1. Making your social app a
whopping success

2. • Joined InMobi in Dec 2011
• I drive user acquisition & monetization for App
Developers
• Early Stage Investments in Clean tech Space
• Product Manager in a clean tech startup
• Carnegie Mellon (2009) & IIT
Mahak Sharma

3. Introduction to InMobi
• Largest independent mobile ad-network , reaching 691 million mobile consumers
across 165 countries
• 850 employees, 25+ nationalities, 17+ offices globally
• 65K+ requests/sec at peak load; 100TB data generated/month
• 500+ engineers across US, IN, JP

4. • Social apps rank 3rd in terms of revenue
& 6th in terms of downloads on the app
store
• Messaging and dating apps emerge as
winners
• Emerging asian social app giants from
Korea, Japan & SEA
• Top social apps differ markedly by
country/segments
• Developers employ new monetization
strategies for social apps
Exciting times in the social networking category…

5. 5.Do you know
your user lifetime
value?
6.Taking your
social app global
4.Tracking
conversions
effectively
1.Social apps
marketing 101
2.Tips & Tricks
for Paid User
Acquisition
3.Driving up your
App Store ranks
Agenda

6. 5.Do you know
your user lifetime
value?
6.Taking your
social app global
4.Tracking
conversions
effectively
1.Social apps
marketing 101
2.Tips & Tricks
for Paid User
Acquisition
3.Driving up your
App Store ranks

7. Challenges with user acquisition
Multiple channels to choose from : Ad networks,
Press, Social, review sites…
Difficult to measure & predict ROI at launch :
Tracking & Attribution across channels
App Discovery : Over 1.8 million apps, 300% growth,
fragmented app stores, multi-screen behavior
Quantity Vs Quality

8. The science of User Acquisition
Cost of acquiring a new user & expected ROI at that time
• Costs can vary over time , so timing is critical
• ROI tough to predict at the time of launch, but estimates are good to have
Efficacy of each marketing channel highly dependent on app & optimizing across channels
can get very tactical
• Detailed analytics are critical
• Continuous optimization & monitoring essential for success
• Important to monitor organic downloads from each channel
Early user =Higher LTV
• LTV & Cost of acquiring user inversely proportional to time at which user is acquired
• LTV of earliest users is the highest and the cost of acquiring early users is the lowest
• Overtime, cost of acquiring every new user increases

9. Pre Launch Marketing
• Participate on forums with similar topics to
drive awareness and buzz
• Monitor reviews of competing apps to find
gaps; pre-empt and promote your
differentiating features
• Create a pre launch page to generate interest
with images, screenshots, details about app
functionality, social media links and newsletter
sign ups
• Claim your social media accounts - twitter,
facebook, pinterest. Try & engage with your
target audience
• Record a demo and create a sneak preview of
the app, teaser video
• Tap into your network and drive email sign-ups

10. Pre-launch marketing example – http://nizoapp.com

11. • Turn your early users into advocates. Interact with
loyal users, give them badges, stickers, virtual
currency etc.
• Encourage users to create FB groups
• Use notifications to solicit feedback
• Facebook:
- Create a fan page, create a FB link within the
app to let users like the fan page
- Post three-four times a day, run contests and
sweepstakes & create an app page
- Twitter contests, dialogues to collect feedback
and complaints.
vLeveraging social media for acquiring users for your app

12. App landing pages
• Important to note - A lot of discovery still
happens on desktop!
• Mobile friendly – large imagery UI
• Desktop users
- Clean Background
- Use Google Analytics
- Large CTA (Test it!)
- SMS or QR is best for tracking
- Get users to share the landing page
- Capture emails “Sign Up for Newsletter”
• Mobile users
- Well designed – realism with high polish
- Smart app banners for iOS
Unnamed Social App
(One of the top 25 in app store)
• 15% traffic from desktops
(mostly social networking
sites) at the time of launch
• Higher conversions with SMS
compared to all other ways
Example

13. Great app landing page example –foursquare.com

14. 5.Do you know
your user lifetime
value?
6.Taking your
social app global
4.Tracking
conversions
effectively
2. Tips & Tricks
for Paid User
Acquisition
1.Social
Marketing 101
`
3.Driving up your
App Store ranks

15. Advertisers
Publishers
DSP’s &
Agencies
RTB
Ad Networks –
Incent/Non Incent
Emails/Press
Social
Networks
The app advertising ecosystem is extremely complex
Courtesy: Luma Partners llc

16. Paid User Acquisition strategy for social apps
• The marketing mix changes considerably over time
• User acquisition channels for social apps are very different from that of gaming
• Important decisions to be taken before starting the campaign :
• Target Audience
• Countries and platform to launch into
• Some ideas for monetization & predicted LTV of the user
• Total marketing budgets and app lifecycle
• For social apps, we recommend starting a focused/local campaign- use the virality within your target
audience to position and grow the user base
• Using a combination of Social marketing channels and ad networks provides the best volume & quality
• App Store rank has a huge impact on organic downloads. Organic users tend to have higher loyalty

17. Marketing mix can change considerably overtime
10%
5%
40%
5%
10%
5%
60%
0%
35%
25%

18. High Quality and Organic downloads should determine your
marketing channel Conversion Rate
How to choose between
different marketing channels for
a social app?

