The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook Over 120 Pages of Mobile Growth Tips

The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook Over 120 pages of mobile growth tips

With stories and examples from What's Inside

Intro: The State of Mobile 2021 1

Challenges to Achieving Growth in 2021 11

Strategy 1: Organic App Growth 16

The Importance of Organic 16 SEO 19 Web to App 23 QR Codes 28 Text-Me-The-App 31

Strategy 2: Paid & Affiliate Marketing 35

Types of Paid Advertising 38 Audience targeting based advertising 39 Intent Based Advertising 39 Discovery Based Advertising 41 Trust Based Advertising 43 Affiliate Marketing 43 Influencer Marketing 45 Paid Advertising in an IDFA-Less World 49 How to Achieve High User Opt-In Rates on iOS 14 50

Strategy 3: Virality 58

3 Factors of Virality 59 Incentives 60 Ego 65 Emotion 66

(Continued on next page) What's Inside (Continued)

How is Virality Measured? 68

Strategy 4: Activation 74

How to Encourage User Activation 75 The Aha! Moment 81

Strategy 5: Retention 86

What Does Strong Retention Look Like? 87 Engagement and Retention: A Perfect Pair 89 Win Back and Retain Churned Users 95

Strategy 6: Measurement 105

Challenges to Measurement 106 Winding User Journeys & Cross-Platform Challenges 107 Types of Attribution Models 108 Challenges to Mobile Measurement as a Result of iOS 14 113

Conclusion 121

The State of Mobile in 2021

If 2020 was a time of confusion and navigating uncharted waters, 2021 is about using the learnings from last year’s pivoting, testing, and iterating to uncover opportunities for further growth and innovation. As the most damaging effects of the pandemic slow down, refining strategies to capitalize on our current new normal and shifts in user behavior will be increasingly important in order to sustain growth.

Let’s take a look at some of the events that have defined and will continue to shape the mobile landscape in 2021: iOS 14, 15 and Apple’s privacy rules Last summer at WWDC 2020, Apple announced that marketers would no longer be able to access granular, user-level data by default on iOS for paid ad attribution. Rather, user-level data such as IDFAs would be available only if users explicitly opted in to data sharing via Apple’s App Tracking Transparency modal. If users did not opt in, SKAdNetwork, Apple’s attribution framework that provided aggregate-level data only, would be the only acceptable alternative on iOS.

The deprecation of IDFAs and other device-level data diminished marketers’ ability to effectively measure, optimize, and run personalized ad campaigns. Detailed campaign insights, retargeting, personalization, and frequency capping became a thing of the past. This left the mobile industry in a frenzy as marketers worried how they would be able to run and measure their ad campaigns without the detailed data the industry relied on for the past decade.

With the announcement of iOS 15 at this summer’s WWDC, Apple introduced multiple new privacy changes, including the removal of access to IPs with Private Relay, signaling a continuing trend of removing tracking identifiers even further.

When iOS 14.5 released in the spring of 2021, most of the industry expected major shifts in advertising spend, efficacy, and very low ATT opt-in rates. And we believe iOS 15 will continue those shifts in both spending and measurement trends.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 1 iOS 15 and Apple doubling down on privacy With iOS 15, Apple has decided to double down on privacy. Some of the major changes that Apple has introduced and will take effect with iOS 15 include:

• App Privacy Report - This provides users with more granular info on how apps and SDKs are accessing their data in a new section under a user’s device’s privacy settings. Users will be able to see how often and when apps use permissions (e.g. accessing location, camera, and microphone) and which domains apps are calling out to (e.g. api.branch.io).

• SKAdNetwork Enhancements - Brands (and MMPs) now can get SKAdNetwork postbacks directly. That means that Facebook, Google and other SANs can no longer simply say “trust us to report how many SKAdNetwork installs Apple sent us.” Brands can configure these postbacks to be sent to MMPs to enhance their measurement and compare with other channels. The direct postbacks are limited for winning claims, while all postbacks (including non-winning ones) are still being sent to ad networks.

• Hide My Email - Apple introduced the ability to easily generate single-use email addresses that can be used as an alternative to traditional email addresses. This is a natural extension of “Sign in with Apple,” which allows users who need an email address to sign up for a service to generate a “fake” email address that Apple forwards to the real email address.

