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The only way to achieve a sustainable App Marketing Strategy is to combine App User Acquisition with Retargeting in a systematic and tactical way.

Thou App Shall Not Suck We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. App marketing works wonders, but only if your app works too. It’s not just about the “concept”, it’s about “execution” as well. A promising app might get installed, but it will only be used and re-used if it has a brilliant User Experience (UX). 

Don’t Jump the Gun  We’ll keep it short and simple: to make the most of your re-engagement efforts you should have at least 50 000 users per market before you launch a retargeting campaign. Since you will be segmenting your user base into smaller sub-groups, you need to make sure each sub-group has enough users to make a difference. That being said… 

Consider Rtgt from the Get-Go - Databases aren’t built in a Day  Re-engagement strategies require a rich user database. No database means no way to know who to re-engage and how. It’s important to identify your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), create your event funnel and start aligning your collected data to the correct device IDs from the very beginning.

Understand Thy Users User experience is vital. It’s important to understand that the customer journey has changed. App usage is characterized by immediacy and relevancy. Apps are used in micro-moments; onboarding, in-app actions and notifications need to be adjusted accordingly. Use app data to understand what’s working and what’s not, and make sure to share your organic user IDs with you RTGT Supplier. This way you’ll maximize Retargeting’s reach and potential to enhance the user experience.

Seg-men-tation Simply put, a segment is a group of users who share common in-app behaviours.  Why is this important? Mobile is all about personalization, “organizing” your users according to their in-app behaviour allows you to customize ads and offers to specific behaviours/behavioural trends. For example, if you have an m-commerce app you could create a segment of engaged users who have “made a purchase in the last 10 days” and a segment of unengaged users who haven’t opened the app in X days, or have added items to cart but haven’t checked-out.

No Deep Links, No Deal Always make sure you are guiding users to the most relevant in-app screen. We’ve said that Retargeting is about relevance, that’s where deep linking comes in. By allowing advertisers to link to specific screens within the app, deep linking removes unnecessary steps in the conversion funnel. Leading users to key points in the event funnel is a win-win: it makes UX seamless, and it drives key conversions.

It’s Not Just About Special Offers  #fact: everybody loves a discount, #fact you want your customers to love you #fail: thinking discounts are the only way to get the love. More often than not, a successful re-engagement strategy consists of a timely reminder. The task-oriented nature of mobile usage means retargeting is a great opportunity to remind users of how your app can help them solve a problem, at the very moment they are attempting to solve it.

Customize to Maximize  Ads should be tailored and tested. Ensure creatives are customized for the targeted segments by generating images and calls-to-action that appeal to previous in-app behaviour: use your data! Having different versions of ads doesn’t hurt either, it can provide  valuable insights and improve performance, so get creative! Keep in mind that what works for one traffic source may not work for another. Finally, avoid oversaturating your users by capping ad frequency and regularly updating creatives.

Optimize Optimize Optimize  Just because segments self-refresh doesn’t mean you can launch and leave. Like any app marketing strategy, it has several variables in play. You’ll need to fine-tune creatives, call-to-actions, show time, and ad frequency (to name a few), in order to get the best results. Achieve the most effective combinations of creatives, traffic sources and targeting with programmatic, real time optimization.

As featured on MMA’s UK Blog A strategic data collection plan can provide valuable insights regarding the way people use your app, which is instrumental in improving user experience, marketing actions and app monetization. For any app marketing strategy to succeed you need 3 things: a) A great app b) An understanding of how people use it (or a usage funnel). c) The ability to target users based on their behaviour All three require an effective App Data Collection Plan, so where do advertisers usually go wrong? 1. Not tracking post-install events

Acquiring new users is only the beginning of an effective app marketing strategy. Over 80% of users stop using the app after 6 months. The challenge today is to drive engagement and in-app conversions. Without tracking post-install events (like app opens, purchases, etc.), advertisers miss out on the opportunity to understand which sources of traffic produce the most engaged users, as well as re-engaging people based on their in-app activity.