19. 5.Do you know
your user lifetime
value?
6.Taking your
social app global
4.Tracking
conversions
effectively
1.Social apps:
App marketing
101
2.Tips & Tricks
for Paid User
Acquisition
`
3.Driving up your
App Store ranks

20. Top rank can increase your organic downloads by up to 10x
Install velocity
No. of installs
Uninstall rate
Ratings & reviews
• The biggest influencer of your appstore rank
• Can be increased by 10 times through intelligent and targeted social
marketing
• For hitting top 25 in social category in the AppStore we need upto 7000
installs a day in US and about 3000 installs a day in UK
• Cut down budgets from marketing channels which deliver users of poor
quality - contributing negatively to your rank
• Lower weightage but important to monitor this channel effectively to
incorporate feedback and update users of changes

21. 5.Do you know
your user lifetime
value?
6.Taking your
social app global
4.Tracking
conversions
effectively
1.Social apps:
App marketing
101
2.Tips & Tricks
for Paid User
Acquisition
`
3.Driving up your
App Store ranks

22. “50% of marketers feel that tracking
and attribution is a big concern they
face in mobile advertising”
Extremely important to track up to installs and beyond
Impression
Clicks
D/L
Registration
100%
2%
.06%
.012%

23. Extremely important to track up to installs and beyond
• Accurate attribution can significantly
improve cost of acquisition per user
through price optimization
• Conversion Based Pricing
• LTV Based pricing
• Budget Optimization across networks
and publishers
Dynamic CPCFixed CPC
N = 80 campaigns
% Inventory Reachable

24. Extremely important to track up to installs and beyond
• Multiple technologies – ID-based tracking, Android Referrer, Digital Fingerprinting ,
HTML5 Cookie
• You can make a choice depending on the launch platforms, countries and your
advertising objective
Device Finger HTML
Accuracy High Low High
User experience High High Low
Drop offs Low Medium High
Inventory accessibility Medium High High
Global compatibility Low High Medium

25. 5.Do you know
your user lifetime
value?
6.Taking your
social app global
4.Tracking
conversions
effectively
1.Social apps:
App marketing
101
2.Tips & Tricks
for Paid User
Acquisition
`
3.Driving up your
App Store ranks

26. Category US UK Australia Canada China Japan Korea Indonesia Thailand
Games Medium Medium Medium Medium Low High Medium High Low
Entertainment High High High Medium Medium Medium Medium Medium Low
Social Medium High Low High Low High Medium High Medium
Chat/Messaging Medium Medium Medium Medium Low High Low Medium Low
Gambling High High Low High Low High High Medium Medium
Dating High High High High Low Low Medium High Medium
Which country & platforms to launch into?
• Vietnam, Thailand & Indonesia – lower costs of acquisition, medium to high ROI
• Japan & Korea – ROI better than US in communication apps but localization challenges exist
• Best platforms to promote – Android Smartphones, iPhone, iPad, Android Tablets – decreasing
order

27. 5.Do you know
your user lifetime
value?
6.Taking your
social app global
4.Tracking
conversions
effectively
1.Social apps:
App marketing
101
2.Tips & Tricks
for Paid User
Acquisition
`
3.Driving up your
App Store ranks

28. What it takes to launch in China , Japan & Korea
‣ Local translation can increase downloads by 128% and revenues by 28%
‣ Cute cartoons & Android premium handsets likely to perform better
‣ Target older audience
‣ Maximizing interactive experience through mobile features increases chances of
success
‣ Localized apps are downloaded much more and generate higher revenues
App Store
Fragmentation &
Device ID issues
‣ Google Play payments doesn’t work in China. All Android revenues are from third
party app stores, hence partnering with 3rd party stores is key
‣ Feature phone penetration in Japan is very high, and fingerprinting is key to
improve scale
1
2
Localization &
App behavior

29. • Focused Audience targeted campaign on Facebook
& Ad networks
• NHN Line’s implant in Psy’s Gangnam Song
• Line beats What’s app in Spain
• Retargeting users with ‘competition’ apps
Successful Campaign techniques used in the past

30. Thank You
Mahak Sharma
Mahak.sharma@inmobi.com