Mobile Marketing

You’ve strategized, developed, designed, iterated, tested and now it’s finally time to launch your shiny new app. But, as anyone who’s ever promoted an app can attest, it can be incredibly exciting, and also incredibly scary. After all your hard work, the last thing you want to do is blow your big launch.A successful app launch is one that translates buzz into real results, like installs and increased store ranking. However, failing to achieve critical mass quickly during a launch can be extremely detrimental to a new venture expecting returns on their investments.Luckily, app publishers have launched millions of apps and we can learn from their mistakes so you don’t have to repeat them! Make sure your app launch doesn’t fail by avoiding these 10 most common mistakes made by new app publishers:

Picking a title is a substantial part of your app’s marketing success, as it weighs greatly on search results. There are two main strategies to app naming. The first one is to use a simple title that does not have any extra keywords. The second is to use extra keywords in addition to the title. Each strategy has its pros and cons. This article, based on practice and real cases, provides tips on how to decide on your app naming strategy.

I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about push notifications: that they’re spammy, un-engaging, and a nuisance to app users.

The rumors are true – that is, if you’re bombarding your users with irrelevant, constant and broadcast-to-all messages.

But like all good marketing, push notifications only work when they’re valuable to the end user. When a user has opted-in to receive push messages from your app, it means they are saying “yes” to receiving real-time alerts on offers, content and information relevant to their interests and needs.

We’ve found that 52% of people enable push on their smartphones, and that push has the ability to drive 88% more app launches and 3x higher retention. But broadcast push messages only have a 15% conversion rate, whereas segmented messages have a whopping 54% conversion rate.

The key to providing value through push is to create and run targeted campaigns based on user behavior, attributes and preferences.

In this post, we walk you through the five steps you can take to delight your users with personalized and powerful push messages.

What is your first day retention rate? I’m continually surprised by how few people I speak to know this number for their own apps.

Last year, Tapstream dug into a large set of its data (ignoring apps above one million daily active users) and looked at app retention rates for a sample month in 2013 then again the same month in 2014. Average first day retention in 2013 was 25% then it fell to only 15% in May 2014. Not only is it difficult to acquire users, but it’s also becoming much more difficult to keep them.

On the web, it’s routine to send ad clicks to custom landing pages with content geared towards the referring advertisement; in fact, it’s the defacto standard. We know it increases conversions and has a higher degree of success than sending clicks to our homepage. If this is the optimal strategy on the web, why aren’t we doing the same thing with our CPI campaigns on mobile?

Learn more about why you should be incorporating this unique mobile advertising optimization technique.

Mobile gaming TV ads were all the rage at this year’s SuperBowl, with Supercell spending a few million dollars on no less than Liam Neeson for their Super Bowl prime time TV ad. On top of casting and production costs, the Finnish game studio also paid out a whopping $9 million for the 60 second media spot. Close contender, Machine Zone used the services of Kate Upton and “only” spent $4,500,000 on one 30-second TV advertising spot.Beyond these high-profile examples, more and more mobile app and game publishers are testing TV as a medium to market their apps; This includes the likes of King, War Gaming, InnoGames, Big Fish, Good Game Studios as well as a few other well regarded studios.Why are mobile app developers suddenly advertising on a medium we ‘digital’ people thought was going towards extinction? How does a mobile app developer track the success of their TV campaign? What is the “entry” ticket to TV, and why should a mobile developer work with an expert to run TV? These are the questions we’ve sought to answer over the last year.

What is the right price for a performance mobile user acquisition campaign?

Although fundamental for mobile advertisers, this simple question has no straightforward answer. There are indeed a lot of factors likely to influence or even determine the success of a mobile user acquisition campaign, especially if it’s run on a performance basis.

Strong of our experience of running performance campaigns for over 500 mobile advertisers, here is what actually matters when it comes to getting the right price…and the price right.

The number of games in the app stores is staggering. There are over 1.2M apps in Apple’s App Store, almost 1.5M in Google’s Play Store and 293K in Amazon’s app store. More apps are created every day. Although the Big Three tech giants like to boast about those numbers, for app developers they mean extreme competition and only a tiny chance to make a profit from their games. According to Developereconomics.com, 62% of developers earn less than $500 a month on their apps. The extreme competition in the mobile gaming market jeopardizes developers’ ability to make a living through game development.

Last week AppLift attended and exhibited at PG Connects London, the third instalment of the event organised by Steel Media. As usual it was an opportunity to give out our beloved swag and do proper networking, but also catch up on the latest trend in mobile and mobile games marketing.

To catch up or get a refresh of the conference, here’s our non-exhaustive digest of the main insights for mobile marketers.