The concept of growth has evolved. The “growth at all costs” mindset has been replaced by a sustainable approach—one that prioritises not just acquiring new users but maximising their lifetime value while driving business profitability.
Today, the mobile app ecosystem is more competitive than ever. Since the iOS App Store’s launch 16 years ago with just 500 apps, we now have over seven million games and apps across various niches and genres. Breaking through in this saturated market is undoubtedly challenging, but success is achievable with a well-planned, data-driven strategy.
This means understanding your audience on a deeper level, leveraging insights to refine your user acquisition tactics, and continuously optimizing your app’s performance based on meaningful KPIs. By focusing on retention, engagement, and monetization, businesses can carve out a distinct space in the market, ensuring sustainable growth and long-term profitability.
At the heart of every successful app growth strategy lies one critical element: data. When leveraged effectively, data removes guesswork, ensuring time and resources are invested wisely while staying focused on what truly matters.
The good news? The mobile app industry is abundant with data. The challenge? Knowing how to use it strategically to make informed decisions that drive results.
That’s why we’ve collaborated with FullStory to create a comprehensive guide: 5 Data-Led Growth Strategies for Mobile Apps. This guide is your key to unlocking your app’s full potential through cutting-edge techniques that blend innovation with analytical precision.
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Why data-driven growth is what your app needs
In the current app ecosystem, prioritizing growth above all else is no longer a sustainable approach. The focus has shifted toward maximising lifetime user value and ensuring long-term profitability. Data is the key to unlocking this potential, allowing you to identify opportunities, eliminate inefficiencies, and create experiences that truly resonate with users.
But with so much data available, how do you know what to focus on? This guide breaks it down and dives into five practical plans you can implement into your app growth strategy today. We expand on them in our report, but here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll learn:
Mapping the customer journey
To build a winning app experience, you need to understand your users. Our guide explains how to map your customer journey effectively to uncover key touchpoints, optimise onboarding flows, and spot friction areas that cause churn.
Leveraging data democratisation
Data shouldn’t just live in silos. You’ll learn how empowering teams across your organisation with accessible, actionable data can drive innovation and unlock growth opportunities.
Reducing churn with pain point analysis
One of the biggest challenges in app growth is reducing churn. The guide provides a step-by-step approach to identifying and addressing user pain points, ensuring you keep users engaged and coming back for more.
Implementing a data-led app growth strategy
Upselling isn’t just about offering more—it’s about offering value at the right time. This guide shows you how to use data to create a personalised upselling app growth strategy that resonates with your users and boosts revenue.
Fixing your leaky revenue funnel
A leaky funnel can drain your growth potential. The guide reveals how to analyse your funnel data, identify where you’re losing users, and take actionable steps to maximise conversions.
Data-driven app growth strategies: Examples & expert tips
This guide is packed with case studies, actionable takeaways, and expert insights to help app marketers and product managers unlock their app’s growth potential. Below is one example that can inspire your own app growth strategy if you’re aiming to drive upsells within your app.
Driving upsells within your app
In-app currency
In-app currency is like modern-day Monopoly money, with no value in the outside world but heaps within the app in question. In business apps, this currency might buy you the chance to send more proposals or reach more candidates, while in a gaming app it often buys you more “lives.” This approach is also common in apps that gamify their own offering, like the language learning app Duolingo. Duolingo successfully combines the chance to buy more hearts (or “lives”) with the chance to subscribe, giving users a short-term and a long-term solution that allows them to continue using the app.
Subscriptions: Pay to go ad-free
Many apps keep things simple, offering users the chance to enjoy the app without the annoyance of ads for a monthly fee. It’s something Spotify has built a business around, and is, again, a common feature in gaming apps. It’s worth considering that there needs to be careful calculation around the decrease in ad revenue you will receive when you have fewer customers viewing those ads. For example, Duolingo’s revenue comes from free users who view adverts, nicely illustrating that even those customers who will never subscribe have a lifetime value worth considering.
Subscriptions: Pay to use
If you’ve got a value-packed app, whether it’s educational, business-oriented, or health-based, you have the opportunity to upsell the full feature version through a subscription. You can do this by offering a limited version indefinitely, or the full experience for a limited time only. With a forever-limited version, the trick is to offer enough free features to hook in your users, but not so many that they don’t think a subscription will offer them any more value.
Here, the Uptime app offers users full access to their content for a very limited time. The three-day free trial is combined with an intense CRM journey, encouraging engagement over this initial period to build relationships with the users and help them to take advantage of the full capabilities of the premium plan.
Subscriptions: Pay to save
Revenue-generating apps, such as Deliveroo or Uber Eats, have adopted a two-pronged approach to monetisation. Not only do they earn when a user orders food, but they can also earn extra revenue if that user signs up for a subscription offering them, for instance, free delivery on their takeaways. Both Deliveroo and Uber Eats offer new subscribers a free month’s trial, giving them the chance to save on the order they’re about to make. Uber Eats goes one further, showing the user how much they’re likely to save by taking them up on their offer. When the saving is £19 for no initial cost, they make it very difficult to say no!
Ready to transform your app’s growth strategy?
Don’t let your app’s growth plateau. Download the 5 Data-Led Growth Strategies for Mobile Apps guide today and equip yourself with the tools to thrive in the ever-evolving mobile app landscape. And if you need support with your app growth journey, don’t hesitate to contact our expert team.
