting users.

To cope with these challenges, app marketers need to adopt alternative solutions, such as Apple’s SKAdNetwork (SKAN), which provides aggregated and anonymized attribution data for app-install campaigns. However, SKAN has some limitations, such as a reduced number of conversion events, delayed reporting, and lack of user-level data. Therefore, app marketers need to test and evaluate different strategies and platforms to find the best fit for their goals and budgets.

One case study that illustrates the impact of iOS 14’s ATT on user acquisition is from Liftoff, a mobile app marketing platform. Liftoff analyzed the data from 1,759 iOS apps before and after the implementation of ATT in April 2021. The study found that:

  • The adoption rate of iOS 14.5 was 12.9 per cent within two weeks of the launch
  • The opt-in rate for sharing IDFA was 16.8 per cent for iOS 14.5 app installs
  • The ad spend on iOS decreased by 3.5 per cent, while the ad spend on Android increased by 8.29%
  • The CPMs on iOS 14.5 declined by 2.4 per cent, indicating lower demand and competition for iOS inventory.

How often should you audit your mobile app user acquisition strategy
While there’s no set rule, audits are recommended at major milestones or performance shifts – typically on an annual or biannual basis. The duration depends on the scale of your app, but it usually takes 2-6 weeks to thoroughly evaluate strategies and implement changes.

According to a survey from CleverTap, 82 per cent of marketers audit acquisition strategies at least once a year. For rapidly growing apps, 45 per cent perform quarterly audits to adapt to their evolving user base. Games may review acquisition during major feature releases or new season launches. Apps should also audit strategies if they experience a dramatic drop in KPIs, like a 50 per cent increase in CPI or a 40 per cent decline in conversion.

What a good mobile UA audit app needs
A comprehensive audit dives deep across key performance indicators, marketing levers, and the user journey. It usually involves several steps, such as analyzing performance data, running experiments, gathering competitive intel, and realigning targeting.

On the metrics side, the audit should synthesize the following data points:

  • CPA, CPI, CPT – Are costs per action/install efficient or ballooning over time?
  • Install volumes – How have total acquisition numbers trended?
  • IPM – Is income per new user as projected?
  • ROAS – Does return on ad spend indicate healthy scaling or diminishing returns?

It’s also important to know that benchmarking against competitors and category norms spots outliers. For example, a dating app with a CPI double their competitors signals inefficient spending.

Auditing channel-specific metrics gives clarity on where users and conversions originate and exposes high-performing platforms as well as problematic areas needing realignment. For example, TikTok delivered 39 per cent of users but only 15 per cent of conversions, while Apple Search Ads accounted for 18 per cent of users and 47 per cent of conversions for one gaming app, according to AppsFlyer. This imbalance highlights optimization needs.

Auditing target audience segmentation reveals the best-fitting user profiles to refine targeting. Evaluating creatives indicates messaging that resonates versus flaws in ad copy or format. A Parallax study found that 60 per cent of gaming apps saw video ads outperform static creative ads.

Benchmarking against competitors and category norms spots outliers. For example, a dating app with a CPI that’s 2x higher than its competitors signals inefficient spend. The audit synthesizes insights across these areas into actionable recommendations tailored to business objectives. Whether lowering CPIs, improving conversions, or maximizing retention, an audit guides realignment for optimal user acquisition success.

With rigorous analysis of metrics, channels, audiences, creatives, and the user journey, audits provide a 360-degree view of performance to inform strategy. Data reveals what’s working, what’s not, and where improvements will make the biggest impact.

If you want a comprehensive user acquisition audit for your mobile app, contact us at ConsultMyApp or learn how we can help improve your paid acquisition.

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Achieving success in scaling paid user acquisition: A fresh 5-step approach https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/achieving-success-in-scaling-paid-user-acquisition-a-fresh-5-step-approach/ Thu, 02 Nov 2023 11:51:12 +0000 Lorenzo Rossi, Co-founder and Head of Growth at REPLUG, offers a 5-step framework for elevating your paid user acquisition efforts. Merely incorporating mobile app paid user acquisition into your holistic approach

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Lorenzo Rossi, Co-founder and Head of Growth at REPLUG, offers a 5-step framework for elevating your paid user acquisition efforts.

Merely incorporating mobile app paid user acquisition into your holistic approach is no longer sufficient. The ever-evolving landscape of tracking complexities, surging costs, and intensifying competition pose significant challenges for marketers seeking to achieve their goals efficiently.

Scaling paid user acquisition remains a complex task unless we adopt a systematic and holistic approach, navigating through processes that allow us to pinpoint challenges and opportunities while addressing intricate details.

We will introduce Procework 2.0, where we take further steps with a spirit of change and innovation.

