Online Marketing Platform: Getting High Retention Rate For F2P Mobile Games

Online Marketing Platform: Getting High Retention Rate For F2P Mobile Games: Three things you need to do in order to build a profitable free-to-play mobile game. Free-to-play games are consistently ranked amon...

What’s More Effective for eCommerce – Email or SMS Marketing?

Many years ago there were many retail and tech experts writing articles on how the brick-and-mortar shops are going to be hit and effected by the introduction of the internet and ecommerce – oh how they were right.

Recently we have seen many retail and tech experts writing about the shift from desktop to mobile (including us here) and how it will affect ecommerce and retail marketing – oh how they are being proved right.

Mobile-first means that you start the design and thought process for mobile first.

In business mobile-first is not exactly a new terminology. Google has been calling themselves a mobile-first company for several years now; however, it is not just businesses that are mobile-first now, the majority of people are too.

This is because our device preference to carry out many activities such as checking email, shopping, banking and looking at social media, has changed from the desktop to the smartphone.

The old ecommerce marketing plan would have looked something like this…

• Get a website
• Put web address on everything we produce and anywhere we can
• Create loads of Google ad campaigns
• Send loads of email campaigns every other day

So has the mobile-first revolution changed this ecommerce marketing plan? Have we seen the end of the ecommerce marketing email?

Well the first 3 stages are still pretty much in full swing however the email campaign stage is under threat, as the recent email stat figures from Experian Marketing Services do not make good reading for the marketing channel.

If you are a retailer then this is probably no surprise to you, as I am sure you have probably seen your engagement and response rates through email fall over the last few years.

Many brands and businesses in the ecommerce and retail world have turned their attention, like their consumers, to the mobile. SMS marketing has proved a big hit not only for retailers and ecommerce sites but their customers too – producing some amazing responses for retailers.

Mobile marketing shouldn’t scare you, it should excite you – and if you are new to the mobile marketing world, here are 5 tips on writing a successful marketing message.

However remember this 3 things and your mobile marketing adventure should be a fruitful one…

Make it personal. Make it relevant. Make it on time.

Secret Sauce for Digital Marketing Success

What’s the secret sauce for digital marketing success?

I did a podcast interview on Friday — I’ll share the link through my social networks and with my email subscribers once it’s live — and that was one of the questions asked. I was a little flummoxed because, to digital marketers, that’s like asking the secret to life.

It’s a big question with lots of different answers from different people.

For me, it was easy to come up with 3 things that make up the secret sauce for digital marketing success.

1. Analytics
2. Content marketing
3. Engagement

Simple, direct, to the point.

I guess I could stop here, but Google requires a minimum of 300 words for SEO so I guess I’ll just expand on these 3 things a little bit.

Analytics

Sure, analytics are a cornerstone of digital marketing success, so they go in my secret sauce in big doses.

You can’t just use any old analytics to make the secret sauce for digital marketing success. You need the right analytics, the metrics that make a difference in your market performance. You can pitch metrics like fan/ follower counts in the trash because that’s what they are — garbage. Sure, in the old days when organic reach existed on Facebook and Twitter wasn’t a stream whizzing by so fast no one could possibly read it, the number of fans or followers you had made a little bit of difference. Today, the impact of what we call vanity metrics is pretty close to 0.

And, don’t just focus on bottom of the funnel metrics — things like sales, leads generated, and email sign ups. Sure, bottom of the funnel metrics tell you how well you’re doing at moving folks all the way down the funnel where the cash register starts ringing, but they’re not very good at showing you what you need to do to get more folks down the conversion funnel.

Having too small a number at the bottom of the funnel may be because you didn’t pour enough folks into the top of the funnel — create enough awareness. The solution is to create more awareness by doing some advertising (maybe a little PPC campaign or some Facebook sponsored posts), reaching out to influencers and asking them to share positive things about your brand (I get free stuff like this all the time from folks hoping I’ll mention something about their brand in my blog or on my social networks; trips to Jamaica, front row seats on the 40 yard line at the Redskins games, cool clothes, etc), or maybe creating a contest that encourages customers to share about your brand (through user-generated content, for instance).

