The 2016 mobile growth handbook

A revolution is changing the rules of ecommerce.

ARE YOU GETTING LEFT BEHIND?

BETTER RESULTSFOR

MOBILE ECOMMERCE

Authors: Rishabh Gupta • Mada Seghete • [email protected]

The 2016Mobile Growth Handbook

This book includes:

- 45 tips, real-life hacks, and best practices from top mobile growth experts- Mobile Growth Chart with a list of metrics/analytics and tools available to measure them - Graphs, numbers, and data to help you understand the mobile app ecosystem- Links to the best blogs, sources, and community for Mobile Growth

Growing an App is More and More Challenging

Top 3 apps …

Others20%

2M Apps

2.2M Apps

App Store PlayStore

Big apps dominate traffic…. In a sea of apps…. And it’s getting worse….

Native Mobile is Taking Over + Drives More Revenue

Source: https://www.internetretailer.com/2014/08/13/jackthreads-proves-deep-linking-e-mail-apps-boosts-saleshttp://www.businessinsider.com/time-spent-mobile-browsing-vs-apps-2015-9

http://colehaan.com

…Native appconverts

1.5x desktopand

3x mobile web

While desktop

still converts2x mobile

web...

http://colehaan.com

3.7 hoursper day in

app

20 minsper day on

mobile web

2015 Holiday Shopping Season Recap from the IBM Watson Trend Hub

Mobile is Only a Fraction of Growing Revenue

- 2 Million+ apps on Google Play and Apple App store- Today, 50,000 apps are being launched every month- 80% of the time-spent is captured by 3 Apps (Facebook, Chrome, YouTube/ WhatsApp)

Given the odds, mobile growth cannot be left to chance

Acquisition

Channels ASO PR / Social Media

Paid Marketing Organic Growth

Partnerships Content Marketing

Referrals Mobile Website/Website

Email Lists SEO

Metrics/ Analytics

App Store Analytics

Campaign Measurement

Install Attribution Event tracking Attribution Linked Cohorts

Content Analytics

Attribution Linked Cohorts

User Analytics Email Analytics

Keyword performance

Activation

Channels In App Notifications

Push Email On-Boarding Tutorial

UI/UX Personalization Community Engagement

User Support Deep-Linking Retargeting

Metrics/ Analytics

User segmentation

A/B Testing Activation Email Analytics

Heat Maps Event Tracking Conversion funnels

User Analytics Time to ResolveDeep-link

Attribution & Analytics


Retention

Channels Push Drip Emails / Newsletters

Personalization Lifecycle Marketing

Cross-Platform Linkages

Marketing Automation

App Performance Retargeting Offers/ Discounts

Deep-Linking

Metrics/ Analytics

A/B Testing Drip Campaign Analytics

Event Tracking Funnels/ Cohorts

Screen Flows ConversionsPerformance

Analysis (Battery, space, speed etc.)

Churn Segment LTVs

Deep-link Attribution &

Analytics

Referral

Channels Text Email Contact List

Content Sharing Promo Codes Word of MouthBlogs /

Multimedia Content

Widgets/Embeds

Metrics/ Analytics

Clicks and Conversions

Invites sent & accepted

Shares and Conversions

Conversions Organic Growth Shares Clicks

What’s Inside

1. 45 tips, real-life hacks and best practices from the top mobile growth experts across top apps

2. Mobile Growth Chart with a list of metrics/analytics and tools available to measure them.

3. Graphs, numbers, data to help you understand the mobile app ecosystem

4. Links to the best blogs, sources, and community for Mobile Growth. Complete Chart Inside

We are a community of 16,000 of top mobile app developers and marketers (iOS and Android) curated by Branch. This global community is headquartered in Silicon Valley and spread across 40 cities around the world. We have an online community at https://mobilegrowth.org/.

If you are passionate about the mobile ecosystem or mobile growth, join the community (https://branch.app.link/kxw2vqgHav). You can also attend a growth meet-up near you, check out our annual calendar here(https://branch.app.link/dCTwYMDHav). Our Meet-ups are attended and hosted by top apps like AirBnB, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Instagram, Medium, Flipboard, LinkedIn, Intuit, PayTM, SnapDeal etc.

