Apptivate: App Marketing Explained

Questions Itay Answered in this Episode:Do you think the industry is doing a good job as far as partnerships or is there something we could be doing better?Do prevailing trends in the industry tend to influence the partnerships you focus on?How do you or AppsFlyer approach fraud?Does the index influence your perspective on partnerships?What response do you get from vendors when the index releases?Looking into the future, what kind of role with partnerships play in the mobile marketing ecosystem?Timestamp:5:00 The size and value of AppsFlyer8:13 Mobile industry partnerships11:58 Changes in industry trends14:00 The performance index: holy grail for partners17:20 AppsFlyer Partner Academy21:26 Influencing factors on the index for vendors25:48 The growing importance of partnershipsQuotes:(8:25-9:14) “Something that’s missing in our space specifically, maybe in the SaaS environment more specifically, to be honest, is collaboration between sales teams. I think when you look internally at a company, sales teams could connect to a partnership team or a product team or the CS team, whatever it is, but if you combine two sales teams from different partners or different ecosystems even, they rarely know how to talk to each other. They know how to maybe assist each other with different accounts, but actually co-pitching together or selling products together--that’s a big pain. That’s what I’ve seen personally as a big pain point. So I think we should probably do a better job of educating teams on how products can talk, products align, and how we can co-pitch together. That’s the ideal story from my perspective at least.”(27:06-27:18) “I think clients these days need, more than ever, really good, valuable advocates and strong partnerships that actually meet the shared customer needs during this time.”Mentioned in this Episode:Itay Vilenchuk - LinkedIn AppsFlyerAppsFlyer performance index

Meet David Llewellyn, the marketing director of EMEA at AppsFlyer. AppsFlyer is a leader in mobile advertising attribution and marketing analytics offering people-based attribution solutions. Questions David Answered in this Episode:What is AppsFlyer doing in regards to cross-screen attribution and why is it important to marketers? Is the comprehensive user journey one of the principal challenges with cross-device attribution? What can advertisers do to get closer to people-based attribution? Where do you suggest people go to learn more about people-based attribution?Timestamp:10:05 Today’s people-based attribution landscape12:25 The user journey perspective on cross-device16:54 Lose the retargeting spam19:00 Avoiding brand fatigue20:00 Paying attention to assist channels21:40 Cross-device: the new “teenage sex” 27:28 Tip: Get the user to log-inQuotes:(13:47-14:05) “I think everyone is kind of waking up, and hopefully is waking up to the fact that users want to interact however they want to interact with it. They probably want to get all the different services you’ve got on all the different devices, which isn’t always possible, technically, and that’s a challenge. But ultimately, they don’t really care about your conversion rates and stuff like that. They want to be able to use it just however they use it.”(22:27-22:40) “Pick one or two things that are genuine pain points for you and for your customers and see how the technologies consult those. And then build your confidence from there. Don’t try and build utopia straightaway, particularly not with technology that is evolving and iterating all the time.”Mentioned in this Episode:David Llewellyn - LinkedInAppsFlyer

Shay Yosifon is the vice president of marketing at Beach Bum Games, which focuses on bringing evergreen card and board games to mobile.Questions Shay Answered in this Episode:How does working with games people are already familiar with affect your need for interactive game-play creative?How do you measure performance? Is D7 your “true north”?When you’re doing your retroactive analysis, do vendors that weren’t hitting your D7 goals actually become really valuable for you?What are some other benchmarks that you’ve found valuable?How are you adapting your performance marketing strategy on platforms, like Google and Facebook, that are integrating more automation?What is your iterative process for developing creative?Timestamp:4:04 Creative strategy for nostalgic games6:45 ROAS curves for different channels11:57 Determining ROAS with a retroactive perspective15:23 Benchmarks outside D7 that matter20:17 How automation opens doors for the creative marketer22:51 Investing in the creative processQuotes:(7:59-8:34) “Not all channels are created equally. And we do see, especially today, that we’ve seen on one hand a lot of consolidation of traffic sources, but on the other hand, you can’t say that your audio campaign should be measured the same way as your influencer campaign, the same way as your rewarded video campaign, the same way as your facebook campaign.”(28:45-29:00) “Even within creative, it’s always making sure you’re taking a long view approach on things, but also to make sure that you’re not only looking at your early set KPIs but think about other KPIs that might have an effect on it.”Mentioned in this Episode:Shay Yosifon LinkedInBeach Bum Games

