In today’s crowded, AI-fueled landscape, it’s not enough to just have messaging — it has to stand out. In this episode, I’m joined by Jason from Customer.io to unpack what makes great mobile messaging work: from building frameworks rooted in value and differentiation, to using first-party data to deliver the right message at the right moment.

We’ll talk strategy, execution, and the tools that help brands stay personal, timely, and unmistakably themselves — even at scale.

"Yeah, this is an interesting paradox that we've kind of created for ourselves. We have all these incredible tools like AI recommendations, powerful automation, sophisticated targeting, but everybody's using that playbook. And I think the result is customers are getting bombarded with messages that sounds very, very similar. so standing out needs to be less about being louder or frequent, and it needs to be focused around being more authentic."

"So,  first party data is absolutely the future, especially with privacy regulations that are tidying up across the globe. So here's what I see happening. think gold marketers are sitting on these gold mines of customer data, but they're not using it effectively. know, a lot of people are, are thinking about segmentation in a very traditional way."

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

All right, I think all of you would agree—regardless of your role or area of expertise in this industry—that learning from the mistakes of others saves you time, money, and, most importantly, nerve cells. Because let’s be honest, trial and error is great… until it’s your budget on the line.

So, today we have Reed on the show to help us skip some of those growing pains. He’s here to share what’s working, what’s not, and some fresh, thought-provoking approaches to both app marketing and development. Whether you’re scaling a product or just getting started, I think you’ll walk away with a few insights worth stealing—or at least borrowing.

After founding the Business Strategy team at Branch six years ago, former strategy consultant Reed Kuhn has worked closely with hundreds of customers across verticals. Along the way, he’s picked up some sharp lessons—not just about best practices, but more importantly, about what not to do. In this episode, we’ll explore guiding objectives for app product owners and marketers, the greatest hits of killer use cases, mobile growth fails, and some simple ideas to make more from what you already have. Plus, we’ll look ahead with some bold predictions about how all of us will interact with apps in the AI-powered future.

"Over the years, so many of our customers fall into two big buckets. And this is, I think, the simplest framework that I have for differentiating between apps and what they're trying to achieve in terms of value. And that is you have commerce apps, which are the most obvious ones. This is your retailers, fashion, even quick serve restaurants, fast food chains, Starbucks, and also the big box retailers, the best buys of the world, even department stores like Nordstrom.

Those are commerce apps. Users primarily are going in there to shop. And hopefully, they actually buy something. And we do know that conversion rates are much higher in apps than on mobile web or even desktop. So those are easy to wrap your head around. The app exists to make it much easier for the user to shop and, in some cases, actually get support. If you want to manage a delivery or send something back, you can do that in the app rather than having to call someone up.

On the flip side, you have apps that don't really sell you anything, but they still serve a very important purpose to the user. So I call those companion apps and they're more diverse than commerce apps. So whereas commerce apps are very conversion focused, companion apps are much more feature focused. It's, I able to access information? So almost everybody is going to have their credit card or bank app on their phone, or at least they should be at this point. If they don't want to go there in person."

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

If there is one feature that helps app marketers to persevere through so much of a market change, it is adaptability. As app user acquisition costs were rising and privacy constraints in mobile emerged, marketers came up with the solution - web to app user acquisition channel.

Rather than sending users directly to an app store, marketers now route users to a mobile web page first—typically one optimized for onboarding, education, or even a light product experience. This allows for better control over messaging, tracking, and personalization before nudging users to install the app.

In this episode, we’ll delve into the concept of web-first growth with Gessica, exploring the new playbook for acquiring app users.

"I would say there are two approaches. Like either you send them to a landing page, but ultimately they convert on an app store - so all the call-to-action will lead to the App Store, or Google Play store. Or you guide them through a web funnel, where you have like lots of questions and you end up purchasing on the web."

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

What makes a mobile ad stick — and what makes it flop?

In this special episode, we feature a panel discussion from App Promotion Summit London 2025, we hosted in April.

Creative leaders explore next gen ad creative — the bold experiments, the unexpected successes, and the flops we can all learn from. From storytelling trends to performance-driven design, discover what’s working, what’s not, and where mobile advertising is heading next.

🎧 Tune in for fresh insights, practical takeaways, and real-world lessons from the frontlines of creative innovation.

The panel of experts included:

It’s been a couple of weeks since we wrapped up our App Promotion Summit London 2025. We were really happy to have so many bright, smart people under the same roof to share their knowledge and experience in app growth, app product development, ASO and so much more.

We had several hundred folks from all corners of the world listening and learning from presentations and workshops, connecting with each other and do business.