Who are the Mobile Growth Experts?

Our mobile growth experts

+ more

Our mobile growth experts

Join our Online Community Attend a Global Meetup Follow us on Medium

Join Mobile Growth Community

https://branch.app.link/dCTwYMDHavhttps://branch.app.link/kxw2vqgHav https://branch.app.link/pcEuz9FHav

Growth Framework: AARRR by Dave McClure

ACQUISITION

REFERRAL RETENTION

ACTIVATION

Note: We are leaving the 3rd R: Revenue, as this eBook’s scope is to discuss Mobile User Growth

ACQUISITION“Most apps die within 6 months.”“It’s too hard. I’m going back to web.”

--Anonymous mobile developer

The Acquisition Tool Kit

KEY PROBLEM

a. Most tools promise to do everything, but best suited for few things.

b. Interlinking data between tools is very difficult. The tools do not integrate well with each other.

Channels ASO PR / Social Media Paid Marketing Organic Growth Partnerships Content Marketing


Email Lists SEO

Metrics/ Analytics

App StoreAnalytics


Install Attribution Event tracking Attribution Linked Cohorts

Content Analytics Attribution Linked Cohorts

User Analytics Email Analytics Keyword performance

Tools

Google Analytics (Premium) / Mixpanel / In-House / Kochava ($$)

SensorTower Mention Branch KISSMetrics Adjust Hubspot Branch Tune Mailchimp Moz

AppAnnie HootSuite AppsFlyer Apsalar KISSMetrics Marketo Tune Amplitude Responsys DeepCrawl

App Store Dashboard Keyhole Adjust Amplitude Tune Amplitude Adjust Appboy Marketo Kenshoo

Google Play Dashboard Nanigans Tune Mixpanel AppsFlyer Kochava Answers SendGrid Marin

"When we first started, we built hundreds of simple utility apps and all of them cross-promoted and advertised to download Dolphin. We built hundreds of utility apps. Once we reached 1M to 2M installs we went to other developers with massive installs to promote our app. We realized category to category user acquisition works; Games to games, utilities to utilities etc. Once we reached 10M+, we got into big partnerships with OEMs, mobile companies for preinstalls….”

Edith Yeung, Dolphin Browser, Partner 500 Start-ups Mobile Collective

TIP 1: Category Cross-Promotion

”Very often, developers launch iOS first or Android first as they develop apps for the other platform. We did one simple hack that worked really well. When we launched our Android app, instead of ‘iOS coming soon’ logo, we asked people to submit their emails as a waitlist for iOS app. We had thousands of emails by the time we launched our iOS app. We also used this list for our iOS Beta users and all of this at no extra cost – just replacing COMING SOON with JOIN THE WAITLIST turned out to be a goldmine.”

TIP 2: Replace “Coming Soon” with “Join the Waitlist”

Alex Jubien, Start-up coach and mobile strategy consultant

"One of the things to leverage early on is – PR. We figured out which competitors were written about, and who were those reporters. We compiled a list of all these reporters. Then, we made a list of how interesting we were compared to competitors, and sent it to them. By doing that we got picked up for a lot of press during our launch.”

Jean Luc David, Docler

TIP 3: Get Early PR by Doing a Competitor Comparison

"Hustle hard to get at least one coverage, and then leverage that to send to others and get more free press. Once you get one coverage, email back to all the relevant reporters with the link to that coverage. If one legitimate site covers you, many smaller will cover you automatically.”

Tim Hsia, Workflow

TIP 4: Create a Press Domino Effect

"You need a minimum of five ratings for the rating of the latest version of the app to show up. Your cost of acquisition goes down when you have good ratings on your app. ‘How to get these ratings? Call your Aunt’. No, seriously call every friend or family member to make sure you start every version with at least five 5-star rating.”

Ethan Appleby, Vango

TIP 5: Get at Least 5 Reviews

"The best way to get [your] app featured is, networking; both Apple and Google organize meet-ups where you can talk to representatives who can put you in touch with the right people. Going on LinkedIn and cold emailing people can work as well.”