2. Not identifying the key event and success benchmark

You can track every step the user takes inside the app, but key events are the in-app actions you optimize for. It is important to define and benchmark the key conversion events. Without a clear success metric, marketers have no way of knowing the real cost and return of their ad spend. If unsure of the ideal benchmark, advertisers should consider starting with a soft launch campaign

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3. Only tracking the key event

Focusing only on the final key event reduces insights and volume potential. Yes, purchases are important (and normally the ultimate goal) but what leads to a purchase? Is it people opening the app a lot? Product searches? Initial steps or events, such as “App Opens” can serve as indicators of potential quality converting traffic and re-engagement opportunities. If you are tracking “add-to-cart” as well as “successful purchase”, then you may identify a segment of users which are one step short of completing the conversion path and can be targeted to follow through.

4. Not establishing an Event Funnel

An event funnel is a key element in a successful data collection strategy. Simply put, the event funnel or conversion path is the set of steps, tracked as events, that a user completes in order to reach the key conversion. Basically, it’s a “map” of what people do inside an app.It is an effective way to calculate specific event rates, and detect the point in the conversion path where users drop-off. 

5. Not setting time-goals for conversion completion

After establishing the order in which events take place, it’s important to estimate how long an average user should take from one conversion to the next. Ideally, how long does each conversion take? Compare this approximation with the time users actually spend on conversions. Are there any steps that take longer than intended? Identifying “stuck” users will enable you to target them specifically, to lead them along the remaining steps.

6. Not using the event data to evaluate and improve UX

Where are drop-offs occurring? Which steps take longer to complete? Why are users stuck in that particular step? Is the “add to cart button” too hard to find? Are you asking too many questions during the sign-up process? This information enables retargeting strategies, but it is also an opportunity to identify possible issues and think up feature improvements. The flow from screen to screen should be seamless, this can be done by ensuring the app user user is guided to take specific actions inside the app.

7. Problematic Event and Parameter Names

Event parameters provide additional granularity on the properties of an event. App marketing campaigns generate enormous amounts of data. Abstract or over-technical names create unnecessary (and costly) confusion and slow the analysis and reporting process.

Must Witness Congress, last year’s event gathered more than 85,000 attendees from over 200 countries. Anybody who is anybody in the Mobile Industry will be there.

Mobile and Web Celebrities like Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Tom Wheeler (FCC) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) are among the keynote speakers.

Meet With Clients & suppliers in person! Plus, it’s a unique opportunity to make new acquaintances.

Many Welcomed Companies, more than 1,800 organisations will showcase products and services through exhibition stands and hospitality spaces across nine halls and outdoor spaces.

Mobile-manufacturers Will Choose their latest, coolest mobile phones and prototypes to show-off, so you will get a first glimpse at the mobile phones of the future.

Mouth-Watering Cuisine: the food alone is a huge reason to visit Barcelona, and the MWC does right by its city. People attending the MWC eat over 35,000 bocadillo type sandwiches and more than 25,000 pieces of breakfast pastry! Many Warm Coffees are also consumed! 40,000 to be exact. Not to mention the bars and cafés in the surrounding area.

Many Witty Companies will want you to have their branded battery packs, stress balls, t-shirts, caps, etc. so you know you are walking out with swag.

Marvellous Winter Climate, although it is winter in most of the northern hemisphere, you can expect great weather in Barcelona.

Maybe Wear Comfortable shoes and get in shape without even noticing it, as you wander in awe around de 94,000 m2 of exhibition ground

One of the keys of good app campaign optimization is having great creatives. The better the creative the higher the chances of people getting to the app.

We see hundreds of different banners every month and work in partnership with our advertisers to help them create the best banners possible.

So here go 10 tips to design the best mobile app creatives.

1. A very clear call to action

Banners are not always designed with a particular action in mind, in fact branding used to be one of the main purposes of banners. When doing an app promotion campaign though, the banners should only have one objective in mind... getting users to install the app.

Remember that it’s not always clear that a banner is “clickable”, specially when you don’t know the environment it will be in (and the colors it will have around it) which is why it’s extremely important to include an “Install now” or “Install Free” or “Download now!” button that is as loud and clear as possible. People feel dumb when they don’t know where to click, giving them a button ensure they don’t!

Banners with nice buttons:

   2. If your app name is self descriptive, make it big!

In general, people like to know what they’re clicking on, so it’s always important to include your app’s name (or company or brand name) somewhere on the banners, as big a possible. In particular if the name is self descriptive or if the brand is a well recognized one.