One of the highlights of the event was the “Beyond Installs: the future of app growth 2025” panel and in this episode we want to share it with you.

The panel brought together people from four verticals - navigation, financials, e-Learning and gaming.

This panel of experts included:

The level of adoption of ChatGPT, the revolutionary LLM-based AI chatbot, is staggering. I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that by now ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots are everywhere; people use them for work and leisure all the time.

Sometimes, it feels like at some point generative AI chatbots will be joining team meetings not to take notes and summarize what was said but to report on what they did last week.

OK, jokes aside - today we want to talk about the role of Generative AI in mobile ad creatives optimization.

"It changes everything from start to finish, or it could potentially change everything. It depends on the adoption. And I'll explain. I think that what happened in the past five to six years is a complete, complete change in the industry. However, if you look closely, you'll see that not all companies have changed. Not all companies have changed their operations or processes. 

The ones that adopted AI early on and those that adopted AI fully are a lot more advanced now. They're faster, they're quicker. They are spot on when it comes to strategy. And also the entire operation became a lot less heavy, heavy with costs, heavy with headcount, and heavy with processes and operations."

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

One of the most important metrics for a mobile app is its conversion rate. It tells you how many people that use the app for free become your paying customers. It’s about how profitable and sustainable your app is.

Now, if you are one of the die-hard Pink Floyd fans, you gotta love their song The Wall. If you are an app marketer, your wall is the paywall :-) Among many tools that you may use to increase the number of people who become your paying customers, once they hit the paywall, are cognitive biases.

You may heard of them if you have a peripheral interest in psychology.

Today, Max will tell you about using cognitive biases to significantly increase your app’s conversion rate.

"Yeah, it's absolutely a valid question because especially in the beginning, it's extremely tempting to see all of these tools you can use to somehow increase this conversion rate by margin or by another percent and so on. But then I also quickly realized not only as a product manager, but also as a user, how would I feel if I stumble across this? "

"Obviously I know the tricks, so maybe I need to be a bit harder in order to define if something is good or not so good anymore. And I then came up with like, how would my parents behave on this paywall? Because parents just as a symbol for an older generation that are not as native with mobile apps.

And I always am fascinated when I see how my dad navigates his app and when I realize, why did he just click on this button because it's blinking quicker? And I realized, okay, this is how easily he's influenced. So as a very soft first test, I'm thinking about, okay, how would my dad would behave on this paywall? Would he buy just because of the cognitive biases or would he still be able to make his own decision?"

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

Ok, here is the thing.

Most apps are still built on rigid, one-size-fits-all user flows. They rely heavily on historic behavior - what a user clicked on last week or which segment they’re in. But user needs change moment to moment. And when apps fail to adapt, users just leave.

The next evolution isn’t about personalizing based on identity - it’s about adapting based on intent. And that intent can only be accurately understood in context.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about the Context Platform by ContextSDK that enables apps to detect real-world context in real time - whether a user is walking, relaxing, commuting, charging their phone, or simply on the move - and then infer their intent. Using a combination of on-device machine learning and server-side intelligence, the platform helps apps deliver the right experience or message at the right moment.

This isn’t just a UX upgrade - it is a fundamentally better way to retain users and drive revenue, while respecting privacy and improving performance.

"It’s great to know a lot about past behavior, but past behavior is looking into the past. Intent is happening in the moment and is looking forward"

"We collect enough data points on patterns of movement and behavior and analyze them with the smartest machine learning models out there. That allows us to infer intent—and that’s something extremely powerful when shaping app experiences,"

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

I think by now you’ve noticed that the last few episodes weren’t regular ones, on those we featured our discussion panels from App Promotion Summit Berlin 2024.

Why? Well, the physical space in the venue in Berlin was obviously limited and it’s not like you can fly to Berlin to visit the summit on a whim - time and money aren’t always there when you need them, right? But we don’t want you to miss an opportunity to listen to these discussions and learn from it.

So here comes the next panel - “Beyond downloads: app engagement strategies"

It was hosted by Keziah Husselbee, Product Marketing Specialist at Adobe.

It was a pleasure to have on the panel people from:

Good news - the winter is finally over, and I’m sure you’ve missed the warmth just as much as I have.

Today, I’m thrilled to share with you another special episode featuring one of the discussion panels we hosted last December during the App Promotion Summit Berlin.

This panel covers a wide range of topics, including user acquisition strategies, incrementality and ROI measurement, retargeting and re-engagement strategies, and more.

The panel was hosted by Bob Hollanders, Head of Sales & Account Management, EMEA & US at Appier.

We were fortunate to have on the panel: