Welcome to the second episode of the Mobile Dev Memo Academy preview series.Our guest today is Eric Seufert. Eric is the founder of Heracles and Mobile Dev Memo. Eric is a media strategist and quantitative marketer who has spent his career working for transformative consumer technology and media companies, including Skype and Rovio. Eric most recently sold his mobile advertising analytics company, Agamemnon, to the mobile gaming company N3TWORK. In today’s episode, we get into a macroeconomic perspective on what the current pandemic means for the mobile app economy - and how we might see the world change over the next couple of months. This is absolutely something that Eric has a great deal of perspective on - and I’m thrilled to have him share these. Also: Eric is teaching the course ‘Introduction to Marketing Cohort Analysis’ for Mobile Dev Memo Academy. Check his course out on http://mdm.academy - alongside the other courses taught by some of the smartest folks in mobile. Of course, Eric is the brain behind the Mobile Dev Memo Academy - huge props to him for helping make this project happen. As the pandemic makes massive changes to the retention and monetization profiles of apps, these courses are perhaps timely in helping you adapt, learn and upskill - and I highly recommend checking these out. Key Highlights:🏦 While the pandemic is driven by exogenous non-economic forces, it likely does exacerbate structural weaknesses in the economy.🌪 The pandemic is like Hurricane Katrina hitting every metro area in the world at the same time.📅 What trends are visible from Silicon Valley layoff lists.🤔 Will the app economy’s low-priced digital goods(IAPs) be impervious to recessionary forces?📲 How the ad supported apps are impacted by the increased engagement - and the recessionary forces.📑 Why it might become important to shift thinking from a ROAS standpoint to a profitability standpoint.💡 Why the current crisis might see a migration of advertisers to Facebook and Google from other ad networks.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/inside-the-storm-what-the-coronavirus-pandemic-means-for-the-mobile-app-ecosystem-with-eric-seufertfounder-at-heracles-and-mobile-dev-memo-mdm-academy-preview-special/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Welcome to the first episode of the Mobile Dev Memo Academy preview series.Our guest today is Thomas Petit. Thomas is an independent mobile growth consultant working primarily with non-gaming B2C apps. He is an external consultant for large apps (inc. 2 unicorns), a collaborator assisting several app agencies and an advisor for very early-stage startups.  He’s run campaigns since the first day, spending 7 digits on the platform directly and also run audits on many other accounts, is certified by Apple, SearchAdsHQ & ASOdesk - and is a regular public speaker on the topic.In today’s episode, we dive into a crucial but underappreciated aspect of user acquisition on Apple Search(and also elsewhere) - LAT - or Limit Ad Tracking. Limit Ad Tracking essentially means you cant track your users because their IDFAs show up as zero. In this masterclass, Thomas shows us ways to think about and make estimations to understand and capitalize on LAT, which can have a significant impact on user acquisition strategy. Also: Thomas is teaching the course ‘Apple Search Ads: Beyond The Basics’ for Mobile Dev Memo Academy. If you are interested in going much deeper into LAT and all things Apple Search related, you should definitely check out his course on the Mobile Dev Memo Academy at http://mdm.academy.Key Highlights: 🤔 Why there can be a 30 to 70% difference between Apple Search and MMPs.👀 What LAT is - and how these users are marked by Apple and Google. Why LAT installs don't get seen in MMPs.🚧 How different channels handle LAT. Why LAT can sometimes mean that a significant portion of your audience is unreachable on Facebook and Instagram.⛰ Geowise, OS-wise and vertical wise differences in LAT-on percentages.🔞 Apple turns on LAT by default for anyone under 18.🤷‍♂️ How a marketer might find out what percentage of users have LAT turned on.💸 Why avoiding targeting users with LAT on can be more expensive than targeting them.👍 How Thomas recommends bidding for LAT on users vs. all users.📈 How Thomas recommends estimating LTV/retention/monetization of LAT on users in the absence of perfect tracking.🙅‍♂️ Why attributing organic revenue to LAT on users can potentially open up a Pandora’s box.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-mysterious-lat-and-how-to-tame-it-with-thomas-petitgrowth-consultant/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Alice Guillaume. Alice is the Senior Director of Marketing at AppLovin where she heads up AppLovin’s in-house creative studio, SparkLabs, where she and her team build creatives for Lion Studios, for gaming studios worldwide, and for AppLovin’s partner studios to help developers grow their businesses. I'm excited to have Alice primarily because she's seen and experienced so much from working on creatives for a wide variety of games on AppLovin’s client base as well as for Lion studios, which is something I'm very, very curious about, especially given the massive success they've had lately. Key Highlights:🎮 What player motivations are - and how they apply to creative design.💭 How to do directed brainstorming to improve creatives.🎨 What elements in a creative drive high volumes, and what drive high quality.⚖️ Why creative tests can be a powerful way to evaluate marketability before the launch of a game.🧱 Why Alice recommends using raw unpolished creatives for marketability tests.🎩 Why every designer on the SparkLabs team needs to wear the hat of a performance marketer.🤔 How Alice thinks about creatives whose performance is inexplicable - and seem to have no clear reason for doing well.💯 Why ads that seem to be unrelated to gameplay can sometimes work well.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-build-high-performance-creative-teams-with-alice-guillaumesenior-director-of-marketing-at-applovin/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