In this Clash of Clans banner, the logo is loud and clear!:

In this other banner however, it’s difficult to understand what the banner is about (we blurred the company’s name but it was in the same font as the rest and lost in the middle of the sentence):

3. Convince me in one line.

It has to be very clear in one line (not like there’s a lot of space!) what the app does or why it’s important that I install it or why is it different or why I will love it. You have to appeal to the user of your app, think of your target demographic, what makes them tick? Do variations with loads of messages until you find the one that performs the best.

Here’s a pretty convincing line!

4. Your app is FREE? Say it!

Most people are still quite averse to spending money to install an app, so the slightest hint that the app you are trying to promote is not free will deter potential users. Hence... if it’s free, make sure you mention it.

5. Make sure it’s in the right language!

Mobile banners can only carry a limited amount of words, make sure you are using the right language! We run into poorly translated banners very often and the impact this has on conversion is huge, it’s well worth hiring a translator to make sure the banners are not lost in translation.

6. Think of your audience for colours and images

It’s important to convey a message with the imagery and colour palette you use. Teenage girls are attracted by different imagery/colours when compared to adult men or young kids. Here’s an example of how eBay targets different demographics on their banners:

7. More is... more.

The more banner variations you do, the more likely you are to find a great combination of message and colours and graphics that appeals to your audience. We can’t stress enough the importance of designing a large variety of creatives. A great part of optimizing campaign is finding the right creative/demographic/traffic source combination.

8. Animate without overdoing it.

Animation actually helps. Anything that makes your creative stand out in the tiny cramped space of a mobile screen will help but there is a fine line between a smooth animation that calls your attention to click on a button and a psychedelic nightmare of a banner!

9. Make sure the banner message and the app store messages match.

Since you are advertising an app and not a website, users will be directed to the app store (iTunes or Google Play), and although clicking wins half the battle, you still want people to go through with the app download. It’s very important that whatever you said on the banner, carries through to the description of the app on the store and that the imagery and general branding feel is also maintained. Did the banner promise a “free coupon”? Mention it on the description or even the name of the app!

10. A few foolproof templates.

Because you were patient enough to read all the way to the end, we’ve prepared some banner templates for you. Yes! A couple of easy templates for your iTunes or Android apps. Feel free to use them with your campaigns:

Mobile Banner templates from Jampp

A few weeks ago we were selected as finalists of the TNW Mobile Startup Rally, a startup competition from the prestigious TNW technology conference in the US. Jampp was the only Latin American company within the finalists.

Yesterday it was announced that we won the competition!

This is a great accomplishment and we are very proud of our team for making it happen.

The way we interact with the web has changed radically in the last few years. Not so long ago, in a galaxy around the corner, our phones were really really dumb.

They were devices that only let you make (and take) phone calls. Literally. The way we wasted time checking out MySpace, or Yahoo! or Friendster or whatever people were doing then with the Internet, was completely different. It was by staring at full sized computers.

But that has all changed with smartphones.

They’re like phones but way smarter mostly because they let you do everything your computer does and even more (like take great photos and have a GPS and a flashlight when you can’t find the key you just dropped on the street).

According to this excellent presentation about the rise of mobile, smartphones are outselling PCs (both consumer and corporate) by over 3X and this growth will only continue.

In some places of the developing world, smartphones are people’s first experience with the web and overall it’s such a better experience.

Contrary to computers, mobile phones follow you everywhere, are personal devices (as opposed to shared) and fit in your pocket (unless you have a Samung Galaxy Mega, in which case you need a backpack more than a pocket).

In Latin America for example, over 50% of Internet users already have smartphones and only in Brazil there are over 50 million of the devices.

Thanks to this, another great thing happened. Many times, it’s much easier to use an app instead of going to a website. Apps are specially designed and built for phones, which means they have less clutter, less buttons, less features and are optimized for a smaller screen.

In contrast, many websites still look awkward or simply bad on smartphones. Also, most of the interface of the service you are using is already loaded in the app which means you don’t have to wait for the whole thing to download every time. Unfortunately mobile data speeds are still problematic in most places, which is why any advantage in performance (similar to what apps provide) is always welcome.

So if we combine all of the above with a few spectacular successes in the world of apps (Angry Birds, Instagram and CandyCrush more recently) and the widespread publicity these have awakened, it’s understandable that there is an app “gold rush” going on.

Amazingly, there are over 1.5 million applications between iOS and Android. Just as a comparison, a large physical bookstore has a catalogue of between 150,000 and 200,000 books. And that’s everything from The Bible to 50 Shades of Grey (I just won a bet by using those two in the same phrase).

