So what do we mean by “growth hacking?” Or the more accurate name for it is “growth marketing.” Growth marketing can drive huge returns, and it has a few characteristics.
The way you interact with the product team. Before, marketers are thinking about acquisition, or branding, or email campaigns, or press releases. They aren’t really thinking in terms of the product. But in the growth marketing mindset, they’re sitting with the product team.
Their goals. Growth marketers are evaluating opportunities across the entire funnel and picking the ones that are the most strategically important.
Their use of data. Growth marketing is about challenging that assumption and using data to drive real results. And this is what enables you to be really creative -- that you know what is or isn’t working.
Testing. This is the flipside of data, right? That we use the data to run experiments, to refine our thinking, and to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Use of technology. There are literally thousands of VC-backed companies in the martech space now. But the growth marketing mindset is to view this as an opportunity, not a barrier. If I choose the right content management system for my website, I can make updates faster and my site renders more quickly, which means I rank better in Google. Growth marketers understand and use technology.
AND IT IS NOT JUST STARTUPS
3. 3 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Today’s Agenda
Introductions
What is Growth Hacking … errr, Marketing?
Growth Tactics:
1. Retention: Laying the Foundation from the Very Start
2. How (and Why) to Iterate on Your Mobile Campaigns
3. Using Mobile Data to Get the Right Customers
Mobile Growth Marketing Key Takeaways & Next Steps
6. 6 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Marketing: Traditional vs. Growth
Traditional Growth
Product Formal relationship Same team
Goal Sell Strategically drive revenue, retention, etc.
Data “Some things can’t be measured” Data-driven approach
Testing Limited Constant
APIs and
Technology
Barrier to be overcome Source of advantage
7. 7 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Growth Marketing & Mobile
Growth Mobile
Product Act as the same team Complete customer experience -- not just a
channel
Focus Strategically drive revenue Customer experience
Data Data-driven approach Seamless data collection
Testing Constant Continuous deployment and 1:1 messaging
APIs &
Technology
Source of advantage Many opportunities for creative usage to drive
better experience; integrations. Omnichannel
9. 9 @urbanairship #growthhacking
If you invest in
growth before
you have
retention, you’re
renting users, not
acquiring them.
-Tarun Mitra
10. 10 @urbanairship #growthhacking
You’re Not Just Selling
USERBRAND
• Reach, engage & retain
customers
• Generate repeat
business
• Gain user insight
• Operational efficiency
• Optimal experiences
• Easy & convenient
• Save money
• Save time
• Have fun!
• Security
• Better deals
• Be reminded
16. 16 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Example
Hypothesis Test Owner Result
Adding signup to the
homepage will drive a 10%
increase in conversions to our
product
A/B test 2 versions of the
homepage to see whether
we see that lift
Justin We saw a 5% lift, half from more
click-thrus, and half because
visitors who saw the signup on the
homepage were more likely to
signup through normal channels
17. 17 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Three Simple A/B Testing Opportunities
1. Brand voice vs. pure information
A) ”Share your love for the new Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger combo using #PretzelLoveSongs
and we may sing it!"
B) ”Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger is here to stay. Choose combo #2 on the menu."
2. Clear call to action vs. vague
A) ”You can now enjoy $1 off premium cheeseburgers! Tap to redeem."
B) ”Hungry? We’ve got local deals."
3. Immediacy vs. value proposition
A) ”Your coupon expires today."
B) ”There is still time to enjoy $1 premium burgers!"
18. 18 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Individual Results May Vary
Hypothesis
Sale copy will have a higher open
rate than thematic copy.