But if your problem is that your product doesn’t make it past the consideration stage, you have an entirely different problem on your hands. You’re not making it into their consideration set. Now, the solution involves figuring out why folks don’t view your product very favorably. Maybe you’ve had some problems with product quality or maybe your customer service folks just aren’t doing a good job of addressing customer issues, or maybe you’ve really pissed off an influencer who’s bent on damaging your brand.

See, once you get past the bottom of the funnel metrics (or, I guess technically before), the questions just seem to multiply.

Start your analytics plan by understanding your KPIs. That’s a good starting point. Now, think of all the activities that support your KPI’s and add metrics to assess them to your list. Finally, create goals for each metric, establish a system for collecting and analyzing the metric then getting it to the decision-maker who needs the information — preferably visually.

Content marketing

Content marketing is a big part of the secret sauce for digital marketing success. Google made sure of that.

In the past, digital marketers played lots of games to get their websites to rank well, bringing with it a wealth of organic traffic from searchers looking for their brands. Searchers For most sites, organic search is still a major traffic source, but Google shut down most of the gamesmanship that went into creating that river.

Now, content is king — as it probably always should have been. Content is now the driver determining your ranking on search.

How much does ranking impact digital marketing success?

Take a look at this from Chitika, showing that a full third of clicks belong to the site in position 1. Also note that almost all (91+%) of clicks go to links on the first search results page.

Producing high-quality consistent content produces digital marketing success by getting you on the first page.

But that’s not all. Great content builds your reputation as a trusted provider — which translates into more conversions. Hence, content marketing is both a top of funnel and bottom of funnel strategy.

Because content marketing is so important for digital marketing success, add metrics representing content marketing to your analytics plan. You’ll need metrics including which posts perform best, which headlines perform best, demographics related to folks who read posts (to ensure you’re reaching your target demographic — new to Google Analytics), and even the progression from content down the funnel to sales (with Google’s funnel available in Analytics). A/B testing helps create a fuller picture of how content impacts your digital marketing success.

Engagement

It’s not enough to just upload content to already crowded social networks and create more pages on your website. You need to fire up your target audience for digital marketing success. That means engagement.

Engagement involves using digital technologies to find, listen, and mobilize a community to support a brand or issue.

Notice this definition starts BEFORE you see any consumer actions, so it involves more than getting clicks, likes, shares, follows, etc.

Engagement involves creating a community in the first place, then listening and responding to them with content that mobilizes them to promote your brand. Engagement amplifies your message, enabling you to reach many more folks than you might otherwise, but, more important, engagement adds an element of trust to your communications. And, that’s important for digital marketing success.

Think about it. You might not rush out to buy that new widget just because you saw a commercial or a post from the company on Twitter. But, when your friend Sally shares the message, you’re much more likely to buy because you know Sally and trust her. You figure she wouldn’t share something if the product wasn’t any good. Even strangers have more ability to promote purchase than brands.

Don’t believe me.

Remember the old Blockbuster stores? You’d wander the shelves looking for a movie to rent. Often, someone would walk past, see the titles you were looking at, and recommend something or warn you not to waste time watching a particular movie.

And, verbal communication isn’t required. You might order a particular dish or visit a particular restaurant after seeing the food on other diners’ plates. Restaurants with outdoor seating entice dinners with not only the image of delicious food on diners’ plates, but the aromas — we’re hardwired to respond more to visual and olfactory clues, than auditory ones.

Creating engagement also drives your target audience down the hierarchy of effects — a fancy name for a process driving more folks into your conversion funnel and increasing the chances they’ll move all the way through the funnel to conversion.

At its highest level, the hierarchy of effects creates evangelists — in this case evangelists aren’t promoting a particular religious belief, but promoting a brand. Evangelists keep the brand top of mind by mentioning it frequently, but they go well beyond simply sharing information, they encourage others to buy and defend the brand when others say harsh things about it. They craft user-generated content and answer questions to improve the user experience of other consumers.

When I was back in my doctoral program, I did a project looking at the Disney community. Evangelists in that community increased park visits by:

• creating a norm supporting multiple visits to the parks each year
• encouraging visitors who were on the fence about visiting the parks
• answering questions to speed visitors through the lines at the part, where to stay, and how to get there
• deflecting detractors who said bad things about the parks
• providing valuable feedback to Disney to improve the parks

Digital marketing success

That’s all you need for digital marketing success.

Period.

Now, you might disagree with me. And that’s fine. Just add it to the comments below.

If you think about it, I think you’ll find everything else that makes digital marketing success falls into one of the three buckets: analytics, content marketing, and engagement. Try it.

The 3 Secrets to Massive Online Marketing Success

If you’re trying to sell products and services online, you’re probably looking for that one magic key to make your business work.

You buy CDs and DVDs that will tell you the secret.

You look at mega-successful sites in your market and try to reverse engineer the secret.

After all of this searching, you may be tempted to believe there is no secret. But the secret is real.

Actually, there are three secrets that work together. To be blunt, these three magic success secrets separate the winners from the losers. Master them and you’ll start to move forward. Slowly at first, then you’ll pick up momentum and things will start to move amazingly quickly. No baloney, no tricks. These three secrets are . . .

Success secret #1: Take action

Every year, hopeful entrepreneurs buy millions of dollars’ worth of “how to succeed” or “how to start a business” products. The market isn’t limited to doing business online, but the idea of working at a computer making “six-figure incomes in our pajamas” is especially irresistible.

95% of the customers for these products will spend thousands of dollars, then turn around looking for the next magic pill before their credit card gets a chance to cool off. So are online marketing products all garbage? Are they just hype and spin?

There are some junky products out there, but the truth is that many of them are excellent. The “gurus,” as they’re (not always affectionately) called, have a lot of sound advice to give. Their advice can make you lots of money, if you know the success secret:

You actually have to do something with the advice.

Most customers for “business opportunity” products value the dream more than they do the result. They want to get out of the cubicle, out of their crummy apartment, out of credit card debt. They might even want it desperately. But they don’t take action.

I’m not saying this to be flippant or harsh. It’s not actually all that easy to go from advice to action. If you don’t have a good track record for that, if you’ve spent a lot of time or money on how-to products but never really done anything with it, you may believe you’ll never master it.

That’s BS.

Your new productivity methodology

Get a little notebook. This is your to-do list for your project.

If you’re a content marketer, most of your actions will revolve around creating content, creating products, or delivering services. Be sure and maintain a long list of content ideas, so you’re never at a loss when it’s time to knock out a post or a podcast.

Write down all the actions you must take to get you to the next step. Add more actions as you think of them. Cross them off when you’re done. When the list is a mess, rewrite it.

You don’t need an elaborate system that wastes more time than it frees up. Your system only needs to help you know what to do next.

Work every day (7 days a week, no exceptions), even if some days you only have 15 minutes. Working every day will increase your productivity by spurring your unconscious mind to come up with more ideas. This is helpful for entrepreneurs, and critical for content marketers.

Make a daily habit of one hour of action on your biggest goal. You’ll be astonished at how quickly you start to make progress. Ready, Fire, Aim author Michael Masterson recommends an hour of work on your dream goal every morning, as a way to start your day with a terrific rush of productivity. I’ve been doing just that for the past few months, and I’m starting to get used to the “whooshing” sound as the pieces fall into place. Not only does it work, it feels great too.

You can spend that hour all at once, or divide it into two or three pieces. Make it work for you. And once you develop the hour-a-day habit, you’ll actually find yourself making excuses to do more work on your project.

Success is built on lots of small steps. Start taking them. You’ve built this up in your head to be 1,000 times harder than it is. The fact that you have historically been terrible at getting stuff done is not relevant at all.

Just start taking action. It honestly is that simple.

Success secret #2: Have a plan

The down side of “just taking action” is that if you do a lot of random tasks, you tend to get a lot of random results.

There’s an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail. Fight that kind of thinking as much as you can. Your plan may call for expertise you don’t have, or actions you aren’t very good at. So make some room in your plan to partner with someone else. If you’re great at connecting with customers but lousy at technology, find a partner whose strengths and weaknesses perfectly complement yours. Believe me, that person is out there and wants desperately to work with you.

Making too many plans can be the enemy of success secret #1. Be sure your plan has plenty of room for “actions I will take.”

