For your app to make an impact on a crowded marketplace, you need to launch strong. But you only get one chance at an app launch – so our App Launch Marketing Series blogs are here to help you do it right. We’ve already explained how to put a mobile and app strategy in place, and the importance of putting retention first. But how will you know if your strategy is effective? That’s where measurement comes in.
Why measurement is important
A successful app launch goes well beyond day one. You need to be optimising your app based on what users want and how they’re using the app – but you can’t quantify this without the right measurement tools.
That’s why everything we do at Yodel Mobile is heavily informed by data. Measurement tools are essential to ensuring you can gain visibility in the app stores, drive engagement and understand the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you can wait till post-launch to worry about your app marketing stack. It’s vital to make sure you have the right measurement tools in place from the beginning, so they can inform all future decision-making.
Picking the right mobile tools for the job
In order for your app to succeed, there are numerous areas you need to be measuring – and that means you’ll need to support it with multiple tools. There are plenty of areas to consider, and a whole host of players, each catering to a particular type of business,
Yodel Mobile is agnostic – as ecosystem experts, we partner with an assortment of providers, and believe in picking a tool that’s right for your needs, whether they have to do with price, projected number of users, planned growth targets, bespoke requirements or integration with your existing stack.
For now let’s focus on three key areas: analytics, attribution and automation, including some of the major players in each space, to help you make an informed choice.
Attribution
Major players include: Adjust, Appsflyer, Branch
It’s vital to know where your app’s users are coming from. Did they click through from a mobile banner or an ad on Facebook? Did they discover it by searching the app store or come through one of your owned channels?
Attribution tools allow you to track all this, identifying which campaigns and platforms are generating installs for you so you can ensure your budget is spent in the most effective way possible. If used correctly, they can also help identify the best sources of organic installs, whether that’s social media or app store keyword searches – this is vital, because organic users generally have the highest lifetime value.
Best practices for attribution include developing a consistent naming convention that is used across sources, making it quicker and easier to compare the data, and ensuring you’re correctly tracking organic users with as much granularity as possible.
Most attribution tools can also be used to identify ad fraud – vital if you’re intending to support the app with paid User Acquisition activity.
In-app and product analytics
Major players include: Mixpanel, Amplitude, ServiceNow
In-app analytics platforms allow you to track users’ interactions with the app: the typical journey to conversion, the features which are used most, and any common pain points which cause users to exit the app.
There are potentially thousands of datapoints to track, and you can’t try to base your decision-making on all of them. Identify the in-app events that feed into your current KPI and focus on those – but be aware that might change as you progress.
For this reason, it’s still best practice to track all available datapoints, even if you don’t use them. This will future-proof your efforts by ensuring that, if KPIs change down the line, you’ll have the historic data in place to support your new goals.
Marketing automation and A/B testing
Major players include: Leanplum, Braze, Swrve, Airship
When it comes to engaging and re-engaging users, two of the greatest weapons in your arsenal are push notifications and in-app messages. These allow you to reach users in real-time with personalised messages triggered by their actions in the app, helping to boost conversion.
Messaging users on this kind of individual basis requires automation. This will handle personalisation, segmentation of users – which can be based on demographic or in-app behaviour – and A/B testing of the messages you send. This can include the copy of the messages but also what time they’re sent and which audiences are most receptive.
A/B testing can be used optimise any part of the app experience, trialling multiple versions against one another to establish which is most effective. A regular testing schedule should be part of any successful app strategy.
Using mobile measurement tools together with your app
Picking the right tools is vital, but it’s not the end of the story. You need to ensure they’re all set up properly with your specific app, and are integrated with one another. This will give you a single view of your user, from the moment they find your app through to their interactions with it.
To do this, you’ll need to work closely with an expert in analytics tool implementation. Which is where we come in. Want advice on how to best harness the ecosystem? Yodel Mobile works across implementation, integration, testing and general management across push campaign and A/B testing management, analysis, and reporting. Get in touch via info@yodelmobile.com if you want to know more!
Here’s what you can expect from our series:
- Understanding the market and your place in it
- Flip the funnel: focus on retention first
- Get discovered: ASO and organic acquisition
- User acquisition done right: start with a soft launch
Make sure to sign up to our newsletter to get notified when we release a new post in the series.
Launching an app can seem like a big feat, but there are plenty of things you can do to get yourself on the road to app success, so stay tuned!
Want to find out more about optimising your app and keeping up with the latest OS capabilities? Make sure to subscribe to our Mastering Mobile Marketing video series. You can also get in touch by visiting the Contact Us page. Follow us on LinkedIn, chat with us on Twitter @yodelmobile, and join our #mobilemarketingUK LinkedIn group.
