24 July, 2017

How Personalized App Marketing Lifts Revenue

Best Practices

Personalized App Marketing

Ever wondered how many apps people keep on their smartphones?

According to some statistics, the majority of Americans keep between 6 and 15 downloaded apps on their smartphones:


Source: Neumob

App Annie found that people now launch an average of 9 apps per day, according to their latest report on consumer app usage.

One-to-one marketing, or personalized app marketing, can go a long way in this competitive landscape – and it has come a long way from the capability to simply add a user’s first name to communications. As a result, users expect a personalized experience from the products they use. Good examples of personalized products are Netflix and Amazon.

Make it personal

Personalized app marketing techniques are widely used in retention, engagement, and reactivation. But what about the earlier stages of the user journey?

We at yellowHEAD believe in a holistic approach or, as we call it, 360° marketing. An ad is just the beginning of the user journey, an entry point to the app. Thus, a seamless but consistent experience going from an ad to the app store product page and to the launch of the app on the smartphone is essential for mobile marketers.

And it is all about personalization – starting from personalized ways to reach your target users, ensuring they are onboarded to your app well, keeping them engaged and ultimately encouraging in-app purchases.

To get personal, you need to understand your users, and for this you need to:

Capture and leverage user data

It all starts with data. From gathering and analyzing data, you can see your users’ habits, behaviors and what they are trying to get from your app. You probably have some sort of mobile app tracking implemented in your app, so make sure you harness the most possible data.

From here on, you can create precise targeting for user acquisition campaigns, create push notifications and offers that are relevant to your users, and many more. With the right data from events and attributes, you will reach your goals with no guesswork.

With user data, you can create unified audience segments to target the same users on social and search platforms. You can target these segments with relevant ads and deliver ads to specific users based on their needs and interests. A better experience is a personal one, and it starts with ads.

On top of attracting users with messages that relate to them, your creatives can communicate even more. Appeal to specific user segments with creatives that speak directly to them, and entice them to click on your ad. Gather data on which creatives work with which user segments and remember to perform A/B test after A/B test!

The sky’s the limit when it comes to the kind of personalization you can achieve with the right data.

User Onboarding: Personal = Engaged

Think how much your users will benefit from an onboarding flow based on the source of acquisition. Or personal assistance from the minute users open your app for the first time, which can result in much higher engagement. Here’s a great example from Beats Music:


Source: BeatsMusic wizard

After all, every 4th installed app is deleted without ever being used. Isn’t that frightening?

No one wants to waste ad spend. And this is why we believe that mobile app developers must gain the most from a close cooperation with a marketing partner. A power combo of Google & Social user acquisition and App Store Optimization efforts enables app developers to produce synchronized messaging and thereby get improved results across all platforms. Furthermore, it is essential that app developers and their marketing partners share insights, not only to improve user acquisition results, but also to help craft personalized onboarding flow, retention and re-activation strategies.

The power of predictive analytics

So, your app made a great first impression and you have a happy activation. Congrats! But your job doesn’t stop here.

With most apps losing 80% of their users in the 3rd month from the time of acquisition, make sure you engage them at the right time with the right message.

When you have all that priceless data, don’t wait for your app users to complete a certain action to launch a campaign. Predict their actions instead.

Using predictive analytics, you can create personalized campaigns for acquiring top-quality users, as well as influence their next move in the app. In the last year, yellowHEAD invested heavily in engineering UA-predictive tools, and this now allows us to reach users with 30% higher LTV than other manual or rule-based tools. So, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of predictive analytics that can significantly increase your app revenues.

Personalized App Marketing conclusion

“With great power comes great responsibility.” It is crucial to personalize the right way by ensuring that you make the value of personalization apparent to the user. At the end of the day, you want to build a trusting relationship.

Now, as for marketers, KPIs to measure the performance of our campaigns are crucial to us. So how can you ensure your personalized app marketing plan is effective? Plan out your key data to gather and analyze, focus on the purpose of your messages, and don’t forget to test so you can improve over time.


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