For most of us, grandiose plans don’t get implemented. It’s great to have spectacular goals, if that inspires you. But put together plans for relatively simple, manageable projects. A dumb, simple little project that gets done is infinitely more valuable than an impressive one that gets 99% done.

The reason “back-of-the-napkin” project planning is a cliché is because simple, compact plans tend to get put into action, while 1,000-page strategies to create business empires tend to gather dust.

Keep your project plan in your little notebook. If your plan doesn’t fit into a small notebook, make a smaller plan.

If you want to make a million dollars online, start with a project to make $10. Figure that out, then scale it. It sounds simplistic and even silly, but it works.

Success secret #3: Your secret sauce is you

This is the one that’s going to take #1 and #2 to a completely new level. Success secrets #1 and #2 can make you a decent living. Add #3 to those and you’ll start to create an extraordinary business that supports a meaningful life.

As a content marketer, you’re going to need to create interesting, useful and compelling content pretty much every day you’re in this business. Your blog posts, free reports and email newsletters all contribute to one goal: to establish you as a trusted authority on your topic.

If you’re just going to regurgitate the usual stuff in a lame me-too blog, you’re not going to find too many customers. You’re betting off spending your time surfing or skateboarding — at least with those, you’ll get some exercise and you might meet somebody cute.

You have a unique view of your market’s problems. You have a unique set of techniques and approaches to solve those problems. You have a unique set of experiences to put the problems in a fresh light. Share those unique perspectives in your content.

If you need more expertise to establish yourself as a credible authority, get out and start asking questions. Be a reporter. Look for case studies. Look for real-life examples, even if they’re tiny. Look for lessons in your own life. Make connections no one’s made yet. Bring someone else’s expertise to light in a new way.

If you’re a Franciscan monk, write about the Franciscan monk’s guide to brewing better beer. If you’re a doting parent, write about the toddler’s guide to success. If you’re an indentured servant for a big corporation, write about how to avoid doing all the really dumb stuff your company does.

There will always be people — often thousands of people — who know more than you do. Acknowledge that so you stay humble and open. Then put it to one side and speak up anyway.

Keep whittling down your topic until you’re speaking with an authentic voice about something you genuinely know and care about. Stay curious and you’ll find the path that works for you and only for you.

The real secret

Nearly everyone will read this, feel inspired for about 45 seconds, then go off to hit Starbucks and check out what the hottie on the 2nd floor is wearing today.

But you’re going out at lunch today to pick up your small notebook. As soon as you get back, you’re going to scribble a simple plan and a good handful of actions that will make the plan happen. You’re going to put some thought into how you can execute this plan in your own inimitable way.

You’ll make 10 minutes and take an action today, even if it’s small. Tomorrow morning, you’ll start working for an hour every day, 7 days a week, toward your biggest goal. And just like that, you’ll be on your way to true, meaningful success, however you define it.

Send me a postcard when you’ve reached your dream. I’ll be very jazzed to hear from you.

Understanding Retention Reports

Acquiring new users requires a significant amount of resources to drive the action of downloading and installing your mobile app. So after much time and effort (and money), maybe your app enjoys high download rates and you congratulate yourself on a job well done. But don’t sit back and relax yet. Because while thousands of users are downloading your app, how many of them actually continue to use your app over time? It's a worthy question to ask if you consider that in almost all cases, it is far cheaper to retain an existing user than to attract and register a new user.

By looking at retention, you can create the opportunity to grow a devoted user base and foster a reliable source of revenue. With multiple methods of increasing user retention (essentially, focusing on keeping and engaging your existing users), you first need to understand the behavior of the existing users of your app, and their lifecycle from download to continued use or disuse of the app.

The value of retention reporting isn't only about assessing user loyalty over time, but having the insight and quantifiable data to see when and where retention starts to decline (so you know where to target your resources more precisely, effectively, and efficiently). You can also use filters and segments to view the same data from different angles (for example, see which specific ad networks and advertising partners have the highest retention rates), then adjust your ad spend accordingly. Ultimately, retention is not about getting a high quantity of users by driving installs through mobile advertising campaigns, but being able to identify your high-quality users so you know which ones to nurture (for example, through cheap email marketing campaigns).

