As so many app developers and publishers would agree, growing an audience for an app is a challenge. Nothing is static - you find a new marketing channel that works and for a while and you feel like you can finally breath again freely but then it becomes crowded with your competitors or the app industry wide change happens like Apple’s introduction of ATT framework and… - back to the drawing board.

But today Luisa will tell you a story of what it takes to scale a subscription app for kids and if you feel like it should be even more challenging, you are right - it is.

Today’s Topics Include:

• Luisa Zuleta's background

"So when you're advertising and producing kids apps, you are you have to face two sets of regulations COPA for the US and GDPR for Europe. Those regulations affect not only marketing, but also the app development, publishing, what kind of data you can collect inside the apps, and also monetization strategies. "

"So it's not like any traditional gaming app where you look at your user base and you know that the user that's most engaged is the one who did level one to three in the first 20 minutes, or bought this pack or that. It's not applicable. Sometimes you could have a parent of a four year old having a strict screen time of two times a week."

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

There is this joke in Silicon Valley “US tech companies are great in software, Chinese ones are cool in hardware and EU make laws and regulations” Of course, there is always a kernel of truth in every joke and I would say that this one has a pretty big one.

Big Tech has been in a free fly mode since the inception of Google. There have been very few regulations for which you don’t event need fingers on your both hands to count. But things change and right now regulations are coming.

Today Michael will tell us about the EU’s Digital Markets Act - what it is and what are its implications for app developers and publishers.

• Michael Bilotta's background

"So the Digital Markets Act is multifaceted, and essentially what it's looking to do is regulate the way that big tech can operate in the EU really from the perspective of ensuring that there are not these monopolies that are created because of the fact that these big tech companies are so expensive. "

"So when a payment goes through the traditional app store, it goes into kind of a black box that nobody is super familiar with, nor do we really understand exactly how that payment is being processed. But through a third party payment provider, we can do things like smart routing, where if a transaction fails initially, we can try and route it to another financial institution and see if we can get an acceptance. "

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

Another week another bonus episode for you, this time it is the Boosting User Engagement and App Retention panel discussion from our App Promotion Summit Berlin that we hosted back on November 30 last year.

Every app marketer would agree that App Retention is absolutely crucial for a mobile app project to become sustainable.

To address a number of questions about app user engagement and retention we had:

• Ioana Iordache, Head of Retention at Blacklane

✅ real life case studies for retaining app users

✅ measuring app user retention

✅ how of app users habits fit in their usage of apps regularly

Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry since 2012

What are you watching these days? The Morning Show or Foundation on Apple TV+? Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime? Are you listening music on Apple Music or Spotify? In other words - we live in a streaming world.

Initially it was cool to have Netflix for all your online movie watching time and now there are Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount Plus, Max (which you may still call HBO Max), Disney +. All these platforms charge you around $10 a month, but when you decide to go with a few of them at the same time, it adds up pretty quickly.

People clearly need to decide what platforms to choose because they both don’t have enough money and don’t have time to watch all of it and so they have to choose.  And this is just movies, there are streaming apps for gaming, fitness, podcasts, and more.

In this episode we have Chris to help us out with your app growth strategy to survive these streaming wars.

• Chris Puga's background

"From the brand's perspective, it's simple, like content creation is important because a seamless user experience is no longer a luxury or a nice to have, it's a necessity."

"I think deep linking  is a great way to make a good first impression. I think not inundating new users with a lengthy user flow. I think that's huge. That is an amazing way to make a good first impression."

• App industry marketplace

This week we have another bonus episode for you, this time it’s the App Growth Strategies for 2024 panel discussion from our App Promotion Summit Berlin that we hosted back on November 30, 2023. 

• Wendy Tai, Head of Performance Marketing at Wolt

App Growth is one of evergreen themes in app marketing, it was relevant and important five years ago, it was crucial last year and it continues to be on minds of app marketers this year.

✅ effective team management.

✅ what trends can be seen in the market

✅ suggestions for app growth 💯

Ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado - the App Growth Strategies for 2024 panel.

• App industry marketplace

Happy 2024 everybody! It’s time of the year when we think about resolutions like keeping yourself fit and so fitness can be one of the things on your mind right now. How about keeping your fitness app fit? I bet just like with keeping yourself in shape you wouldn’t mind to learn from other folks’ experience, wouldn’t you?

In this episode, I have Mansi to tell you about the lessons she’s learned growing and keeping the MyFitnessPal app in shape.

