#185: How do you scale subscription apps for kids with Luisa Zuleta, Growth Lead at Sago Mini & Toca Boca
Feb 12, 2024
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Learn how Luisa Zuleta scaled subscription apps for kids, faced marketing limitations, built partnerships, redefined audiences, and optimized LTV. Discover challenges in compliance, adapting to industry changes, and reworking marketing channels. Explore reflections on smartphones, features, and Apple AirTags disappointment.
Marketing kids apps requires complying with COPA and GDPR regulations, impacting advertising and data collection strategies.
Innovative marketing partnerships and strategies are essential for scaling subscription apps for kids, emphasizing brand trust and parental engagement.
Deep dives
Challenges of Scaling a Subscription App for Kids
Scaling a subscription app for kids involves unique challenges, including addressing the needs of both children and parents. Luisa Zaleda shares insights into working with a renowned educational app, Sago Mini, emphasizing the importance of engaging content that is safe and beneficial for kids. The app, focusing on play-to-learn concepts for children aged three to five, offers a holistic approach of promoting laughter and fun to aid in the educational process.
Navigating Marketing Limitations for Kids Apps
Marketing kids apps presents regulatory challenges due to COPA and GDPR restrictions, impacting advertising, data collection, and monetization strategies. Sago Mini's marketing faced limitations such as being unable to share deep app metrics for user optimization. Despite these obstacles, their commitment to complying with the strictest regulations ensured readiness for new changes, like SCAD, allowing strategic adaptations and partnership building.
Adapting to SCAD and Marketing Strategy Shifts
SCAD's enforcement in kids' apps forced swift revisions to marketing strategies. By leveraging probabilistic attribution before SCAD's full implementation, Sago Mini navigated the loss of IDFA and tailored custom SDK solutions to maintain tracking and attribution capabilities. The necessity for innovative marketing approaches prompted collaborative efforts with partners like AppSlayer, enhancing compliance and post-install event tracking.
Revamping Audience Engagement and Marketing Funnel
Reevaluating audience dynamics led to a shift in Sago Mini's marketing approach, prioritizing brand trust and parental engagement. Understanding the dual target of kids and parents prompted the creation of parent-focused creatives and initiatives to build trust and awareness. By emphasizing brand affinity early in the customer journey, Sago Mini observed increased lifetime value, reduced costs, and improved user retention through holistic marketing strategies.
As so many app developers and publishers would agree, growing an audience for an app is a challenge. Nothing is static - you find a new marketing channel that works and for a while and you feel like you can finally breath again freely but then it becomes crowded with your competitors or the app industry wide change happens like Apple’s introduction of ATT framework and… - back to the drawing board.
But today Luisa will tell you a story of what it takes to scale a subscription app for kids and if you feel like it should be even more challenging, you are right - it is.
Today’s Topics Include:
Luisa Zuleta's background
What Sago Mini and Toca Boca games are about
Limitations in app marketing Luisa faced even before SKAD introduction
Building relationships with partners to go through tough times
Rethinking app audiences
Reworking the marketing channel
Defining LTV for an app
What Luisa managed to achieve as the result
Takeways
What Luisa would like to change about mobile ad tech the most
Android or iOS?
Leaving her smartphone at home, what features would Luisa miss most?
What features she would like to see added to his smartphone?
"So when you're advertising and producing kids apps, you are you have to face two sets of regulations COPA for the US and GDPR for Europe. Those regulations affect not only marketing, but also the app development, publishing, what kind of data you can collect inside the apps, and also monetization strategies. "
"So it's not like any traditional gaming app where you look at your user base and you know that the user that's most engaged is the one who did level one to three in the first 20 minutes, or bought this pack or that. It's not applicable. Sometimes you could have a parent of a four year old having a strict screen time of two times a week."