Definition of Retention

While user acquisition focuses on driving new installs (acquiring new users), user retention focuses on keeping existing users (who installed your app). In analyzing retention, you can see how long users continue to get value out of your app (by performing in-app events, completing purchases, or accomplishing whatever behavior you deem valuable). The longer users find value in your app, the better your retention rates are, which ultimately leads to higher user lifetime value (LTV) for you.

So retention is the ability of a product or service to retain its existing customers, with retention rates measuring the ratio of customers who are devoted and “stay” (those who keep using and supporting your app) to the total number of customers who installed your app. In contrast, user attrition is the opposite case where you measure the ratio of customers who are dissatisfied by the app and “leave” (stop using and supporting your app) against your total install base for the app.

Retention Rates

Measuring the rate of retention provides a useful metric for understanding user behavior and the complete user lifecycle. Retention rates typically measure the number of active users (unique users who completed a desired action regardless of how many times they did so) as a percentage of the entire user cohort to which they belong (for example, all users who installed your app 30 days ago) over time.

In Attribution Analytics, our cohort-based retention analysis measures the ability of a mobile app to retain its install base. Attribution Analytics does not measure attrition because it is essentially the inverse or absence of retention. Cohort-based retention analysis consists of two main components:

• Cohorting event - the initial engagement event in which you want to aggregate users together, which requires defining the type of event (typically the app "install" event), the timeframe of interest (during which the event occurred), and the cohort time interval by which users are grouped (for example, a weekly interval).
• Retention indicator metric - the event used to determine the retention rate itself, as a function of the cohorting event. This metric in Attribution Analytics is unique app opens by users.

Attribution Analytics calculates retention rate by dividing the number of unique app opens (within a specified time interval) by the total number of app installs (essentially, the base cohort size or retention potential), and then multiplying the quotient by 100.

Retention on Day X =   (	Number of  unique "app open" events on Day X	)   X 100
	Total number of "app install" events on Day 0

The denominator (total installs) defines the cohort and its size, and is bound by a time range and interval so that you can evaluate cohorts with one another for an "apples-to-apples" comparison. Defining cohorts by time range and interval (limiting the analysis to only the installs performed within a specific time range) allows Attribution Analytics to calculate retention (number of unique app opens) relative to the initial install date and time.

The numerator can vary based on your definition of a "retained user". The two main methods of calculating retention differ only by the numerator:

• Classic Retention - counts users as retained in an interval if they are active in that specific interval.
• Rolling Retention - counts users as retained in an interval if they are active in that specific interval, or a future interval.

Attribution Analytics currently uses rolling retention, but let's take a look at both methods for comparison.

Classic Retention

Classic retention generally provides a conservative calculation of retention because it only considers the portion of users retained on a given day (it does not account for future activity). Classic retention is best for weekly or monthly reporting intervals because longer intervals generally allow more users to be retained within the interval.

For example, let’s suppose User 1 performed the following actions:

• On March 1 (Day 0), installed a mobile app
• On March 2 (Day 1, first day after install), was not active/did not open the app
• On March 3 (Day 2), was active/opened the app

Since the user wasn’t active on Day 1, classic retention considers the user NOT retained for that interval. Then the user was active on Day 2, so they are retained for that interval.

Now let’s assume User 2 performed the following actions:

• On March 1 (Day 0), installed the app
• On March 2 (Day 1), was active/opened the app
• On March 3 (Day 2), was not active/did not open the app

The following diagram shows the activities of User 1 and User 2 over one week, and their impact on retention levels using the classic retention method.

So with classic retention, we calculate retention as follows:

• Retention for Day 1 is 50% because only one of the two installed users was active between hour 24 and hour 47 (from Day 0)
• Retention for Day 2 is also 50% because one of the two installed users was active between hour 48 and hour 71 (from Day 0)
• Retention for Day 3 is 0% because neither users were active during that interval.

Rolling Retention

Now let’s take the same scenario as above with two users performing the same actions over one week, and look at how rolling retention is calculated (which is more complicated because retention levels may change over time as this method takes into account 30 days after the current interval). Rolling retention is best for daily reporting intervals because future activity is already accounted for in prior intervals (expanding the interval does not affect the retention rate).

Taking the same two-user scenario above, the following diagram shows their impact on retention using the rolling retention method.