Zaid Al-Husseini, Gogobot

TIP 6: Get Your App Featured

"Building a working relationship with your category manager at the Apple and Google helps…They talk to us about their future plans and technologies and we try to build features into our products that map onto those, so we are more likely to be featured.”

Billy Shipp, Yoshirt

TIP 7: Use Latest Platform Features to Get ‘Featured’

"If you start from zero you just have to hustle – get very creative and reach out to everyone you know. Figure out whether there is some sort of barter system you can engage in – you promote someone’s app and in turn they promote yours. Once you have a first user base, figure out what it is they love about your app and then take those experiences and make them even better.”

Deema Tamimi, Flipboard

TIP 8: Use Barter to Promote Your App

1 2 3

Example: App to App BarterPartner with adjacent businesses to drive mobile commerce

YUMMLY + INSTACART

Deep link to ingredients

"If a problem exists and user exists, they already are talking about it somewhere. For Branch, we found deep-linking problems being discussed on Stack Overflow and Hacker-News. Also, if the right person hunts you on Product Hunt, and you get early vote-ups, you can get a lot of eyeballs and users. Find existing communities of your users and leverage those. When we built the Kindred app our community was moms – so we engaged them in mom forums and on mom blogs.”

Mada Seghete, Branch

TIP 9: Leverage Existing Communities like PH/HN

"If your app isn't geo specific, you can launch your app in a smaller market, very often for American startups its Australia or New Zealand. You can test and beta release in that market. Apart from learning from a test market, you can still get Apple's support during US launch as they like to support during launch, and your US launch will be a with a more stable and better product.”

Michael Dawson, Pocket Games

TIP 10: Leverage Geo-Beta for Product Release

"Videos work extremely well, the cost per install for static ads are $3.75 and it is down to $1.75 for video ads on FB/Instagram. Videos work.”

Kat Kitay, Buzzfeed

TIP 11: It is 2016: Use Video Ads

"Search engines are a big part of discovery, along with ASO you still must consider SEO, for Grindr we don't have a web product, but we do have a landing page and we optimize it.”

Quan Duong, Grindr

TIP 12: Don’t Forget SEO for Apps

1 2

has app

Example: SEOTracks installs and increase conversion

HOTELTONIGHT

https://branch.io/attachment/case-studies/hoteltonight.pdf

lift on install to purchase ratejust by adding deep linking

Example – SEO Tracks installs and increase conversion

18%

HOTELTONIGHT

"When we started out on mobile, we started web to mobile interstitials and they didn't perform too well. We had very high bounce rates. We relaunched them to come only during certain events that we identified as MOBILE MOMENTS - actions or events that are better on mobile than web. We found success, in fact our most successful interstitial was during the "listing" experience, driving 30% of our web to mobile installs. We must find these MOBILE MOMENTS while converting users from web to mobile.”

Sash CatanZarite, Tradesy

TIP 13: Define ‘Mobile Moments’ for Web to App

1 2 3

Example: Web to App ConversionsDrive high quality installs and purchases from mobile web

JET

Deep link to same content in app

"One of the main shifts we saw was - lets say you search the restaurant Gary Danko on Google on your mobile. First option for a mobile web banner prompting to download the Yelp app was ‘Download Yelp’ because mobile experience is better than web. Second option we tried was ‘Download Yelp’ because we have so much info on Gary Danko, X no. of reviews , Y no. of photo etc. That shift i.e. providing more context lead to much higher downloads.”

Sep Norouzi, Yelp

TIP 14: Provide Context to Drive Downloads

"Incentivized installs, lots of people have used it and spend millions on it, but these users the worst and useless. You are just throwing money away. And incentivized installs are dying.”

Philip La, Figure 1

TIP 15: Don’t Do Incentivized Installs

"The advice is to not pay for Installs, but buy active users and not lose all the money. Unless you have metrics to define active users and measure conversions, don't buy."

