Presented at 360 iDev Denver 2012 We're at the end of 2012 and it has become clear that the mobile app economy is leaving the vast majority of developers out in the cold. The revenue story is lopsided -- a handful of apps have turned into gold mines, but most of them are still standing in the river with a pan hoping for a stray nugget. With over a million apps in existence, simply building your app does not mean that users will come. In this talk you'll learn how to use customer relationship management, analytics and marketing tools to turn your app into a full fledged business. We'll start with a discussion of the many facets of analytics spanning from macro trends in the app stores all the way down to the demographics and actions of your individual users. You'll then learn about how to use customer relationship management tools collect and analyze that data in order to execute on marketing campaigns to engage, grow and monetize your user base.

1. Turning Your Mobile
App Into a Business
Bill Magnuson (@billmag)
Co-Founder & CTO, Appboy
bill@appboy.com
http://slideshare.net/BillMagnuson

2. Why Does This Matter?
• The revenue story is lopsided. Some
apps end up as movie stars, but most
of them are still working at
Starbucks, trying to make it big.
• Most developers don’t market
effectively. Those who do have a big
advantage.
• Mobile revenue is still an unsolved
problem. Experimentation and
attribution are critical to success.

3. The Data-Messaging Cycle
App usage and identity
targeted messaging
Effectiveness
analytics & attribution

4. What Data Should I Collect?
Everything you can. Success in mobile requires
understanding data along many dimensions:
• Who your users are
• How, when and where your app is used
• App store and sales metrics
• Social media engagement and marketing
effectiveness
• Marketplace trends

5. User Identity
Understanding your user
base is key to keeping
them engaged.
• Engaged users make in-
app purchases, share
your apps and develop
product loyalty.
• High quality
monetization
opportunities require
data-driven targeting.

6. How, When and Where
Passive usage analytics provide you with high level insights
on the usage patterns of your app.
• Correlating usage changes with events, marketing and
upgrades is key to measuring the value of your efforts.

7. Sales Metrics
Like “How, When and Where”, but closer to your bottom line.
• Measures the effectiveness of marketing and cross promotion.
• Helps you plan future products and forecast the effectiveness of
monetization.

8. Going Viral
Determining the effectiveness of social
media engagement is hard.
• How often is your app being
shared, are those shares converting
into paying users?
• Who are your most influential users
and how can you harness them?

9. Marketplace Trends
Keeping up on industry and marketplace trends
ensures you’re leveraging new learning and not
repeating mistakes.
• However, be careful – a lot of “facts” we see on
blogs and in the media have shaky foundations.
• Remember that your app is one of millions and
your experience will be unique. Learn from
others, but keep your own data and test your
assumptions.

10. What Now?
Effective app management is an
ongoing effort.
1. Collect – Get everything you Collect
can.
2. Analyze – Once you have
your data written down, you
need to analyze it to inform
future efforts.
Act Analyze
3. Act – Take action based on
your analysis, then collect
data to see if it worked.
4. Repeat.

11. Real World Examples

12. Handling Bugs and Outages
• Timely communication helps eliminate negative app
store reviews. Pathway experienced a complete app
failure due to DST and made it out with 30 new
beta testers, and zero negative reviews.
• Tip: Use in-app messaging instead of push to avoid
telling users who won’t experience the problem.

13. Cross Promotion - Kickstarter
• Your user base represents an
incredibly valuable resource –
attention.
• Leverage that attention to
succeed with other products.
• The developer of Affix
successfully funded a
Kickstarter project for a new
app by advertising to his
existing user base.

14. Reward and Engage – More Ideas
• Use push to get ‘lost’ users back into the app.
• Excite early adopters with news about
upcoming versions and features.
• Target top social media influencers and
reward them for sharing.
• Market directly to funnel segments to get
users through registration or help them
discover new features.

15. Principles

16. Be a Scientist
• Isolate your efforts, don’t try everything at once.
• Make sure you can measure the effectiveness of
actions before you make them.
• Learn from your peers.
• Experiment!
http://www.xkcd.com

17. Take Focused Action
Everything you do should be growing
your user base or increasing your
lifetime customer value (LTV).
• Grow your user base through app
store optimization, cross
promotion, advertising and install
campaigns.
• Increase LTV with customer
relationship management and
inbound marketing tools.

18. Target, don’t Spam
• Maximize your signal-to-noise
ratio with targeting. Your users
will reciprocate respect.
• Use drip campaigns and event
driven marketing to capitalize
on sales opportunities.
• Leverage the strengths of
different communication
mediums (push, e-mail, in-
app, social networks).

19. Turning Your Mobile
App Into a Business
Bill Magnuson (@billmag)
Co-Founder & CTO, Appboy
bill@appboy.com
http://slideshare.net/BillMagnuson