Okay, I promised a follow up to my post on Retention is the New Acquisition and here it is.

My first foray into App marketing was for a bank, a little over 15 years ago. We ran download campaigns directly to online banking clients as a ‘soft’ target before moving on to the banks’ customers who were not using any form of digital banking. This was the early days of banking apps so uptake was slow. However, through educational content and incentives, we eventually surpassed our targets. So early days and lessons learnt as we progressed – building the aeroplane as we were flying, so to speak.

However, it was a different story when I received a brief from a USA based game developer, to help with a launch strategy for a new board game and it’s mobile app derivative. The board game was a pachinko style game (a sort of vertical pinball machine from Japan), far too complicated to explain here, but exciting nonetheless. The mobile app was an expansion of this and the game developers created an almost endless supply of levels to keep users engaged and opening up their wallets.

The strategy was digital-only for both, with cross marketing between the two. Basically, developing very separate audiences for offline (older market who remember pinball machines) and online (younger digital savvy audience with little to no interest in having an in-person board game experience), who would normally only fit into one or the other profile, and then selling them the excitement and benefit of the other.

We did staggered trial launches in various markets to test a whole host of things but mainly to understand if we had an MVP (minimum viable product) to take to market. Each trial was 6 weeks, to work and understand the algorithm, as well as gather audience data.  We had nowhere near Candy Crush budgets but we sure felt like we had big wallets to play with, spending between US$ 1000 and US$ 3000 a day. We must have done something right as the founder sold the business to a competitor on the eve of full launch for a tidy sum, and the games were subsequently shelved, never to see the light of day.

By all accounts, the mobile game was more successful in every metric – downloads, registrations, engagement, in-app purchases and low drop-off rates. Why? Because everyone in the marketing team lived the experience. We had several marketing stand-ups a week and at each one, the founder would challenge everyone in the team to play the game, and to play it like we were the intended audience.  Every meeting we had to provide a progress report; what level we had achieved, what we struggled with, what we breezed through, were there any glitches, where could we improve, etc., etc.  We all used the gaming playbook and the brand guide as references, making every marketing meeting a Quality Control session as well as an ideas dump for new levels and features.  I had never experienced this level of mental investment in a product before.

And that’s the key insight for me. I have seen app marketing teams where a number of the individuals on the team haven’t even downloaded the app, let alone signed up and become active users. Your in-app analytics becomes so much more meaningful when you are familiar with the User Interface and the User Experience.  I get it that not every app is fun or in your field of interest but you’ve got to taste the food if you’re going to recommend the restaurant.

Andre Steenekamp