Edith Yeung, Dolphin Browser, Partner 500 Start-ups Mobile Collective

Andy Carvell’s Mobile Growth Stack Revised: https://mg.app.link/dSejkrrIav

Andrew Chen on Mobile Retention: https://mg.app.link/xrs1sjuIav

Rahul Vohra on App Virality: https://mg.app.link/TaEItvwIav

Localytics: 8 Mobile App Metrics that Matter: https://mg.app.link/9XdkelyIav

What User Retention Hides: https://mg.app.link/P8ecwUzIav

Round up of Mobile Analytics Tools: https://mg.app.link/mjbl2qBIav

Quora Discussion on best mobile tools: https://mg.app.link/pwaz2XCIav

Quora Discussion between founders of Segment.io and mParticle:

https://mg.app.link/iDj1qgEIav

Resource: 8 Must-Read List on Mobile Growth

Source: mParticle

Resource: Round of App SDKs

Resource: 2016 Mobile Growth Stack

Acquisition





Email Lists SEO

Metrics/ Analytics

App Store Analytics


Install Attribution

Event tracking Attribution Linked Cohorts

Content Analytics



Keyword performance

Activation



UI/UX Personalization Community Engagement

User Support Deep-Linking

Retargeting

Metrics/ Analytics

User segmentation



User Analytics Time to ResolveDeep-link Attribution & Analytics


Retention






Deep-Linking

Metrics/ Analytics

A/B TestingDrip

Campaign Analytics




Churn Segment LTVs


Analytics

Referral



Multimedia Content

Widgets/Embeds

Metrics/ Analytics








ACTIVATION“Installed my app, but not using it.”“I lose them at the sign-up.”


The Activation Tool Kit

KEY PROBLEM

a. Defining an “Activated User” for an app requires a lot of data analysis and studying user behavior

Channels In App Notifications Push Email On-Boarding

Tutorial UI/UX Personalization Community Engagement User Support Deep-Linking Retargeting

Metrics/ Analytics

User segmentation A/B Testing Activation

Email Analytics Heat Maps Event Tracking

Conversion funnels

UserAnalytics Time to Resolve


Analytics


Tools


Amplitude Loacalytics Appboy Appcues Amplitude LeanPlum Amplitude Freshdesk Branch AdRoll

Apptentative Mixpanel Mail clients Appsee Appboy Appsee Adjust HappyFox Tune AppAnnie

Adjust Apptimize Localytics UXCam Tune Localytics Apsalar Zendesk Appsflyer Adjust

Tune Appboy Mixpanel Appboy Apsalar Appboy Kochava Intercom.io Adjust Tune

"Most services try to make the signup flow as painless as possible. That’s a terrible idea. You have more attention than you ever will have again from that user. So teach them what your product is really about – consider the onboard flow a ‘learn flow’. Slow down, it’s ok to explain your product. But don’t just tell your users how your product works, get them to engage with it right away.”

TIP 16: Take Time With Onboarding

Josh Elman, GreyLock Partners

"I think attention span is a huge thing with mobile, if it takes a few seconds to load, people are on another app.”

TIP 17: Work on App Performance

Philip La, Figure 1

Metrics to track

a. App crash rate: keep it below 2% and lower it as app matures.

b. API latency: Approx. 1 second response time is a good standard to follow

c. End to end application latency: Again, approx. 1 second response time is a good standard to

follow

"From my twitter days, we found a 30% increase in user conversion when we prefilled a username or Twitter handle for them.”

TIP 18: Pre-fill User Data

Justin Zhu, Iterable

30%+

"We think about onboarding as part of a larger user journey and we try to have onboarding flow nicely from beginning, to after onboarding (we have callouts walk you through different features post preference screens), to what we refer to as your “first re-engagement”, we don’t immediately send a welcome email since you’re necessarily already on our app, and instead wait a few hours, so that we have a chance to get you to come back.”

TIP 19: Think About User Journey as a Whole

Ethan Smith, Yummly

"Creating the right onboarding flow is incredibly important. If you don’t create the right first impression and give the user what he’s looking for he will close the app right away and never open it again. With deep links you can personalize the first app experience and give new users an individual welcome, automatically apply any promotional offers and bring them to the content they came for without any friction.”

