As more data and analytics become available, the opportunity for data-driven app marketing campaigns is growing.
What exactly is data-driven marketing, and what are the best practices your company can use to lean the available data in your favor? We’ll be discussing the best practices for using data-driven app marketing in the article below.
What is Data Driven App Marketing?
Data is everywhere – user demographics, app installs, abandon and uninstall rates, user retention, all of these details can be tracked via data and analytics, and these details can be used to drive your app marketing to success.
Nowadays it’s becoming increasingly less common for a business not to use data-driven marketing, but even though data may be at every businesses’ fingertips, utilizing it properly will set you apart from your competition.
Follow the best data-driven app marketing practices listed in this article and you’ll have a better chance at making the most of the data available to you.
Measuring your Statistics and Building App Marketing KPIs
First things first, you need to measure your statistics, look at your current user
base, and understand their personality. It’s also important to look at how your app compares to others that share the same category as you, and see how they may do things differently.
Here are a number of typical stats you can track that are important to your app’s success:
– User retention rate (what day users quit your app)
– User LTV (the average lifetime value of each user, or how much revenue, on average, each user will provide for your app)
– Average user session length (how long, on average, each user spends in your app at once)
You can use these stats as your key performance indicators and can measure them against your competitors. There is so much data available out there, not just for your own applications, but for other applications too.
Once you have understood how well your app is performing based on the KPIs listed above, you can directly compare them to other apps in your category. You can see where your application may not be performing as well.
With this base to go upon, you can start your data-driven app marketing campaign.
App Promotion for the Right Users
Proper data-driven app marketing starts with understanding the best potential users for your application. Once again, by using published stats from other popular apps, you can understand what audience would like your application the most. A little bit of common sense can go a long way here too, but it’s always best to back up your assumptions with data where possible.
For example, if your app is a DIY how-to book for jobs around the house, you may assume your users are 20-40 years of age, but it’s important to check that with any analytics you can get your hands on.
Many ad networks and analytics platforms are out there to provide you the information you need to determine more about the kind of user base that would be interested in your app. Here’s an example of some of the details you can find out about your users:
– What is the age range of users who use apps like yours?
– What country are most users of apps like yours based in?
– Alternatively, what country could result in users with a higher LTV for apps like yours?
– What other interests or hobbies do most users of apps like yours have?
Like mentioned before, you can often get a rough idea about these metrics by using a bit of common sense, but when it’s hard to judge, it’s always best to use ad networks and analytics platforms to find this information yourself.
Holistic Data Approach and Attribution Management
With more app marketers utilizing more and more marketing channels, the need for a holistic view of the effectiveness of app promotion activities becomes bigger. You call that also mobile marketing attribution management: attribute every app install to the marketing campaign and media source that drove it and see what the granular impact on your business model/success is.
In order to gain more insights into the overall performance of the app, use analytics platforms like Adobe Marketing Cloud, IBM, Swrve, Mixpanel, Localytics, and dozens more.
Data Driven Anti-Fraud Fight
With the current amount of fraudulent traffic in place, app marketers without a doubt look at data and utilize tools to actively detect and fight fraudsters. This data should power a multi-faceted platform that includes IP filtering, anomaly detection, device-level protection, raw data reporting, install and receipt validation, protection against fabricated SDK triggers, and more. If you’re looking to implement tracking tools make sure it offers full Raw Data Reports covering everything from attribution and performance data to post-backs.
Marketing Automation
Mobile marketing automation is a red hot topic since there’s a wide range of choices in order to increase marketing productivity; including push and in-app messaging, email marketing, personalization, user flow management, A/B testing, localization, and user segmentation to improve their user retention, social growth, and app performance. Integrations into these marketing tools allow marketers to easily sync their mobile attribution and rich-in-app events. These insights improve mobile marketing automation performance and unlock another level of insight into user engagement.
Using Your Data in New Ways
Now that you have an understanding of the kinds of users that may be most beneficial to your app, you can spend your marketing budget on those specific users. Whichever platform you use, chances are you can be very specific with the kind of audience it reaches.
For example, both Facebook and Twitter’s advertising tools allow you to explicitly market to users with specific interests. Most platforms also allow you to market for different age ranges and those who reside in different countries.
Not only can you now market towards the types of users that will be most beneficial to your application, but with the KPIs you picked out, you’ll be able to determine when you may need to adjust your marketing demographics.
For example, if your user LTV isn’t reaching the kinds of rates that are expected of an app in your category, you can go back to the drawing board and look at what data you may have missed when starting your marketing campaign.
You’ll still need to consider maintaining and updating your app too, but using data to acquire the right users is often half the battle to creating an application that can return the revenue you’re hoping for.