Test
A: Make the most of Summer…
B: Camping equipment on sale
Result
A: 23% direct open
11.5% conversion rate
B: 18.6% direct open rate
13.9% conversion rate
21. 21 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Opt-in >> Convert >> Grow >> Retain >> Reactivate
Acquiring the Customer Building the Relationship Win back
Prospect Customer Super User Best
Customer
Recaptured
Customer
Reactivation
Transactional &
operational
Broadcast
Obtain
permission
Loyalty
1:1 triggered
Targeted
by segment
Preference/ behavior
based push
Exclusive rich
contentWelcome
Get the opt-in
Value prop
Deals & alerts
Sharing
preferences
Aggressive
deals/content
Engage
Pre-Install
Opportunity
Interstitial
education on
value prop
Pre-opt in screen
Customer Insight
Engagement Signals Across User Lifecycle
Register
22. 22 @urbanairship #growthhacking
What Are the Attributes of Your Best Users?
Explorers
Converts
Advocates
Skeptics
Your App
On and offline marketing
App store discovery
Download
Open app
Opt-in to push, location
Register / key action
Purchase, return
Share & refer a friend
Action
Awareness
Consideration
Preference
25. 25 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Multiple touch points 6x more valuable.
“The more channels that we can engage
in with our customers, the better the
overall value of the customer.”
-Tim McCauley,
Senior Director, Mcommerce, Walgreens
Source: eMarketer, January 2013
Cross-Promote & Retarget
28. 28 @urbanairship #growthhacking
When the Love is Gone…
Create reengagement campaigns
v
• Identify users that recently
uninstalled
• Export a list for an e-mail, or social
winback campaign
32. 32 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Define segments that move your business
Expand your omni-channel reach
Recapture users and retarget the right new ones
Segment
BEST PRACTICE
33. 33 @urbanairship #growthhacking
Q&A
Luke, we need a slide here
that we can sit on while we
have Q&A. Also add: “Want
more? Check out the online
resources in our Content
Library for more best
practice and benchmark
resources.” in smaller text
on the slide. Thx!
Q & A
Want more?
Check out the resources in our online
Content Library for more best practices and
benchmark reports.
Welcome to the Urban Airship’s Growth Hacking Mobile Apps: 3 Critical Growth Tactics.
We are excited to cover the changes we’re seeing in the mobile marketing space with you today.
And we’re social! So please tweet or follow @urbanairship using the hashtag #GrowthHacking on any comments.
So who are we? I’m I’m Alyssa Meritt, Head, Strategic Services for Urban Airship, which means I lead a team of consultants who deliver tailored digital marketing strategies to clients of all sizes in order to increase mobile app engagement and grow business ROI. I’m there for anything from XXX to XXX, which gives me a unique perspective into the business challenges mobile marketers and product owners are trying to solve.
And with me is Justin Dunham, Marketing Technology and Analytics Lead for The Ship. Justin manages all marketing technology and analytics, including web engineering, marketing automation, and digital marketing and lead flow & revenue analytics for Urban Airship. He also leads our testing and experimentation function across the organization.
Why are we here today? We’re seeing a shift in how people engage in mobile
It’s changed the tools we offer to developers and marketers,
and what it takes to be successful.
So now that we’ve set the course, what is growth marketing,
I want to start with a little story, about a service called Hotmail. Does everyone remember Hotmail? The first really well-known web-based email service.
When they started, they put this link at the bottom of all their messages
This was really smart: because every person who received an email from Hotmail, had a way to sign up for it, too
They were bought 1.5 years after launch, and had over 10 million users. That’s nothing today, but back in 1997 that was a big deal
This acquisition strategy was really creative.
It required some thinking across marketing and product.
It required awareness of the fact that you could advertise to someone else at a great moment -- when they’re in their own email client.
It required data and analytics. You can be sure that they were tracking how well this tactic worked.
And it was really the first “growth hack.”
So what do we mean by “growth hacking”? Or the more accurate name for it is “growth marketing”. Growth marketing can drive huge returns, and it has a few characteristics.
The way you interact with the product team. Before, marketers are thinking about acquisition, or branding, or email campaigns, or press releases. They aren’t really thinking in terms of the product. But in the growth marketing mindset, they’re sitting with the product team.