Mike Molinet, Branch

TIP 20: Personalize Onboarding With Context

"The onboarding experience early on is really critical. Don’t think of all your users in the same way, instead tailor their onboarding experience. Some users will know your product fairly well, others don’t know what to expect when they download your app. Maybe don’t ask these people right at front to give you all their information. Let them experience your product first. Branch Metrics for example gives you the possibility to contextualize the onboarding experience based on where the users come from.”


TIP 21: Customize User Onboarding

USED BY:

Example: Existing User Information for OnboardingEngage new users with custom welcome

78%conversion to signup

Example:Fun Onboarding First-touch UX

Blackbox by Ryan McLeod // @warpling

"We realized that users who have a ‘promo code’ are three times more likely to convert into paying users. As a consequence, we were giving out a promo code to every user who installed the app, so they could try out all the premium features and understand the value we were creating before we even asked them to pay.”

Bayram Annakov, App in the Air

TIP 22: Leverage Geo-Beta for Product Release

Source: andrewchen.co

65% users leave you on day 1

and 95% by Day 7

” One of the things you overlook is the app is in your users pocket or hands. Thatis a communication channel & you have an opportunity to talk to your users. Especially in early days when 100 or 1000 users are using your app, you should allow for users to talk to you & vice versa. That’s your easiest way to build a community, its not going to happen on Twitter and Facebook, users are too lazy to switch channels. But when they are in the app, make it easy for them to talk to you. At the beginning, their community is YOU, bootstrap your community and as you grow expand your strategy. Talk to your users before they land up on app store with a bad review.”

Robi Ganguly, Apptentative

TIP 23: Talk to Users Within the App

”We wanted to increase sign-ups, and our theory was instead of asking people for email, password etc., we made a demo mode, where you can experience the app, immerse yourself in the experience and feel the product. We thought this would be really successful, but this killed conversion in a very bad way. We had graphs going southwards. We nixed that idea, we learnt from that, that users are okay giving some data and effort but want to use the app/product for real and see real value.”

Lindsay Rothman, Freshbooks

TIP 24: Don’t Build a Generic demo Mode

Resource: Mobile Trends 2016

• 2.5 Billion smartphone users, grew 21% in 2015; China, India and USA are top 3 markets.

• Users spend 4-5 hours spent on mobile; 80% of time spent within 3 apps.

• Average user uses ~12 apps per day and ~33 apps in a month.

• 1 Billion+ android phones, 230 million iPhones. iOS users spend 7X more than android on

respective stores.

• Mobile Advertising is in its early days; only 12% of total ad spends goes to mobile, while 25%

of user time is spent on mobile. It is expected to be a $100 billion market in the next 5 years.

• Messenger apps are massive with Whatsapp (1B+), Facebook messenger (800M+), & WeChat

(~700M) being the biggest platforms.

• Mobile Drives 35% of all eCommerce Transactions.

• Mobile Deep Linking doubles user retention over 30 days.

Source: Mary Meeker Internet Report 2016, Branch Blogs, Criteo State of Mobile Commerce Report, Mobile Marketing Magazine

Mobile Marketing Statistics 2016: https://mg.app.link/ft5I4HHIav

Greylock Partners: Mobile Growth Stack: https://mg.app.link/ZEHOG7IIav

The Growth Story of Musical.ly: https://mg.app.link/69uHCAKIav

Mobile Growth Meet-up videos from SV & beyond: https://mg.app.link/6FabZPMIav

The Metrics a16z looks at for M-commerce: https://mg.app.link/ZYWwD8NIav

Mobile Cheat Sheet for Internet Report 2016: https://mg.app.link/orS1vfQIav

The 10 point ASO check-list: https://mg.app.link/TTjmEGRIav

16 Metrics that matter for Mobile Product Managers:

https://mg.app.link/06jzRgTIav

Resource: 8 More ‘Must-Reads’ on Mobile Growth

RETENTION “After 3 months, I lose all my users.”“Why are they not coming back?”