Tommaso Scazzocchio is a team leader for user acquisition at Freeletics. Freeltics is a subscription training app that creates custom workout plans based on user feedback on the exercises.  Questions Tommaso Answered in this Episode:Do you find it challenging to market a fitness product in such a highly competitive space? How do you break through that noise and make Freeletics stand out?What is the importance of working with your product team? And how do you go about working together?How have you improved collaboration between your performance marketing and product teams? How do you better understand your product team and why they make the decisions they do? How do you foster trust between teams?How does customer feedback inform marketing and product teams? What’s happening this year at Freeletics that you’re excited about?Timestamp:8:25 Finding the sweet spot in your competitive market to stand out 11:16 When performance marketing and product team goals are not aligned16:28 4 tips on building a multi-department taskforce 19:58 Educating each other during taskforce meetings23:42 Peer research, survey, data, and working out together26:45 What’s launching this year at FreeleticsQuotes:(18:32-19:01) “You want to challenge the status quo, right? And it’s really important that you want to change and improve the experience, but it’s also very important that you trust the other teams. So if they say something, I don’t know, if they say that they need to do a full sprint to release a new change, then you need to trust their work; and they should trust your work when you set up the campaign. So, everybody should be trusted in their own specialization, I would say.” (24:23-24:32) “Sometimes we do the training all together just following the app, so it’s really a good way for us to learn about the usage of the app.”Mentioned in this Episode:Tommaso Scazzocchio’s LinkedInFreeletics

Warren Woodward is the co-founder and chief growth officer at Upptic, a platform for automated app store optimization. Upptic also provides full stack growth services. Warren is a musician, an indie filmmaker, a self-taught mobile marketer, and an ASO expert.Questions Warren Answered in this Episode:What makes an app a good one for you to partner with?What made you want to build an automated ASO platform as one of your core pieces of technology?How do you measure your results?If you could automate something tomorrow, what would it be?Why did you decide to make the leap of starting your own company rather than moving up in the corporate world?Timestamp:8:30 What Upptic does13:04 Selecting app partners that have growth potential16:08 Evolution of the industry’s first automated ASO platform19:41 The value to be gained from optimizing your store page20:50 Measuring conversions from ASO23:23 Upptic’s philosophy that informs what to build next25:54 Facing the fear of starting a startupQuotes:(6:27-6:49) “A lot of what I’ve learned about building teams and matching personalities and getting the right group in complement of people with skill sets together, all lot of that I learned from the world of bands and being stuck together in a van. Getting people that have something different to bring to the table that add up to a sum greater than the parts. It’s weird the lessons you can learn just from grinding it out on the road doing the music thing.”(19:43-20:11) “If you’re a developer, you know how hard it is to juice an extra 10% of revenue by changing the economy of your app or something. It can be a lot of work, but, it’s so much easier to just make an ad that converts 10% easier or make your store page convert 10% better. That can be done with a few hours of creative development time and minutes of setting up a test. You run that test, you’ve got that win. Congratulations, you’re now getting 10% more users every time someone comes to the page, making 10% more revenue.”Mentioned in this Episode:Warren Woodward - LinkedInUppticLow Praise

Ne Djuric is the digital alchemist for Coca-Cola in Central and Eastern Europe, a corporate team focused on transformation. Previously, he was working as Coke’s senior mobile product manager. Questions Ne Answered in this Episode:Did you find that ratings had an impact on the organic growth you could drive in the app store?What was the article about that spiked your organic growth? And why do you think it was successful?Is it fair to say that because the growth was mostly organic, fraud wasn’t necessarily an issue?Do your strategies need to change drastically from country to country within a region?How do you go about choosing influencers to represent your brand?Timestamp:4:26 Huge performance spike from an ad article7:28 Why you should start push marketing in smaller countries9:11 How to boost your ratings to boost organic growth12:47 The shelf life of a successful ad article15:59 Spotting fraud17:59 Keeping strategies, changing tactics across markets20:04 Working with influencersQuotes:(10:31-10:48) “Whenever you give something to someone, they’re actually feeling psychologically obliged to give something back. And of course, it doesn’t work on 100% of the population, but it does work on 10%, right? So if you, for example, start following people on Instagram, 10% of people will follow you back.”(15:45-15:52) “If you’re doing mobile app advertising, you’re either being a victim of fraud or you’re being a victim of fraud and you don’t know it.”Mentioned in this Episode:Ne Djuric - LinkedIn

Meet Haseeb Tariq, founder of Retention App, a marketing company specializing in converting and retaining app users into subscribers. Haseeb has worked in marketing automation with companies such as Disney, Fox, and Guess and is a regular contributor to Forbes.Questions Haseeb Answered in this Episode:How do you convince people to stay and stick with you for the long run during a subscription trial?When you ask users questions, do you then have different automated marketing messages for every answer? Is the retargeting goal to get as close to a one-on-one conversation as possible?Why did you start Retention App?Timestamp:7:00 The Guess campaign that took 30 mins to create and generated $1.8M 11:23 How Fox Nation hit an 85% trial-to-subscription conversion rate12:53 Retention: Top 3 things to pay attention to17:21 Humanistic automation20:05 Retention goes hand-in-hand with growthQuotes:(17:33-17:56) “The idea behind human automation is just a process that establishes a human touch by the means of automated personalized tools focused on building trust and providing value. And that means that you don’t just need to automate tools and resources but at the same time you personalize the message to a specific audience persona; and, they get excited whenever they hear from you because it’s completely optimized and focused on them only.”(20:05-20:26) “So I’m putting it out there so that all the listeners out there if they’re planning to launch a subscription product out there, I think they should be focused on understanding their customers and focused on retention before they’re focused on growth because when they start thinking about retention it’s too late. Growth and retention should go hand-in-hand together when they’re launching their product, and if they already have a product they should start thinking about retention more.”Mentioned in this Episode:Haseeb Tariq - LinkedIn@haseebspeaks - Twitter & Instagram“Why Marketers Make Good Customer Success Managers” (Forbes)“Why ‘Humanistic Automation’ Is the Future of Marketing” (Forbes)Retention App