With rolling retention, we calculate retention as follows:

• Retention for Day 1 is 100% because both users were either active on that day or some point in the future
• Retention for Day 2 is also 100% for the same reason
• Retention for Day 3 is also 100% for the same reason (even though neither users were active on Day 3, they were both active on a future day within the interval)

The following table compares the retention rates between classic and rolling retention.

	Classic Retention	Rolling Retention
Day 1 Retention Rate	50%	100%
Day 2 Retention Rate	50%	100%
Day 3 Retention Rate	0%	100%
Day 4 Retention Rate	50%	100%
Day 5 Retention Rate	50%	100%
Day 6 Retention Rate	50%	50%
Day 7 Retention Rate	0%	50%
Day 8 Retention Rate	50%	50%

As you can see, rolling retention provides a different indication of retention (generally a higher one) than classic retention even though the same two users performed the same actions over the same interval. Even if a user is not active in an interval, rolling retention may consider the user retained for that interval if they are active in a future interval. But classic retention does not account for activity in future intervals.

Only when a user is no longer active in a future interval (stops using the app) are they considered not retained. User 2 is no longer active after day 5 and thus, no longer considered retained with rolling retention. Retention for Day 6 and beyond is only 50% because only one of the users is retained (User 2 stopped using the app after Day 5).

Because rolling retention accounts for future activity (up to 30 days after the current interval), calculation of Day 1 retention is subject to change and cannot be deemed complete for 30 days (within the 30 days, a user may become active and thus affect the retention rate for a prior interval).

With classic retention, the calculation is easier because future activity does not impact the retention rate for a current interval. So taking the same scenario above, a user is considered retained for Day 1 (24-47 hours after install) if they opened the app on that day. And calculation of Day 1 retention is complete after 48 hours from install (any activity performed thereafter does not affect the Day 1 retention rate).

Please note that the Retention report provided in the Attribution Analytics platform automatically excludes testing and debugging data (installs, opens, and events associated with debugging requests or test profiles). This exclusion prevents test data from skewing the retention calculation.

Implications of Retention

Now let’s consider a big-picture example to demonstrate what retention means. You recently released a significant update to your app and you’re interested in evaluating if the update had any (hopefully positive) effect on the retention rate for your app. As the update went live two weeks ago, you can compare the users who downloaded and opened the old version of your app (during the two weeks prior to release/update) to the users who downloaded and opened the new version of your app (in the two weeks after your app went live).

Now let's say your cohorting event is defined as “First App Open/Install” beginning the week of April 1, 2014 and ending the week of April 29, 2014 (using a weekly interval). This definition aggregates all of the users who installed your app (or opened it for the first time) during the month of April into 4 weekly cohorts. The retention indicator metric is defined as “App Opens” and is measured both as an absolute count of unique users (who completed the event) and as a percentage of unique users (who completed the event, out of the entire cohort),

 

Using the retention report, you can see that your example app update had a positive effect on retention, as your retention rates are higher in the two cohorts post-update event (in green color in the table above) than the two cohorts of users who opened your app BEFORE you released the update (in blue color above). So the data substantiates that your app update had a positive effect on your retention rates, congrats!

While this example scenario compared the retention rates before-and-after an app update that you made (correlating user behavior and response with a change you implement), you can run retention reports to look at data in comparison to other factors or variables. For example, you might compare the retention rates between two different partners to see which one you should partner with (which one generates more valuable/high-quality users).

Example Retention Reports

The following scenarios provide examples of how you can use retention reporting in Attribution Analytics to assess user loyalty and identify potential pain points (when do users drop-off?).

Which of the six ad campaigns that I ran in April was most effective?

• Define/limit the cohort to only the installs in April
• Group the installs by ad campaign
• Filter the list of installs to only the six ad campaigns of interest
• Show 30-day retention

How did my Android users compare to my iOS users last quarter?

• Define/limit the cohort to only installs
• Group the installs by device OS
• Show 90-day retention

How well did I retain users on a per-country basis last quarter? (Should I vary my target CPI on a per country basis?)

• Define/limit the cohort to only installs
• Group the installs by country
• Filter out "organic installs" (non-attributed installs) from the list of installs
• Show 90-day retention