• Mansi Sharma's background

" So, for example, if the category is not big enough, we need to come up with category expansion campaigns, which would be much more broad reaching and sort of educational in nature. However, if the category is okay and our budgets are still small and we need results in the short term, I'd focus on growing my market share by reaching out to people who are already in the category right and win them over to my side. "

"So creative wins over targeting because what I found is that a good creative can break the targeting barriers. So for example, if you have designed a creative for a 25 year old male, if it is designed well, it can also work for a 45 year old male."

• App industry marketplace

Like with many things in business, when it comes to app marketing people either rely on data to make decisions or listen to their gut feeling. We are strongly suggesting to do the former, we encourage you to do your best to keep it rational and follow the data, be a scientist in your field.

In this episode, Steve will make the case for you showing what A/B testing reveals about app engagement, paywalls, and more. This episode is special to celebrate the beginning of 2024 - you can either listen it here or actually watch it on our YouTube channel.

• Steve P. Young background

"Now I had Yeva from Headway, the product manager. And she said when you have a longer onboarding, we've actually seen our clients from their data that longer onboardings actually lead to higher conversions. Yes, there will be more drop offs, but the people actually make it all the way through will actually subscribe. And the people who drop out, they were never probably going to subscribe it anyways. "

"I mean, frankly, in life, just think like a scientist, like everything is an experiment. We have a hypothesis, which may come from our gut, but we're going to test it out, and then we're going to let data decide."

• App industry marketplace

Generative Pre-trained Transformer or better known to you as ChatGPT. This Generative AI, based on a large language model, was launched by OpenAI on November 30th last year.

You might have heard about OpenAI’s very recent turmoil with its CEO, Sam Altman’s firing and re-hiring 5 days later. Of course such a twist with a company worth 80$ billion grabbed your attention.

Speaking of money - how Generative AI can help you to boost your app’s monetization strategy?

It’s a good question and we have Jenny to help us to figure it out.

• Jenny Kay Pollock background

"AI’s power to drive business growth is exciting! Organizations and individuals can partner with generative AI to create something better or faster!"

"AI is not going to take your job. You’re just going to have to partner with it. Collaborate with the AI to supercharge your efforts."

"The [AI] technology is moving fast and things like corporate governance and legislation can be slow to catch up. Your board should be talking about AI strategy and AI policies."  

"AI is a new frontier and with that comes a new opportunity for more diversity."

• App industry marketplace

App user acquisition is so important across mobile platforms, countries and languages - we all understand the challenge and significance of connecting your app with users.

We also are pretty familiar, way more than we would like to, with the notion of a mobile app churn.

This infamous situation when people, users of your app you spent so much energy to find, abandon the app.

In this episode, we will be talking about how to prevent app subscriber churn in particular. When people leave your paid app it’s a problem but not as big as when they pay you a subscription fee and they stop using your app.

• Vahe Baghdasaryan background

"Subscriber churn is inevitable, but implementing the right interventions  can make it healthy."

"Giving this your customers a grace period is always a good idea. Another very important thing here is incorporating life cycle marketing in terms of transactional communication with the users that you fail to charge. For example, if you fail to charge, send them an email notification that says your payment didn't go through. "

"So the biggest takeaway from here is like if you're gonna ask them to update their billing information, there's something that is that has a lot of friction in it. And your strategy should be also how am I gonna like minimize the friction? "

• App industry marketplace

Ok, if you work in a brick-and-mortar mall you can see your customers in person daily and you even have a chance to know some of them better than others.

If you own a mobile app, you stare at your laptop’s screen and you better have a good consumer intelligence platform in hand to have a clue about what people use your app, so you can serve them well.

In this episode we have Paul to talk about his company’s “AppLife Report 2023 Vol. 2” report that talks about app users’ behavior.

• Paul Neto's background

" And I think we're just in the early stages and maybe underappreciate some of the changes that are being driven by  TikTok. So, for example, the volume is immense. If you look at younger audiences, they're browsing about 5,400 videos a month. Older audience, it's around, 1,600 videos. That's a massive amount of content. Secondly, actual engagement with the app is, through the ceiling."

"And so we look at what are some of the top apps that people use when they first pick up the phone. And we see often it's for communication for across for all the generations. So things like messaging, Snapchat or even Discord tend to be ranked relatively high, of the reason why you pick up this device. So it often ends up being communication or some kind of entertainment. And entertainment will be things like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. All those tend to bubble to the top."

• App industry marketplace