When we talk to people about advice that is unhelpful or frustrating to them, something that frequently comes up is ‘fix the product’ - or ‘build an amazing product’ or ‘have a strong product before you spend on UA’.This is all good - except - if you pardon my French, WTF does that even mean? Today, we’re going to break down what we look for when we evaluate ‘a strong product’. We’re going to share our 6 point checklist of key metrics that you can review and benchmark to assess if your product is strong enough for you to consider doing paid UA. Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/mini-episode-wtf-does-fix-the-product-mean-our-6-question-checklist-to-assess-ua-readiness/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Today we have a very topical and very insightful episode for you guys. We answer the question- What's it like to be on the inside of an app that is seeing breakout growth in the middle of the crisis that we are in right now. Bunch is an app that allows users to video chat while they play games. Over the last couple of weeks, Bunch has seen a massive increase in usage and engagement. With the DAUs growing many folds and the app breaking it to the top hundred overall on iTunes in nine countries and top 10 in four countries at the time of recording. In today's episode, I'm excited to welcome Selcuk Atli, the CEO of Bunch, and Harsh Kher, the product manager at Bunch to get to know and see what it's like to be in the midst of very heady growth right now. Key Highlights: 📈 Bunch’s growth trajectory prior to March - and what they started seeing in their metrics in mid-March.2️⃣ The two trends that Bunch sits at the confluence of that likely drove a surge in their usage.👥 How the age and gender composition of Bunch’s user base shifted literally overnight.💭 How users’ nostalgia might be a reason they’re adopting Bunch.🤝 Bunch’s onboarding and activation rates are higher than before in spite of there being no change in the product.⚙️ Keeping the servers up is the highest priority right now. 💸 Infrastructure costs start to go up with sudden growth.💡 The qualitative & quantitative factors the Bunch team sees that suggest that this growth trajectory could be sustainable long-term.👨‍💻 How Harsh’s role has evolved and changed from being a growth intern/analyst.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/inflection-breakout-growth-in-the-midst-of-the-coronavirus-crisis-with-selcuk-atliceo-and-harsh-khergrowth-analytics-at-bunch-live/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Samuel Hulick, user onboarding consultant and founder at UserOnboard. I’ve wanted to interview Samuel for a long long time. I’ve read Samuel’s work for over 7 years now. I love his onboarding teardowns of many many apps that are both incredibly instructive and very hilarious. Always incisive, always insightful - I’ve enjoyed so much of Samuel’s work. My interview with Samuel today pinpoints how crucial user onboarding is - and outlines how to improve both upstream and downstream user retention dramatically by improving your app’s user onboarding experience.Key Highlights:🤝 The ‘educational moments’ that Samuel looks for when he analyzes an app or product’s onboarding.🤔 Why Samuel recommends thinking of software as a service rather than a good for sale or an object.🧭 Why Samuel recommends letting users feel in control rather than taking them on a tour of the product’s features.👉 Why Samuel suggests thinking about boiling down your business model to supporting human motivation - or helping people do what they want to do.↘️ How Samuel recommends reducing stress in onboarding experiences that sometimes need to be long drawn - for instance, banks or fitness apps.☝️ Why it’s important to wrap every ask in the context of why a user is better off for having done it.👥 Why it’s important to build different user segments based off of the kinds of things that people are trying to do, rather than the kinds of people that they are.🔄 Why it’s important to value an existing onboarding process and get insights from it before changing it.💯 The concept of POP or ‘point of payoff’.ℹ️ How some products and apps are customizing the onboarding experience based on information they collect earlier in the process.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-win-with-user-onboarding-with-samuel-hulickfounder-at-useronboard/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Today’s episode is a mini-episode - and it punctuates our regular weekly programming of interviews, which will continue next Wednesday.These mini-episodes are short vignettes based on mobile user acquisition topics or themes that we think could be helpful or instructive for you folks.This mini-episode is a mini-case study, and describes a phenomenon we saw recently - and were able to diagnose.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/mini-episode-welp-i-dont-see-my-google-uac-installs-in-my-mmp/ **Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Michail ‘Mishka’ Katkoff, the Head of Studio at Rovio. Mishka has worked on hit games at Zynga, Supercell, Digital Chocolate and FunPlus - and is the founder of the very popular and very insightful Deconstructor of Fun blog that is very much an authority on the gaming space - I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't done so already.In today’s episode, we ask a very important question - how to build a studio that can make genre-defining hit games. Even though game mechanics are powerful forces, what can truly drive massive and sustainable growth are culture, processes and teams that drive high-performing studios - a perspective that I’m excited to dig into today. I’m truly thrilled to get Mishka’s insights distilled from hundreds of games from tens of studios in our interview today. Key Highlights:🤔 Why is it important to know and understand how to build a successful studio, versus, say how to make successful game mechanics?