Retention is the Foundation of Mobile Growth


Source: Appsflyer

Compounding effect of Retention is massive

a. Increasing retention from 5% to 20%, we can

see user growth jump by 10X

b. If we manage retention of 60% (up from 5%),

users grow by 350X

The Retention Tool Kit

KEY PROBLEM: Most apps and developers under-invest in retention and engagement.

Channels Push Drip Emails / Newsletters Personalization Lifecycle

MarketingCross-Platform

LinkagesMarketing Automation

App Performance Retargeting Offers/

Discounts Deep-Linking

Metrics/ Analytics A/B Testing Drip Campaign

Analytics Event Tracking Funnels / Cohorts Screen Flows Conversions

Performance Analysis

(Battery, space, speed etc.)

Churn Segment LTVsDeep-link

Attribution & Analytics

Tools


Optimizely Marketo Amplitude Amplitude Appcues Kahuna Crashlytics AdRoll Amplitude Branch

Apptimize Branch Email Journeys Appsee Adjust Localytics MoEngage Pulse Tapad Localytics

Appboy Responsys CleverTap Tune Amplitude Apptentative Apteligent TapCommerce Apsalar

Localytics MailChimp LeanPlum Amplitude UXcam Appboy New Relic Tapjoy

"The importance of first 3 days cannot be overstated, apps win/lose the user retention battle at this stage. We have gone through tons of mobile growth charts, and time and again the trend to notice is difference between a successful and not a successful app comes down to the first 3 days of the app usage.”

TIP 25: First 3 Days Retention is the KeyEveryone loses 4-5%. Difference b/w top apps

& others


After the first 3 days, the top Apps and

the others follow the same trajectory.

But the first 3 days of higher retention,

leads to 131x growthMike Molinet, Branch

”Retention is a big number for us and monitor our retention curve very closely, after launching several apps, we found push notifications to be very effective and first week after install is really key in educating users about your product. Experimenting with handwritten notifications…as a content company we have something new to talk about everyday.”

Kat Kitay, Buzzfeed

TIP 26: Educate Users About Your Product Week 1

”Don’t aggressively acquire users if you can’t retain them. You are also potentially burning some of the most enthusiastic people about your product. Someone sees your ad and thinks that’s the product they have been waiting for, downloads it and it’s not the experience they have been looking for…and then they just leave. The chance that they come back is slim to none.”

Vanessa Larco, Box

TIP 27: Always Prioritize Retention Over Acquisition

“Email is great, just reminding customer what Jet.com stocks, or it is football season, works really well and gets them back. Email is our best engagement channel so far.”

Lauren Picasso, Jet.com

TIP 28: Emails Really Work

"Our best engagement channel is emails…every email is personalized. Yummly is basically like Pandora or Netflix but for food. Taking through an extensive set-up, we have a lot of information, we send them personalized email. That's our biggest driver of retention."

Brian Witlin, Yummly

USED BY:

Example – Email to App

65%sessions from email when deep linking

to app vs. sending to mobile web

Make app email marketing seamless

”If your are not an ecommerce company which makes money on each conversion, its difficult to justify costs of expensive tools. One of the easiest ways to A/B test is to use your Email MVP, we use sendwithus, a service that is really great. This helps us to split-test emails, and a lot of learning we learn from here we apply to the product...We tested a weekly digest with playlists based on their on-site listening habits, this weekly digest did 70% better than our previous newsletters. This eventually led us to launch a feed in our 3.0 version, which was super successful.”

Andrea Slobodien, 8Tracks

TIP 29: Emails Can be Used as an MVP Tool

”The single most important thing for games early on is the quality of users & building a density of quality users. After getting to a critical mass you can start to focus on the drivers of virality and the target audiences.”

Josh Lu, Zynga

TIP 30: Get Quality Users, it Matters

”We make every single notification personal, so they are either about content you posted or it is recommended content based on the stuff you posted on Pinterest. Be careful with general notifications that you send out to thousands of users and make sure every notification is personal, based on the data you have about your users. We treat every notification as an experiment and measure whether they increase the retention of our users or just waste their attention.”