Gessica Bicego is the director of performance marketing at Blinkist. Blinkist is a mobile app that provides 15-minute summaries of bestselling nonfiction books so that people can discover the books they want to read next and fit more reading into their lives. Questions Gessica Answered in this Episode:How has your computer science background been beneficial to your career?Can you tell us how your team is structured and what you focus on in your role?What is the payoff with native advertising on platforms like Outbrain and Taboola? How do you justify spending on tv advertising if it’s so difficult to track?How do your brand and performance marketing teams work together?Do your creatives change with the seasons? Timestamp:9:25 Marketing team structure at Blinkist 10:30 The perks of paid content14:55 TV advertising for mobile apps18:52 “Brandformance,” the union of branding and performance marketing26:02 Going deep with evergreen content iterationsQuotes:(10:32-10:53) “In general the people that we acquire through big content, they have a higher LTV so they stay with us for a longer time. In general, they have a better understanding of the product, because of course, they read an entire article about -- I mean the article isn’t just about us, it’s an interesting piece of content; it’s also an explanation about Blinkist and how it works. So, it’s really, really good to pre-qualify your audience, as you say.” (21:55-22:04 ) “If you have a brand and a performance team, put them together in the same room. Make sure that they talk the same language. Make sure that they work on the projects together.”Mentioned in this Episode:BlinkistOutbrain-TaboolaTVSquarredMobile Growth Nightmares Podcast

André Kempe is the founder of Admiral Media, a performance app marketing agency based outside of Barcelona. Andre also puts on GrowBoat, an exclusive sailing event with decision-makers in the app industry.Questions André Answered in this Episode:How do you mitigate the risks of scaling a major campaign with a small team?What is the tilting point for needing more employees to handle a facebook budget?Do you prefer more or less control with ad platforms?What emerging channels outside of TikTok should people be paying attention to?Timestamp:9:49 When ad spending explodes, your team doesn’t necessarily have to12:42 The more channels and iterations of creative, the bigger a team needed15:57 The black-box of Google and others19:00 Emerging channels: TikTok & PinterestQuotes:(9:49-10:10) “I think the first mistake many companies are doing is having in their mind very often and then just execute on that is that as soon as they discover, ‘hey, there’s a new channel and we put $20,000 in there we need another pair of hands doing that. And then, if we double that budget because it works, we need another pair of hands because it’s three more countries or something like that.’ But that’s simply not true.”(19:15-19:40) “Right now, I think TikTok is a very clear leader. And I see myself, I mean I’m almost 40, but I see myself strolling through TikTok more often than through Reddit nowadays. I don’t use Instagram at all, for example, because it’s just not funny; it’s not entertaining for me. I really don’t like it. And TikTok is like a comedy show, and I really like the bite-sized snacks of content that I get there.” Mentioned in this Episode:André Kempe - LinkedInGrowBoatAdmiral MediaApptivate Ep#26 with Lorenzo Rossi

Meet Josh Gosliner, senior director of product marketing at Juvo. Currently serving 26 counties (and counting), Juvo enables people who are underbanked to start building a credit history by lending instant loans for phone credit in developing markets via their mobile app.Questions Josh Answered in this Episode:Is it challenging to get your product adopted? How to do you manage the negative connotation of taking a loan in your marketing strategy?What is the role that mobile plays in these emerging markets? And how might that be different from what we see here in the U.S. or in Europe?How do you make consumers aware of your financial credit building services?What is the future for Juvo in 2020 and how will you get there?Timestamp:8:58 What is Juvo?12:02 Leveraging phone carrier data to inform marketing messages 13:32 How to manage consumers’ preconceptions about a product15:22 The massive role of mobile in emerging markets16:00 Challenges of mobile app marketing for Juvo20:54 Give people what they need when they need it, progressively24:06 Juvo’s goals looking forwardQuotes:(12:31-13:04) “One of the things we’re really working on optimizing right now is what is the flow or the journey that somebody goes on from once they get that message? Is it a message that then takes them to the app store to download an app to sign up to then take the loan? Or is it something where we can make it as simple as responding to that text message? There’s a number of ways in which people prefer to interact with their mobile operator or services in general. And optimizing that is a really big part of our go-to-market and our growth strategy.”(15:23-15:48) “I think emerging markets, in general, are mobile-first. There’s a small slice of the population that has access to computers and has had that for some time. But for the vast majority of people, a mobile device is in many instances the first time that people are getting access to the internet. And so, it really is a much more transformative piece of technology.”(17:38-17:48) “We are constantly doing funnel analysis. And every point of the journey in which we can reduce friction, that’s our number one priority.Mentioned in this Episode:Josh Gosliner - LinkedInJuvo