• Misc changes related to "tracking" - For non-paying customers, there are some small but still meaningful changes to enhance privacy, including IP addresses masked for domains counted as trackers in Safari, and IP addresses masked for pixels in emails.

• iCloud+ Private Relay - Apple is providing a “private VPN” in the Safari browser, with IP address masked for Safari traffic for users who pay for iCloud+.

ATT opt-in rates varying wildly With the debut of iOS 14.5 in April came the loss of device-level data for paid app campaigns on iOS unless users explicitly consented to data sharing via Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework. While predicted ATT opt-in rates ranged from doom and gloom to tentatively optimistic, the reality is far murkier than expected, with ATT opt-in rates raging in wildly different degrees. For example, Flurry reported opt-in rates between 4 and 13%, while AppsFlyer reported a global average of 37%.

While various factors like app category, user base geography, and the app’s ATT strategy could impact an app’s ATT opt-in rate, a major contributor to the confusion is differences in how these opt-in metrics are being calculated. According to AdExchanger, ATT opt-in numbers are wildly inconsistent because of lack of consistency in deciding which events qualify for the opt-in rate calculation (authorized / (authorized + denied)), and in the method used to collect these events. This is why many observers are confused by the different “opt- in rates” they're seeing, which makes it easy to draw incorrect conclusions.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 2 ATT opt-in rate numbers provide a useful point-in-time look at user preferences. These numbers can serve as a helpful benchmark for advertisers and publishers working through the disruption caused by iOS 14. However, using these numbers irresponsibly, especially this early in the adoption cycle, can provide ammunition for narratives that may not truly exist. In addition, debating and obsessing over this data doesn't change the reality that Apple has used AppTrackingTransparency to shift the narrative around mobile user privacy. IDFA- based, device-level attribution data is now far rarer — meaning marketers will need to find new ways to measure and optimize their campaigns.

Shift to Android ad spend As a result of iOS 14 and 15 changes making paid advertising more difficult on iOS, we have seen marketers shift their ad spend from iOS to Android. Ad spend has increased 8-21% on Android, while ad spend on iOS has been decreasing. This is because on Android, marketers still have access to the GAID (Google Advertising ID), which gives granular-level visibility into campaign performance. However, we don’t recommend ditching iOS ads completely — as more users update to iOS 14.5, iOS 15 launches, and the ecosystem adjusts to the new reality, we expect iOS ad spend to recover.

The rise of offline to online As a result of the pandemic, brands have shifted to providing no-touch experiences that promote social distancing and reduce the need for physical contact. This need accelerated the rise of the QR code — in fact, Branch observed that from January 2019 to January 2021 there has been a 496% surge in QR codes as the last attributed touch before a conversion event. For example, the food industry has used QR codes to link users to a menu on mobile, reserve a place at a restaurant, and enable ordering ahead. As travel started to reopen, airlines implemented QR codes to enable bag and flight check-in, generate a boarding pass, ordering, paying, and viewing information to reduce queues and promote social distancing guidelines.

The explosion of QR codes shows no signs of slowing down, and is here to stay even after the world slowly returns to pre-pandemic times. Their ease of use from the end-user perspective, ability to measure offline to online journeys, and their ability to convert existing offline users into the app make QR codes a must in a savvy mobile marketer’s growth strategy. We cover more on QR codes below in the Organic App Growth section.

Coby Berman COO

“Winning brands will exceed new consumer expectations by seamlessly bridging digital experiences and the physical world. As consumers move through the physical world again, give them a reason to download your app with on-premise app experiences, engage them with location-triggered and location-targeted messaging, and exceed expectations with arrival detection and seamless pickup and check-in experiences.”

As a result of the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 requiring strict lockdowns and sheltering in place, food delivery apps experienced unprecedented growth. Global sales for food delivery apps Doordash, GrubHub and UberEats surged 122% to $51 billion in 2020, compared to sales of $23 billion in 2019.