Casey Winters, Pinterest

TIP 31: Personalize Push Notifications

”Email and push are the best engagement channels. Don’t overuse push notifications, but also don’t be afraid to use it, most users love it, some don’t and they will turn it off.”

April Alexander, Redfin

TIP 32: Don’t be Afraid to Use Push

”When I was at Shopkick, we were a retail rewards app. Geo-fenced notifications were a huge help in reminding users to open the app when they were near the store. It improved our metrics by double digits once we launched them. It took us time to fix GPS inaccuracies and battery performance, but it was worth it.”

John Egan, Pinterest

TIP 33: Using Geo-Fenced Notifications

”We switched CDN providers, and the benefit was reduced response time and this improved user experience, we saw a lift in both retention and engagement.”

Quan Duong, Grindr

TIP 34: App Performance Matters

”Users have to get addicted to your app – not to the entire experience but to something in your app. Some feature, something to hook on to that they do over and over again. When you don’t take away every single barrier that lets them exactly do that, you will end up chasing the next feature that is going to create growth – and that never works. Having tons of features usually doesn’t create growth.”

Andrew Fernandez, Rent the Runway

TIP 35: Users Get Hooked on to Features, Not Apps

”Balancing A/B testing with resources / time constraints, there are so many ways to make A/B tests manageable. First of all, learn to validate ideas more quickly. Live tests are just one means of validation. You can also test types of content, types of personalization, and even layouts, through email or push, user interviews, or by digging into past data around similar features you may have built. None of these require dev time. I also like to spend a lot of time looking through random metrics just to see if any gems jump out at me. SQL is really fast to learn and you get a lot of bang for buck.”

Andrea Slobodien, 8Tracks

TIP 36: Keep A/B Testing Simple and Fast

“We are not looking at cost per install, but cost per booking , and we look at users who move the needle on our key metrics.”

Audrey Tsang, Hotel Tonight

TIP 37: Define Engagement Metrics

"Metrics, we have quite a few but on the listener side we have “listening time” as a key metric – it is a compound metric that helps interpret (a) the quality of content on the platform and (b) relevance to the user (related to discovery) and (c) engagement. We arrived at it after countless debates."

Sridhar Ravichandran, SoundCloud

Resource: Growth Modeling Template

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GrowthChart

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Download the growth modeling excel

a. Run your own growth modeling experiments

b. Understand what metrics will contribute the biggest delta

https://mg.app.link/rW99c1VIavDOWNLOAD NOW

What happens in 6 months, if you increase retention from 10% to 40%

REFERRAL “If they ain’t talking, you ain’t growing.”“How do you I make my app viral?”


App Virality

User A engages in app

User A shares app

User B clicks on link

User B downloads app

User B engages in app

User B shares app

Double viral loop

1

2

3

4

5

The Retention Tool Kit

KEY PROBLEM: A lot of referral events happen outside your app, making measurement difficult

Channels Text Email Contact List Content Sharing Promo Codes Word of Mouth Blogs / Multimedia Content Widgets/Embeds

Metrics/ Analytics



Shares and Conversions Conversions Organic Growth Shares Clicks

Tools


Twilio MailChimp SumoMe Branch DeepLinks Existing Tools HootSuite In-house

Branch DeepLinks SendGrid Social Networks Plugins

Referral Saasquatch Topsy

NexMo SendWithUs Branch Content Sharing Extole Mentions

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Branch Email Journey Twitter Kit (Fabric) Friendbuy Nanigans

"Most companies get caught up in what I call ‘infectious virality’ – the kind of virality where you encourage your users to bring their friends so the experience is better for both. But there’s two other types of virality that let your core users be your evangelists: 1. ‘Word-of-Mouth Virality’ – having your users describe their great experience to their friends. Be careful which words you use in the product or when talking to the press because these words will impact how your users will describe it. 2. ‘Demonstration Virality’ – having your core users share content from your product. These shares only happen if they are authentic and naturally happen in your product.”

