Feedback from the App Promotion Summit

Application publishers consider the launch of their mobile application to be a major event. However, launching an application is more like a continuous series of important moments, where you are constantly refining or improving your application and iterating according to the competition.

Users will go through different phases in using an application:

• Acquisition: attract them to download your application
• Activation: get them to register and use your application
• Retention: encourage them to use the application on a recurring basis
• Monetization: increase the revenue generated by each user

During each phase, it is important to include the user: by listening to him, by talking to him, by involving him. During our visit to App Promotion Summit in Berlin last week, we met and talked with a lot of publishers who told us about their strategies for success.

Here are a few tips we picked up!

1. Focus on converting a small number of users

When an app is first launched on the stores, the reflex is to want to boost downloads. This strategy rarely pays off because at this stage the product is not yet mature, so it is difficult to retain a large number of users. The key is to focus on conversion.

For example, Skoove is an application that allows you to quickly learn to play the piano. At launch, the startup allowed its users to test the application for free over 1 week. This allowed it to acquire a lot of users. But once the free trial ended, only 0.5% of users agreed to upgrade to the paid version. The product team found that having to enter payment details discouraged users. They therefore changed the course by requesting payment data from users as soon as they signed up for the free trial. This allowed the conversion rate to be multiplied by 10!

What we are learning:

• focus on a small number of users
• analyze their feedback every week: what do they do, when do they leave the application,...?
• regularly launch new versions of the product taking into account these learnings

Once a conversion rate equivalent to market standards is reached, traditional acquisition strategies will be much more profitable.

2. Investing in content marketing

Content marketing consists in producing content for current or potential users of a product in order to increase its reputation. Ex: blog articles, media content, etc. Why invest in content marketing when you have download campaigns that work well and don't want to invest in branding?

Because it's much more profitable! Content marketing costs 62% cheaper that outbound marketing, and generates three times as many prospects. Especially since today more than 70 million Internet users block ads on their devices.

The benefits observed compared to a paid download campaign:

• a higher click through rate (CTR) for a lower cost per click (CPC)
• more commitment
• improving SEO
• A viral effect

Blinkist is a good example. The brand regularly publishes numerous articles via its Magazine but also on blogs, newsletters (Pocket for example) or magazines (Business Insider) for its users.

Their principles allowed them to significantly increase their conversion rates:

• What I write should be linked to my product/application
• write interesting and rich content
• Ensure that the article will interest its target

For example, mentioning the application right from the introduction (or even in the title) of the article increased the conversion rate on the same article by 39%.

3. Listen and talk to your users every day

Once a user likes a product (comes back a few times and converts well), the goal is for them to convert new users. Word of mouth can be reached in two ways:

• Have more people talking about the product
• have users who talk about the product more often

For this, there are a few tips:

• Give users opportunities to talk about the product

For example, Uniwhere, an app that helps students manage their careers, created a buzz on Twitter and Instagram by adding a phrase that appeals to the user on the app's home page. Result: +20% engagement on Instagram.

“I've thought about it again and I've come to the conclusion that I like you!”

There are also better known examples from companies like Dropbox, which offers its users a storage boost of 125MB when they follow or like their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

• Working with “micro-influencers”

Working with influencers is not just for big guys. A lot of smaller influencers can bring in highly qualified users.

Uniwhere's strategy was to find people who had influence in academia in its own users. Double advantage:

• they are already convinced: they therefore talk about the product with authenticity
• as they already like the application, they easily agree to talk about it, and often for free!

• Be responsive to user comments and feedback

Paying attention to each comment or feedback from users will allow you to better understand who they are, what their expectations are, what are the points on which the application can be improved and puts you in a better position to react quickly.

It is therefore important to pay attention to what is said on social networks as well as on the notes in the stores. For example, Uniwhere asks its users to rate the application at the right time - after a successful action but without interrupting a process - and some users in particular.

In addition, thanks to Zendesk, the company involves beta testers by allowing them to test new features in a community logic where the human aspect is very important.

Result: when they stopped customer support, ratings on stores fell by 70%.

Conclusion

The goals of each stage of the user lifecycle - acquisition, activation, activation, retention, monetization - may contradict each other: for example, we'll look at the total number of downloads at the acquisition stage, while at the retention stage, it's more about attracting the right type of users. The aim is therefore to identify the most critical phase for its strategy in order to focus on the key indicators that concern it. For each phase, three lessons are learned from these experiences:

• listen to its users
• The best marketers are the users
• test, measure, and iterate

It's up to you to play!