However, a big portion of this growth — 69% — came from unusual demand that analysts expect to cool down as the pandemic subsides. This implies wealth transfer from restaurants to delivery apps that could potentially swing the other way once restrictions lift even further and vaccination rates increase. One example: according to the Wall Street Journal, daily users of restaurant reservation app OpenTable more than doubled in mid-April from the same time a year prior, as restrictions on indoor dining and drinking were lifted. During the first week of April, 45% of Americans said they had dined out, up from 29% in early February, according to the pollster Ipsos. We are likely to see these numbers further increase as more vaccinations roll out and restrictions ease.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 5 Similarly, grocery delivery apps experienced massive spikes in growth during the onset of the pandemic and continued to stay higher than pre-pandemic levels:

These apps show no signs of slowing down, implying that users have grown accustomed to the convenience of grocery delivery and plan to continue using grocery delivery apps even as the pandemic subsides.

Mobile gaming surged in 2020 due to a greater number of customers downloading apps during the pandemic to stay in touch with friends and find something to do under lockdown restrictions. In Q1 2020, according to a report by App Annie, gaming app downloads rose 30% in the months of January through March. Branch data shows this early spike and that gaming continued to rise far above pre-pandemic levels throughout the year:

Hotplay Games reports that many mobile gamers who started playing after the beginning of COVID-19 outbreak were still playing in July 2020, with more than half saying they plan to continue mobile gaming. These new mobile game players are likely to spend money in-game on average $10.51 higher than those being spent by the existing gamers. What does this mean for mobile marketers? Now is the time for advertisers to capitalize on this audience.

Retail

The retail industry saw a huge increase in app downloads during the height of the pandemic: in 2020, retailers saw a year over year 58% increase in in-app transactions from September 2019 to September 2020. As consumers continue to shop in-app and pick up curbside, mobile has become the number one destination users turn to when buying a product.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 7 What does this mean for mobile marketers and product managers? Those in the retail space will need to continuously show the value of their in-app shopping experience to prevent users from flocking to the competition. Preparing for the post-COVID era, where users will prioritize brand loyalty on customer experience over price, is of utmost importance: 86% of people are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Enabling seamless pickup experiences and making in-app payment easy are just a few things users now expect from retail apps.

Digital acceleration across platforms Worldwide digital transformation technology spending is expected to total more than $7.4 trillion over the next four years — with apps being a key focus of investment. This means digital transformation is being adopted at a faster rate than ever before, and this rate has increased even more due to the pandemic. With COVID requiring lockdown and social distancing measures, brands have had to discover ways to provide and transform their services to reach users digitally. This means we’ve seen an increase in brands expanding across channels and platforms they might not have considered before, such as investing in their app and improving user experiences across touchpoints. As a result, we predict digital acceleration to continue long after COVID as we see users expecting seamless mobile experiences from brands as they turn to their mobile phones to complete tasks. This means that continual investment in your app and digital platforms is key to retain app users acquired as a result of COVID.

Insurance company Allstate emphasizes in its social media app adoption campaign how easy it is for customers to get their money back through the app for insurance reimbursement claims. The messaging ties app usage to the idea of receiving money, directly showing users the app’s value. Utilizing deep links to bring users to the app from social media would further remove friction and increase install rates.

Features like BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) and curbside pickup that developed as a result of the pandemic and became in-app offerings will continue to be expected even as the pandemic subsides. For brands, this means continual investments in the mobile app to facilitate easy, seamless shopping experiences. This is increasingly necessary if retailers hope to keep up with Amazon and big-box retailers.

Michaels and the Walmart app offering curbside pickup and delivery through the app.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 9 Focus on retention As a result of so many brands realizing the value of mobile as a result of the pandemic, a new challenge for brands is how to retain those mobile users even after COVID-19 has become the “new normal” or faded into the background. In fact, 73% of CMOs say retention is a key focus area in 2021.

However, retention isn’t something you think about after you acquire new users, rather, it should permeate all stages of the funnel. You wouldn’t want to waste money or time acquiring a user likely to churn quickly, for example, and you want users with high retention rates to be advocates for your brand. To foster user retention, ensuring customers receive a good user experience is key. This means fixing broken touchpoints and creating connected, cohesive opportunities with deep linking for users to interact with you no matter what channel, platform, or device they’re on. Build trust by making interacting with your brand easy, engaging users, and personalizing their experiences to convince users to stick around long after the pandemic subsides.

A Crowded App Store

A common challenge for businesses that consider mobile a key player in their growth strategy is scaling app discovery and consistent adoption, as users increasingly spend most of their time in just a handful of top apps.

The unique challenges of mobile, including a crowded Play/App Store of over 4 million existing apps, disruptive new businesses clamoring for mindshare, and the stores themselves driving traffic to competitors through proprietary search ads, mean making your app known to the world is no small feat.