Their goals. Growth marketers are evaluating opportunities across the entire funnel and picking the ones that are the most strategically important.
Their use of data. Growth marketing is about challenging that assumption and using data to drive real results. And this is what enables you to be really creative -- that you know what is or isn’t working.
Testing. This is the flipside of data, right? That we use the data to run experiments, to refine our thinking, and to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Use of technology. There are literally thousands of VC-backed companies in the martech space now. But the growth marketing mindset is to view this as an opportunity, not a barrier. If I choose the right content management system for my website, I can make updates faster and my site renders more quickly, which means I rank better in Google. Growth marketers understand and use technology.
AND IT IS NOT JUST STARTUPS
You’re right. We’re seeing this shift in small and large companies
It is a shift in approach and business strategy
TACTICALLYAlign on growth. Respond and measure, block and tackle with retaining users and creating a great user experienceElevate the data discussion to omnichannel as you do this, using tactical strides to power investment.
STRATEGICALLY
Changing how you work internally: cross departmental collaboration, building for growthThinking open omnichannel- best in breed, identify what moves the business.
How growth translates to mobile is a focus on the mobile app as a product with supporting contributors and cross channel connection points.
This kind of change isn’t easy. There are some core elements tho:
Retention, Testing, Retargeting
Let’s start with Retention.
Retention often gets overlooked.
Imagine you have an app that’s growing users 100% a week (which would be incredible). But you’re churning 90% a week. So your net growth, at that point, is only 10%. It probably makes a lot more sense to focus on fixing your churn than worrying about adding more new users; and the gains there will probably be easier to come by.
And going back to user experience, and to data, there are lots of things you can do to use the data you have to increase retention. Personalizing content, improving functionality, connecting offline and online experiences, and so on.
Exactly!
Retention is about value. As your relationship grows, so does the data you have on a user.
As a marketer- not just selling, all touch points. Be effective by providing value. Right person, right place, right time.
We talk about this in every strategy session; Best messaging and experiences benefit the brand and the user.
VALUE IS AT THE HEART OF THIS
Digital wallet boarding passes are efficient and low cost to airlines. For the user, they are easy, convenient and save time. Starbuck’s mobile app is a loyalty and payment device for the brand, but is a lifestyle experience for the user, making payment easy, and exposing them to new apps, music and discounts.Features are a huge part of retention
These benefits engage new users. A retention plan keeps them.
It can be as simple as building in habit
We support retention through the use of tags to identify user preference as well as user behavior.This can be used in marketing automation to welcome new users or re-engage lapsed ones.
Fandango planned for the possibility of lapsed users by asking for interests when users were most engaged- upon the first open of their app.
There’s some really sophisticated stuff you can learn from mobile behaviors.
We’ve set up our tools to allow you to learn at whatever place that you’re at.1) understanding what helps engage aggregate audience early: click thrus on welcome offer
2) See how
Testing is the best way to improve results. You want to figure out what you think will happen, figure out a way to test those assumptions, and then act on the data.
An example: You want to invest money in a new navigation design so that people can find content more easily. So one way to do this, is just to do it. A better way is: what numbers do you expect to effect? Can you run a change with some visitors to see if those numbers actually move? And you can apply this everywhere.
Here’s a quick, simplified example of what this looks like. The first column is our hypothesis. We make a guess as to what will actually happen, and we put a number against that guess. That way, we know what we’re looking for. And also, we can see how far off we were and make our guesses better later.
Then we have what the actual test is. Some are simpler than others. Some tests are just going out and getting data we already have. But the point is to find a way to figure out whether our hypothesis is true or false.
Then an owner. Accountability is really key. To help you out, we’ll make the experiments sheet we use part of the follow-up we send out after the webinar, so you can see how we manage things at Urban Airship.
Lastly, the result! The nice side effect of cataloging all your results is you start building yourself a litlte knowledge base showing what you’ve learned.
This can be as simple as A/B testing your message copy to start
The best way to get someone to do what you want is by giving them a call to action.