In this article, we uncover a portion of our enhanced 5-Step Paid User Acquisition Process Framework, which we call “Procework” because it combines the essence of both a process and a framework. It’s an invaluable resource for any app marketer seeking guidance on paid ad campaigns and aiming to sidestep significant mistakes.

What is the Paid UA Procework?
REPLUG’s Paid User Acquisition Procework unfolds in five sequential phases, each containing vertical and horizontal tasks.

All activities are neatly categorized based on their nature, falling into campaign-related tasks, creative-oriented tasks, and tech-driven or cross-functional activities. This ensures you have a clear roadmap for every step of your user acquisition journey.

5-step framework for elevating paid UA efforts
In the 2.0 Procework version, you’ll discover more structured activities, increased possibilities for personalization, and enhanced scalability. It’s now adaptable to ALL scenarios, from startups to scale-ups and even traditional companies eyeing the transition to mobile.

REPLUG’s 5-step process framework, known as Procework 2.0

Here’s a preview of the fresh features:

  • Structured activities: each phase is accompanied by a set of specific questions that define the phase’s objectives and actionable tasks. Activities have been thoughtfully grouped into campaigns-related tasks, creatives-related tasks, and activities involving tech and cross-functional collaboration.
  • Personalization: our 5-step framework now underscores the importance of personalized user journeys, ensuring your paid UA efforts resonate deeply with your target audience.
  • Scalability: we provide a roadmap for scaling your paid user acquisition endeavors efficiently, making it easier than ever to unlock your app’s full growth potential.

Who is this framework for?
Everyone in the app marketing field can benefit from our framework. Starting from startups and businesses that can lay a solid foundation for growth, established brands that can take their scaling efforts to even greater heights, and traditional digital enterprises seeking to embark on a mobile transformation journey.

Five questions for each phase of mobile app user acquisition
We’ve crafted a series of straightforward questions for every phase, playing a pivotal role in defining the phase’s key objectives and the specific tasks that must be executed. Here are the questions associated with each stage of paid user acquisition:

1. Audit and Setup
This phase is of paramount importance in every paid UA project. Before committing to any budget, no matter how big or small, it’s crucial to assess past actions and ensure your tech infrastructure is prepared for measuring success.

Key questions to ask yourself: what previous activities have been undertaken? What types of past actions and messaging were employed? Is your tech infrastructure equipped to measure success?

2. Strategy Planning
Following the audit phase, you delve into the stage where you determine the most effective way to allocate your budget and achieve your objectives.

Key questions to ask yourself: what is the primary objective for the paid UA activities? Who is the target audience, and what are the optimal channels to reach them? What messaging and creative strategy should you employ? What are the unique selling points of your app?

3. Strategy Implementation
With the strategy defined and approved, it’s time to launch your campaigns. The precision of your campaign setup is crucial for measuring success and scaling your paid user acquisition efforts.

Key questions to ask yourself: what is the optimal campaign setup, and how will you measure success? How do you acquire the necessary creatives?

4. Results Analysis
As live campaigns gather data, it’s time to analyze the results. This phase is essential for understanding what worked in your initial strategy and planning for the future.

Key questions to ask yourself: what are the primary results and the drivers behind them? How are the creatives performing? Which channels, targeting methods, or creatives are delivering the best results?

5. Optimization and Testing
After the initial results, it’s time to optimize for even better outcomes. This phase offers plenty of opportunities for experimentation in mobile app paid user acquisition.

Key questions to ask yourself: what can you test to enhance results? How can you optimize cross-functional activities? What specific optimizations are needed within your ongoing activities? What new tests can you carry out?

However, our approach extends beyond just questions. Specific tasks must be executed, which fall into various categories that consistently apply across all phases.

Unlocking the guide to your Procework 2.0
By addressing these questions, you can pinpoint the key aspects of each category and understand the tasks that need to be completed.

Our 5-step framework encompasses a set of tasks, categorized by area, that remain consistent throughout each phase. The primary areas of tasks are as follows:

  • Tech: encompassing all activities related to the tech components required for executing paid UA campaigns, such as MMP (Mobile Measurement Partner) and analytics.
  • Campaigns: covering all tasks associated with the strategy, management, and optimization of campaigns across various ad platforms.
  • Creatives: encompassing all tasks related to the creative aspects of paid user acquisition.
  • Cross-Area: covering all tasks not directly tied to paid user acquisition but with the potential to positively influence results, such as App Store Optimization and Mobile CRM.

The approach to scaling paid UA, however, remains unchanged, emphasizing the necessity of adopting a holistic perspective:

  • Think holistically: paid UA cannot exist in isolation. A comprehensive view of app growth, where all marketing activities are interconnected, is vital.
  • Use frameworks: frameworks aid in understanding the connection of various app marketing activities and their impact on paid UA.
  • Follow processes: processes enable you to track progress in different areas and maintain a systematic approach to growth.

