Mass Appeal #1: How to Build Smart Engagement Programs to Monetize Your App - Alex Guerra (Baz Superapp)
Monetizing an app relies on how you keep users engaged, and not just at the beginning but over a user’s lifetime. To kick off the first episode of adjoe's Mass Appeal Podcast, host Tommy Yannopoulos speaks with Alex Guerra, the Director and Head of Monetization at Baz. They discuss how economic incentive programs can drive app engagement in a profitable way. You’ll learn about the three principal monetization strategies; how to use incentives, like referral programs and gamification, to drive engagement and retention; and how to work with your data science team to build predictive marketing models with AI and machine learning to turn a profit.
After receiving his Masters from UCL in London, Alex worked at Uber for over 4 years, eventually becoming the Latin America Lead for Global Strategy. Now he directs pricing, market intelligence, and revenue growth strategies for Baz, Mexico’s first superapp. Baz is one app for payment and financial services, entertainment, e-commerce, and more.
Questions Alex Answered in this Episode:
- How is Baz structured? What does it do for customers?
- How do you decide where to focus on engagement across all the verticals in your superapp?
- How do you structure your incentives program across all these different datasets?
- How do you identify users early on that you want to put the effort behind in terms of driving more mid- to long-term incentives programs?
- What are the inputs required of you in this process of working with your data science team to build a predictive marketing model?
- Could you share with us an offer that you brought as a result of these efforts that worked really well for your customers?
- What’s got you excited about this year at Baz?
Timestamp:
- 1:52 Intro to Alex Guerra
- 4:52 What is monetization in the mobile app industry
- 7:45 Baz and superapps explained
- 11:45 Identifying engagement strategies at a superapp
- 14:02 Economic incentives to increase engagement and retention
- 19:38 Building machine learning models for predictive analytics and marketing
- 22:40 Working with your data science team to build AI models
- 26:47 Giving your AI modeling experiments time
- 27:53 Incentives for customers who have churned
- 31:35 What Alex is excited about for Baz
Quotes:
(14:48-14:54) “What speeds up engagement and also user acquisition or retention is giving a customer something to reward their action.”
(19:57-20:11) “You have to build AI and machine learning models that create propensity and ranking models that make sure you’re reducing the cost of engagement and the cost of acquisition but you maximize or optimize for the lifetime value.”
(26:49-27:02) “You need to be patient. I’ve seen a lot of companies drop their [AI data modeling] efforts after a few weeks. Some of these experiments need two, three, or four months–it depends on the purchase frequency that your business has.”