Word choice does matter in breaking news (see Expressen) Effects of emojis is inconclusive based on beta tests, but we have clear evidence that our customers want to test this.
Some customers only message through A/B Tests - they test everything just in case
Really interesting result that shows how to think through the actual metrics and who you’re trying to target. The conversion rate is the actual target and you can use data to ensure that you’re targeting the right people.
The right user, right place, right time -- talk of 1:1 marketing, personalization- at the core of this is attributes and segments that define your users.
So, segmentation is really marketing 101, right? We talked about funnel segmentation. Thinking strategically about each of the funnel stages, and where you should focus, is important for driving growth.
[consider saying something about finding where the funnel is leaking---- Tagging for key actions and custom events to fix the HOLES IN YOUR FUNNEL]
There are lots of other ways to segment, too. How about frequency of use? Or where a user came from? Or how long they spend in your app? One exciting thing about growth marketing is you can find little groups of users who absolutely love something about your product, and then focus on them, and focus on growing that segment by improving your product for them.
One really important segment is where people are in the funnel and people forget that one of our key approaches in growth marketing is targeting people the whole way through the funnel, and planning for retention – asking for
WHAT IS YOUR CORE ACTIVATION GOAL? There’s probably 10 user actions, but one that means something significant to the brand and shows user intent.Sign up / consume content/ buy something/ share something
Actions and KPIs
Identifying points in the lifecycle where messaging or user experience can be improved upon
By the time someone has downloaded, opted in and then registered or signed in…they’ve shown themselves to be extremely interested in your product. These are the most qualified people you have to work with.
If you don’t focus on retaining them (AND FINDING MORE LIKE THEM) then you are neglecting the most high quality leads that you have.
Certainly you want to activate people, capture those who have abandoned a cart or repurchased.
Use Case: Focus on your highest valued users. Get them to rate your app using a rich page to direct them to the app store.
Insight: Export list of user that are on the high end of app open from your month actives. Target them to rate your app.
Your best customers download your app. If they refer that’s a huge signal
When they connect in additional channels, that is yet another signal
Cross promote and retarget (Connect)Mobile is a unique channel. What is your strategy to increase audience touchpoints?Viral user growthCross channel protects your investment
Redbox, Digital Wallet
Another strategy you can use is lookalikes – any product that allows you to find segments that…
We all want to capture our best customers but sometimes ...
When they’ve lapsed, or cancel your service, or been inactive, or generally show themselves to not be retained, then you have an opportunity to learn from them.
Mobile + Email can = Insight
Give them the option of choosing a less expensive package that isn’t advertised during signup. You’ve already lost them, so you might as well try something to bring them back.
What’s the worst thing that made them cancel? Use it to inform the product roadmap, increase future retention, maybe even improve enough to bring them back.
Assemble the right team to support your mobile product. Share a focus on growth
This includes your internal, agile, cross functional team as well as partners
There’s a new expectation of a value exchange between brands and users. It should be built into the app itself, but if it is not, what messaging can add value?
Build in sharing, utility, reasons to reengage
Track metrics that ladder up to your goals. Optimize incrementally, Iterate on small improvementsDefine KPIs that actually matter- downloads are great but are they staying.
Do you have content worth sharing that is aiding in organic growth?
We look at segmentation in a number of ways: explicit and implicit cues from your user’s mobile actions, where a user is in the lifecycle, how they respond to campaigns, as well as other data gathered from CRM and POS systems and exported into the mobile experience
Marketing is no longer linear. Make sure you can use your mobile data in other channels. In fact, Forrester just talked about how mobile data is the key channel for user information. Expand the touchpoints you can impact through user insights, cross promotion and retargeting.
Thanks so much for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you on our next webinar in July that reveals results of a recent survey we did on the newest mobile channel, Mobile Wallet. Early look: consumers are very, very interested in using it, and we’d like to talk to you more about how to engage them through the non-payment side of digital wallet.