Apptivate: App Marketing Explained

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

Sylvie Vandevelde is the Head of Business Development and Marketing Communications for Belgian Mobile ID’s mobile app, itsme. Itsme is a form of official identification for all Beligums (and soon Luxembourgers), similar to a government-issued license or passport but in mobile app form. Questions Sylvie Answered in this Episode:Was it challenging for you as a marketer to educate consumers on why they should trust istme as an app for their personal identification? What’s the strategy or media mix you used to educate consumers? What are some of the lessons you learned while developing the itsme brand that you would pass on to another mobile marketer?How do you jump from branding to user acquisition? What is the “digital gap”? And how have you worked to overcome this gap?What do you see as the future for digital identification?Timestamp:5:03 Branding as a tool to educate app users and drive growth6:15 Developing itsme’s branding strategy 7:37 UA: First, be trustworthy, be easy to use9:23 Closing the “digital gap”11:08 Itsme app’s growth story14:39 The future of digital identification in EuropeQuotes:(7:51-8:13) “People, when they need to choose between something difficult and something easy, well it’s human to choose the easy way. And we were easy, secure, and respecting privacy, so it was very easy and obvious actually to use itsme. And we had the government also behind us. That mark of trust is very important. When you’re trusted in a market and they said, ‘They will do it the proper way,’ then it’s quite easy.”(10:05-10:26) “We have a lot of people who are not doing things online. They’re not used to going to the bank online, or they’re a little bit older and it’s new stuff to them. So we are also working with different associations who have an academy where they teach people how to do their banking online, how to do their taxes online, and they also explain how to install the itsme app.” Mentioned In This Episode:ItsmeBelgium Mobile ID 

Maria Fossarello, based in Paris, is head of paid channels at BlaBlaCar, a leading long-distance carpooling app with over 18 million users in 23 countries. Questions Maria Answered in this Episode:What do you attribute BlaBlaCar’s success in marketing to?What were the first things you were looking to automate?How do your core KPIs translate from one platform to another? Do you apply the same acquisition metrics to search and Facebook, or do they have different KPIs associated with each? And if so, does an automated budget allocation tool take that into account?When weighing the potential value of automation, do you consider the reduced workload and need to hire fewer people? Timestamp:9:01 Agility and innovation in marketing10:17 Innovation at BlaBlaCar12:40 Automating search engine advertising campaigns15:14 Automating budget allocation18:45 An incremental attribution approach of KPIs across channels20:45 The effect of automation on employee workloadsQuotes:(9:09-9:22) “I learn everything on the ground because the online marketing framework and practice actually evolves so quickly that there’s not even much to learn in school because everything is going to be updated and outdated in a month’s time.” (18:45-19:05) “What is really the move that we want to make, which we think is the move that will be more significant, is to actually move to an incrementality type of attribution where you’re able actually to consider what is the incremental contribution of each channel; and that way, you would be able to consider all the channels the same way.”(20:53-20:59) “Using automation allows you to unleash a huge amount of new strategic tasks.” Mentioned In This Episode:BlaBlaCar

Scott Tomkins is the sales vice president and general manager for U.S. Digital Turbine, a company that pre-installs apps on newly activated Androids. Digital Turbine claims to deliver more apps to phones in a day than any other company and that there is no other inventory in the world that is as fraud-free.Questions Scott Answered in this Episode:Do you deliver more apps to phones than Google or Facebook?Is it challenging to determine the KPIs for the advertisers that work with you?Are performance marketers too numbers-driven?Do you think performance marketers will shift toward brand advertising in 2020?Timestamp:7:50 What stands Digital Turbine apart from any company11:34 An argument for a more holistic view of user acquisition 16:11 Branding 101 and multi-touch attribution18:00 The change Scott sees in performance marketing24:43 Why we need a brand approach to app marketingQuotes:(12:23-12:26) “I think all ad units can be effective and ultimately perform differently.”(14:43-15:00) “Would you rather for a small fee get your app on that device so you’re there in front of their eyes when they want to book a trip? Or would you rather take the risk of them going to the Play Store where there are 20 of your competitors who all do the same thing and be lucky that you’re the one of 20 that they pick?” (24:45-24:52) “I think you’re going to see the bigger brands come in and open the eyes of performance marketers that there is a ‘k factor’ that needs to be looked into.”Mentioned In This Episode:Digital Turbine

Krishnan Menon is the vice president of growth marketing at Fetch Rewards, Inc., a grocery rewards app that prides itself on being the easiest way to save on groceries. Questions Krishnan Answered in this Episode:How much of your growth do you attribute to paid marketing?Over time, does it become harder to diversify channels? Or does the need to diversify grow more?Are you willing to be more lenient and take fewer efficiencies with new vendors in order to diversify?What do you look for in a sales pitch from a new vendor?Have you had success with the vendors you’ve found in Appsflyer and Singular reports?Timestamp:6:40 Fetch Rewards’s growth trajectory and inflection point9:04 Paid marketing aside, a product still needs to be quality12:15 Thinking about how you will spend the next million 15:24 Testing the waters with a new channel and the goals that matter21:57 What I look for in a sales pitch24:50 Sourcing new vendors from key articles 31:11 The challenge Krishnan gives himself to be successfulQuotes:“For me, at the end of the day, it’s about how many of these users are going to be active 30 days from now? I keep track of the quality of the user that is brought in.”“It’s a case of what else can we do outside of the comfort zone of digital?”“This is a tough industry. You have to be on it and really continue to be hungry in order for successes to be ongoing.”Mentioned In This Episode:Fetch Rewards, Inc.AppsflyerSingular

Meet Nadav Shalit, retargeting department lead, and Dani Magid, retargeting manager, at Playtika. Playtika has a portfolio of 15 large-scale gales that are run from more than 16 global sites by over 3,000 employees. Previous to Playtika, both Nadav and Shalit worked in marketing for agencies. Questions Farhan Answered in this Episode:What is your strategy for launching retargeting campaigns? How do you source data for segmenting users? How closely do you have to work with other departments to run retargeting initiatives/treatments? What else do you focus on when launching retargeting efforts?Was there a shift that motivated Playtika to start retargeting? Timestamp:6:27 Launching retargeting efforts begins with the user experience7:36 Segmenting users with an internal BI system12:10 The internal process of offering segments treatments (or incentives)15:17 Measuring for retargeting 18:04 Playtika’s catalyst to beginning retargetingQuotes:“We are literally learning every day. And I think that’s part of the magic in retargeting.”“The very first thing we look at when we set up a retargeting activity is the user experience. I think that’s the main purpose and that’s the main goal. And that is what the connection between you and the user is all about.”“For certain activities, we might even show an ad even the say after the install saying, “Hey, did you check out this feature? Did you get a chance to look at this?” So it kind of builds up the connection from day one, literally.Mentioned In This Episode:Playtika