🎮 The seven elements that make for a great studio. ✅ Why ‘right sized’ teams are important to a great studio.👨🏻‍💻 Why Mishka values software and art over presentations.🎨 Why Mishka considers an art director a key early hire.❌ The one common characteristic of unsuccessful games.📐 How engineers, designers and business people on teams look at problems from very different perspectives.💭 Why a PM or businessperson-driven culture can find it hard to release anything genre-defining.✌️ How to change the composition and leadership of studio teams as a game matures.💯 How to think about being design driven vs. metrics driven.Check out the full transcript and show notes here: http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-build-genre-defining-gaming-studios-with-michail-mishka-katkoff-head-of-studio-at-rovio-founder-at-deconstructor-of-fun/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today on the Mobile User Acquisition Show is Andy Carvell, the co-founder and partner at the Berlin based mobile growth consultancy Phiture. Before founding Phiture, Andy led the retention team at Soundcloud, where he helped drive some massive experimentation-driven growth. He is also known for his Mobile Growth Stack, a framework that I’ve found impressive in both its comprehensiveness and simplicity. In today’s conversation we talk about in-app messages, which can sometimes be underappreciated as a retention strategy especially compared to PNs and emails. Andy outlines why they work, when they work - and talks about the tremendous impact they can have. He gives the example of a 4000%+ uplift in engagement that they helped drive even when they were untargeted. I’m very excited for an in-depth view into an underrated but very powerful strategy that this interview with Andy provides. Key Highlights:💬 What are in-app messages?⚡️  The typical use cases for in-app messages - and how they are a part of a multi-channel strategy for Phiture.💯 The 4000%+ engagement lift that Phiture saw when they tested completely untargeted in-app messages for promoted books for Blinkist.💪 Why in-app messages are powerful - and how to measure their impact - both positive and negative.😰 How over time in-app messages can get fatigued.💰How to think about users’ propensity to purchase or lapse - and to think about predictive messaging.💡 Some of the more surprising things that Andy has seen with in-app messaging.🏁 For an app that has never tested in-app messaging, where Andy recommends beginning - and what he sees as low hanging fruit. Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/4000-engagement-lift-from-early-tests-the-superpowers-of-in-app-messaging-with-andy-carvellco-founder-at-phiture/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co

Our guest today is Lomit Patel, VP of growth at IMVU. Prior to IMVU, Lomit managed growth at many early stage startups including Roku which had an IPO, TrustedID which was acquired by Equifax, Texture which was acquired by Apple & EarthLink. Lomit is a frequent speaker at different conferences and has been recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. Lomit has also authored the book Lean AI: How Innovative Startups Use Artificial Intelligence to Grow, which is a fascinating deep dive into the wild crazy world of automated marketing - the book comes out this week. We link to that in the show notes, so definitely check it out. In today's episode, we dive into how Lomit and his team run incredibly sophisticated re-engagement ads. We are going to dive into why paid re-engagement is necessary even when there are other organic options available. We talked about how to employ re-engagement across very different points of the user journey, how to measure the impact of re-engagement and we get a peek into the AI based creative testing and optimization system that Lomit & his team used to drive some incredible performance. This is a fascinating peek behind the curtain of an incredibly sophisticated marketing machine. Key Highlights:💸 Why spend money on retargeting when you’ve already spent money on acquiring users. 3️⃣ The three key segments Lomit recommends retargeting - and why. 📧 Why push notifications and emails can’t reach all the users that you might want to retarget. 👬🏼 How Lomit recommends setting target KPIs for retargeting different segments of users based on their behavioral profiles. 📈 What incrementality is - and why it matters. 🤔 Why Lomit recommend going after different sets of retargetable users on different channels. 📱 Why IMVU shifts communication from paid retargeting to emails & PNs after a user’s first 7 days post-install. 👨‍💻 The user behavior inputs that let IMVU use AI to build personalized creatives. 🚋 How deeply understanding the ideal user journey helps IMVU craft personalized ads for users at each stage of the user journey. 💯 How Lomit thinks about building vs. buying AI technology - and how maintaining an in-house system can be a challenge.Check out the full transcript and show notes here:http://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/how-to-supercharge-your-retargeting-ads-with-automated-personalization-with-lomit-patelvp-of-growth-at-imvu/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog**Check out our podcast featuring inside stories of how technology evolves and grows:http://HowThingsGrow.co