What lies ahead?
As mentioned, acquiring mobile app users as a standalone endeavor is ineffective. A systematic strategy is the way forward, allowing you to identify challenges and opportunities accurately.

It all comes down to meticulous planning, monitoring, testing, optimizing, and repeating the process, which we refer to as the “Optimization Loop.” Each phase builds upon the previous one, with the audit stage always serving as the starting point.

While it may seem intricate at first glance, it’s a matter of following the steps and paying attention to the finer details.

Are you ready to unlock the full potential of Procework 2.0 and explore the five phases in greater detail?

Delve deeper into the framework by downloading our ebook, available for free.

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Performance vs. Growth – Two sides of the same coin? https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/performance-vs-growth-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/ Thu, 26 Oct 2023 10:33:39 +0000 Amish Zinzuwadia, Paid UA Lead at Yodel Mobile, looks at the differences between Performance and Growth Marketing, and explains how they complement each other in a successful app marketing strategy. 

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Amish Zinzuwadia, Paid UA Lead at Yodel Mobile, looks at the differences between Performance and Growth Marketing, and explains how they complement each other in a successful app marketing strategy.   

In the dynamic and competitive landscape of mobile apps, success is often measured by intricate performance metrics contrasted against broader, long-term goals of growth and sustainability. In app marketing, performance marketing and growth marketing are usually distinguished as two schools of thought. However, the line between these two disciplines is blurring, and they could soon merge into a unified approach.

Let’s start by revisiting each discipline individually to understand the key differences that make these two strategies work together.

What is Performance Marketing?
Performance Marketing is all about achieving tangible outcomes. It entails pinpointing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and fine-tuning your campaigns through testing and adjustments until you reach your objectives. This involves analysing engagement metrics like clicks and clickthrough rate (CTR) to optimise your creative elements and messaging.

Delving deeper into the customer journey, you assess conversions such as Costs Per Install (CPI) and Costs Per Acquisition (CPA). This is typically aided by a Mobile Measurement Partner and data you can pull directly from the advertising platforms. Performance Marketing operates across a variety of channels, including Search, Social and Programmatic Display. However, it’s important to emphasise that it comes at a cost – careful media budget planning is crucial to maximise your marketing investments, a perpetual endeavour to answer the age-old question posed by John Wanamaker over a century ago:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

What is Growth Marketing?
This is a more holistic approach to your marketing, and not just a numbers game. It takes a broader, more long-term view, and investigates strategies to grow your user base and retain them. Metrics are still important, but not necessarily the same ones as for Performance Marketing. It’s all about quality vs. quantity, looking at deeper metrics such as Lifetime Value (LTV) and Daily or Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU), because if these are on the rise, then we know the more users we acquire from Performance will stick around longer and drive sustainable business growth, such as revenue or engagement. The channels to run Growth Marketing on are not the usual suspects. They encompass non-direct sources such as content marketing, referrals, CRM & ASO. Money always matters, so there are budget considerations for Growth Marketing, but measuring your ROI is not as simple as CPIs or CAC. Uplifts in engagement, active users, or new product utilisation, over a longer period of time, is what will matter the most.

The cross collaboration of Performance and Growth Marketing
Though there are intrinsic differences between Performance and Growth Marketing, bringing the two together will elevate app acquisition, engagement, and retention strategies for any app brand. This convergence integrates the precision of Performance Marketing’s data-driven approach with the strategic, holistic vision of Growth Marketing. By aligning objectives, leveraging insights, and optimising user experiences, this collaborative effort is the key to success.

Data is oil with Performance Marketing and Growth Marketing
Data is akin to the modern-day oil. This is because data is valuable for any business to help them thrive and grow. Its significance lies in driving effective campaigns, now propelled by Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, to optimise and target the most relevant users – hinging heavily on conversion data. Furthermore, growth in any application is contingent on understanding user data – identifying where engagement drops and devising strategies for enhancement.

Customer behaviour insights, preferences, and trends through performance analysis inform growth strategies. Concurrently, growth initiatives aid in retargeting audiences and enhancing performance metrics.

This is something we have trialled and tested across categories for various brands. For one of our Video on Demand clients, our data analysis identified that they achieved a higher conversion on Sundays. It may sound simple, but this insight dictated how we allocated our budgets throughout the week. So, by allocating a higher budget on Sundays, we achieved maximum results and ramped up ROI. The era calls for us to don our ‘googles’ and embark on a data exploration akin to drilling for oil!

Performing and growing while testing and learning
Performance Marketing may as well be synonymous with testing and learning, and if you’re not doing it, you’re not going to grow. Testing different targeting tactics, creative messaging and channels are all part of the game to help you impact metrics beyond install. Tactics like A/B testing can help you understand what your users prefer, whether it be to help increase conversion rate or improve lifetime value. Growth can incorporate these tactics for their CRM strategies, ATT prompts and pre-screening, user onboarding and all-important elements of the UX. So, being able to then learn from these tests and continually improve is imperative to help your app grow to further heights.