Those of you who have been of legal drinking age for a while will remember the early late 90s when everybody had an idea for a “dot com”, well it seems now everybody has an idea for an app. The difference is that back then it took a few million dollars to actually setup an Internet business whilst now it only takes a few thousand dollars to develop an app.

Also, if you do a few things right you can actually make money too! Last February, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said that iPhone/iPad app developers generated more than $8 billion in revenues since the platform was launched. That’s more than enough (for even my mother) to have app ideas.

So, what is the secret formula to succeed in the app economy? If I really knew the answer to that... I’d keep it all to myself and build the next Instagram but it’s not that simple.

It is possible though, to follow a few guidelines that will increase your odds of succeeding.

The first thing to understand is that a good idea is not enough to create a winning app. It’s important to understand the dynamics of the app stores and how apps work and build it around this.

Around 90% of app installs are generated by only 10% of the apps, that means that the odds are heavily against you when it comes to people discovering your new app. That’s why when you come up with an app idea, on top of the app having to be useful or fun or innovative you also have to think of or build in a marketing/distribution plan from the beginning.

The most common mistake when launching an app is spending 100% of the budget in its development and start thinking about how to promote it once the app is live. Most of the times, it doesn’t matter how good or original the app is, it’s VERY likely only a few people will discover it and install it.

If you take the iTunes App Store for example, it is still useful to be featured by them (this being a completely subjective, random and unlikely prospect to the average developer) and most importantly show high in the app rankings. Most people look for their apps there.

The way Apple calculates what apps are shown there is related to the velocity in which apps are installed. That means you need to generate a lot of installs in a short amount of time. In most cases, it’s very hard to achieve this without some sort of exogenous help (advertising, press, planet alignment, etc.). Being in the rankings, definitely guarantees a burst of installs for a few days or weeks but it doesn’t guarantee success.

Another myth is that the way people make money with apps is because “people pay them”. In-app purchases are now the majority of app revenue and the trend will continue to grow. In a report published in March 2013 by analytics company Distimo, we learnt that 71 % of app store revenues in february were generated by in-app purchases.

So, if you are like me, you have completely ignored everything I’ve written above and skipped straight to the “list”. Here are the recommendations to increase your app success chances!

1. A good product (duh!)

Yes, seems obvious but the app stores are full of horrible apps. It’s important that the app is original (or improves on another app) or solves a problem or entertains. It has to be well designed, both in terms of how it looks and its user experience (UX). Everything that follows will be easier if the app is good. Something to keep in mind: The best apps only do “one thing” but they do that thing very very well.

2. Built In Virality

Try to incorporate some viral mechanism into the core functionality of the app, that way each user that uses and enjoys the app will potentially attract new users. In Instagram for example, the experience of looking at other people’s photos was much better with the app.

3. Free is better

The difference between zero and $0.99 is GIGANTIC when someone is evaluating installing an app. You will increase exponentially the odds of someone giving your app a try if it’s free, you can always monetize with in-app purchases.

4. Don’t forget Android

For most of us, our first experiences with a smartphone and the apps ecosystem was through an iPhone but it’s very important to understand that Android is now the dominant platform with over 50% market share in most markets. You can start withiPhone but if you want your app to be huge, you need to incorporate Android into the roadmap.

5. Marketing is as important as development

It’s important to budget for app promotion. If the app is free and has viral elements then it’s essential to attract a first batch of users to test metrics and understand what is the real value of each user to then continue with more systematic campaigns.

6. App Marketing is complicated, leave it to experts

 In contrast to what happens on web, mobile traffic and marketing providers are highly fragmented and it’s also very challenging to measure accurately what you are buying. We recommend paying CPI (Cost per Install) only and to make sure that a healthy share of what you buy is not incentivised.

7. Track and measure EVERYTHING

We recommend using tracking tools to both measure what happens inside the app (what are people clicking and using) as well as where you are getting your traffic from and which sources bring better users.

8. Rankings are more accessible in small markets

We all want our app to be in the Top 10 of the US market but sometimes it’s easier to start in smaller markets like Latin America or some Asian countries.The volume of installs you need in the US to be on the Top 25 is about 30 times higher than what you need in a country like Mexico. The CPIs are also cheaper.