TIP 38: Different Types of Virality

Josh Elman, GreyLock Partners

k = p*i*c1*c2

Where,

p: percentage of users inviting others [How many users love your app enough to evangelize]

i: no. of invites sent by each sharing user [Proxy for ‘How much they love your product’]

c1: % of people who click on that link [Measures effectiveness of your marketing message; hint: A/B test]

c2: % of people who convert on that link [Effectiveness of your landing page; hint: always use Deep-links]

Resource: Measuring K-factor (detailed)

NOTE: One should multiply referred users with retention quotient to understand long term growth

“Content that users share out, deep-linked to our app, is the best way to refer users in.”

TIP 39: Content Sharing is a Driver of Virality

"More than an Invite button, you gotta figure out the native ways users are sharing. Conversion from image sharing by users, is much much more popular than the invite button. If you can find any of those natural things people want to share and discuss things, than that’s the best way to create referrals for your app.”

Philip La, Figure 1

Kat Kitay, Buzzfeed

"It’s not only about sharing your app but more about letting users share what content they like or have created inside the app. At Flipboard this could be an interesting article they read or a magazine they have created. Think about their motivations and tie it back to what makes your product unique. This is where Branch can be really powerful by letting users share contextual links to one specific piece of content they like inside your app.”


TIP 40: Give Users Something They Love to Share

"Text messages have the highest conversion rate. While the volume of shares on Facebook is higher, the eventual conversion of a text invitation to install the app is much higher.”

Bayram Annakov, App in the Air

TIP 41: Text Messages Work Better Than FB Shares

Use Deep Linking and Deep Views to

maximize conversions from text

"Growing through inviting/sharing, means we know who invited the new user. If we personalize their landing pages and in-app onboarding, we can maximize conversions.”


TIP 42: Give Users Something They Love to Share

TIP 43: Create Shareable Content Outside Your App

Create a YouTube channel with UGC

Creating shareable blog content

Creating shareable video content

Create Things People Love to Share

TIP 44: Create Viral Loops

"A lot of our growth is driven by our organic viral loops via creators as well as listener/discovery based virality, so the channels that drive growth are the same as where creators and listeners hang out, which is basically everywhere on the internet (FB/Twitter/Embeds/SEO/Tumblr etc.). The variations between the channels are quite drastic when an influential creator drops a track that goes viral, which leads to interesting effects on acquisition/retention and others, but largely speaking it is a game of optimizing for conversion and reducing friction across all the channels that refer back to SC debates."

Sridhar Ravichandran, SoundCloud

TIP 45: Referral Best Practices


It’s better to get something than a discount on something.Give an Incentive

If you can only reward one, reward the new user.Two-sided are Best

Make it incredibly easy for users to share.One-step Sharing is Easiest

People share when it makes them look good.Appeal to Ego

Strong emotions like anger can drive a lot more clicks than happy emotions.Negative emotions only drive clicks, not shares.

Use Emotion

Resource: Referral Modeling Template

<30,000 weekly users (@2 friends) ~ 6M+ weekly users (@8 friends)

Download the growth modeling excel

a. Run your own referral based growth modeling

b. Understand what metrics will contribute the biggest delta.

https://mg.app.link/rW99c1VIavDOWNLOAD NOW

What happens in 6 months, if each user invites 8 instead of 2 friends

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1000000

2000000

3000000

4000000

5000000

6000000

7000000

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

GrowthChart

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5000

10000

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35000

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Resource: 2016 Mobile Growth Stack

Acquisition




Referrals Mobile

Website/Website

Email Lists SEO

Metrics/ Analytics

App Store Analytics


Install Attribution

Event tracking Attribution Linked Cohorts

Content Analytics



Keyword performance

Activation



UI/UX Personalization

Community Engagement

User Support Deep-Linking

Retargeting

Metrics/ Analytics

User segmentation



User Analytics Time to ResolveDeep-link Attribution & Analytics


Retention






Deep-Linking

Metrics/ Analytics

A/B TestingDrip

Campaign Analytics




Churn Segment LTVs


Analytics

Referral



Multimedia Content

Widgets/Embeds

Metrics/ Analytics








A revolution is changing the rules of ecommerce.

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Rishabh Gupta • Mada Seghete • [email protected]

The 2016Mobile Growth Handbook

Thank you!