How Performance and Growth Marketing affect the customer journey
I touched on this point above when talking about UX. The journey from ad to app is one thing, but the user does so much more once the app is on their phones. This is where the magic happens for your business. Here are our recommendations for cross-pollinating your strategies:

  • You can use Performance Marketing to identify and target specific user segments based on demographics, behaviours, and preferences.
  • You can then your campaigns to appeal to these segments which help optimise your CPA and maximise your ROI.
  • You can leverage Growth Marketing to analyse user data and behaviour to identify high-potential segments which can similarly help personalise your engagement strategy (you can read more about how to refine your apps customer journey here.)

For one of our food app clients, our Growth team found that users were dropping off before conversion. This was because users were specifically dropping off at the verification stage of the onboarding process, because it was too difficult and tedious to complete. Therefore, we decided to gamify the process by making the verification more akin to a Captcha Screen, which improved the conversion rate.

Everything loops back to the Infinite App Growth Loop
Something very close to our hearts at Yodel Mobile is the Infinite App Growth Loop, a holistic framework bringing together performance and growth, as the insights and feedback from Growth Marketing, such as customer surveys and product usage analysis, can inform optimisations on performance marketing campaigns and vice versa. This offers you a flexible and agile marketing strategy to combat any growth obstacle.

Yodel Mobile’s Infinite App Growth Loop

Conclusion
Performance Marketing and Growth Marketing, although distinct, are inseparable and complementary, working together to drive the success of any app. Performance marketing focuses on immediate results and measurable outcomes, leveraging data and analytics to optimise user acquisition, engagement, and conversions. It’s akin to the fuel that propels the app forward, ensuring a steady stream of users and revenue. Growth Marketing is the compass that guides the long-term trajectory of the app. It’s about building a sustainable user base, fostering brand loyalty, and expanding the app’s reach through innovative strategies and user-centric approaches.

For a successful app, striking the right balance between these two marketing approaches is what ensures long-term success for any app business. Performance Marketing provides the necessary initial thrust, but Growth Marketing charts the course for sustained success. Both strategies should be continuously refined and integrated.

About the Author
Amish Zinzuwadia has over 10 years’ experience in the paid acquisition space and now leads the Paid UA team at Yodel Mobile, covering client strategy, team management and innovation.

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Holiday season: Top ASO & ASA strategies from leading app marketers https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/holiday-season-top-aso-asa-strategies-from-leading-app-marketers/ Thu, 19 Oct 2023 10:14:47 +0000 Jay Bugeja, Content Executive at Yodel Mobile, looks ahead to the company’s upcoming webinar offering advice on how to get your holiday season app marketing strategy in place. The holiday

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Jay Bugeja, Content Executive at Yodel Mobile, looks ahead to the company’s upcoming webinar offering advice on how to get your holiday season app marketing strategy in place.

The holiday season is just around the corner, and it’s not only a time for joy and celebrations, but also a golden opportunity for mobile app marketers and developers. As the holiday spirit sweeps across the globe, millions of people turn to their smartphones for shopping, connecting with loved ones, and seeking entertainment. That’s why every mobile app marketer and developer must gear up for this festive season.

In our upcoming webinar, we’re diving into the strategies and best practices that can help you make the most of this holiday season. By optimising your app store listings and paid acquisition efforts, you have the potential to captivate a vast and engaged audience, boost user acquisition, and maximise your revenue streams.

Join us for this exciting and informative webinar on November 1st at 4pm (GMT), where leading app marketers will share their insights and real-world use cases. Learn how to ensure your app shines brightly during this festive season by implementing effective strategies. You can register to join right here.

Here’s a glimpse of what we plan to cover:

1. Why Prepare Your Mobile App for the Festive Season?
Discover why gearing up for the holidays is your chance to skyrocket your app to top positions and significantly increase ROI.

2. ASO Best Holiday Practices
Gain valuable insights on adapting your ASO (App Store Optimization) strategy to align with festive trends and proven techniques to make your app stand out in app stores.

3. ASA Strategies for Maximum User Acquisition
Unlock the festive season’s full potential with Apple Search Ads (ASA) advanced tactics and best practices to maximise user acquisition.

4. Maximising Results through ASO and ASA Synergy During the Holiday Season
Learn how to align your ASO and ASA strategies to optimise your return on investment (ROI) during this crucial time.

Save your spot now to be a part of this engaging and enlightening webinar on November 1st at 4pm (GMT). It’s your chance to learn from the best in the industry and elevate your app’s performance to new heights this holiday season. As always, we’ll reserve a few minutes for a Q&A session at the end, ensuring you have the opportunity to get your questions answered. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to make your app holiday-ready and set yourself up for success! Register here now!

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