Last year a majority of our Mobile Growth Survey* respondents (38.2%) reported that driving app discovery was their biggest challenge of 2020. In 2021 and beyond, creating new pathways for users to discover and fully adopt your app will be critical.

*The Mobile Growth Survey is a yearly survey that informs the results and content of our annual Mobile Growth Handbook.

Over the past year, we have seen walled garden advertising networks like Facebook, Google, ByteDance, and Jio become stronger, despite logistical challenges from legal paradigms like GDPR and CCPA that gave users increasingly granular control over their personal data. These advertising giants continued to respond by further locking advertising data within their walls, preventing advertisers from effectively measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns across platforms and raising their own CPIs, limiting the ability to expand meaningful learnings from paid placements into their broader marketing strategy. This, coupled with purposeful technical limitations, prevents users from accessing content beyond their walls from organic engagement, creating an environment that increasingly biases app discovery towards the companies with the largest wallet, rather than the most compelling product. iOS 14, 15 and IDFA Changes

The IDFA, which stands for ‘identifier for advertisers,’ acts as a universal ‘name tag’ that allows advertisers and ad networks to recognize a user who interacted with an advertiser app on iOS. Advertisers use the IDFA to tie back a user who clicked on an ad and a user who downloaded an app, which allowed for campaign optimization, measurement, ads personalization, and granular-level targeting.

What is the IDFA used for in the industry?

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 12 However, advertisers can no longer easily access the IDFA, turning the mobile industry upside down. At WWDC in the summer of 2020, Apple announced that on iOS 14 and beyond, advertisers would not get access to users’ IDFA (or any other granular, user-level data) unless users explicitly consent via Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework. If an app does not secure user opt-in via this framework, SKAdNetwork, Apple’s aggregate-level attribution framework, is the only acceptable alternative. As of April 26, 2021, this change went live with iOS 14.5.

Apple’s ATT framework.

This development isn’t exclusive to iOS, either. We’ve seen this shift towards strict privacy policies throughout the past year, indicating that the mobile industry is moving towards a world where universal identifiers will be unavailable. For instance, Google announced its plan to phase out support of third-party cookies in 2022, making targeted advertising across the web more difficult — as many adtech solutions used to do this today rely heavily on third-party cookies. We also expect Google to deprecate the GAID (Google Advertising ID) on Android in the future, which would assign mobile advertising campaigns on Android the same fate as those on iOS. iOS 15 is continuing this trend with an even stronger push for a move away from device data with the removal of access to IP and a strong disruption of email tracking. Soon, the mobile industry will be faced with a new reality where the ability to use device-level data to run and measure mobile ad campaigns is no longer guaranteed.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 13 What does a world without universal IDs or device-level data mean for mobile marketers? The loss of user-level data makes the tactics of cross-channel growth marketing — targeting, personalization, and cross-platform attribution — increasingly difficult. Capabilities like user-level attribution, the creation of retargeting audiences, look-alike audiences, personalization frequency capping, and more capabilities to run app ad campaigns effectively will be diminished. Re-engagement campaigns across both the web and mobile apps will be nowhere near the level of previous granularity. All of this makes campaign measurement and optimization exceedingly difficult, contributing to diminishing ROI for paid campaigns (organic campaigns are unaffected).

Although mobile advertising and measurement is going to be more difficult, marketers will simply need to find new ways to connect users with their app. For example, certain networks that are less reliant on universal IDs could support effective re-engagement campaigns without the need for IDs – for example, networks whose inventory is direct-to-device (e.g. preloads and other types of OEM inventory). Owned and earned media will become increasingly important, as will strategically leveraging your existing user base on desktop and mobile to convert into app users. We are confident that savvy marketers will be able to discover and create alternative methods to drive app adoption, and look forward to a mobile ecosystem that places the holistic customer experience at the forefront of its marketing efforts.

In this whitepaper, we’ll cover every stage of growth, so your team can execute a custom mobile growth strategy. We’ll provide you with a holistic framework for structuring your growth marketing and unpack specific tactics for each stage your company will encounter. At the end of each section, you’ll find a brief summary of the main takeaways, as well as questions meant to help better align your team on your growth strategy.

Let’s begin!

Although much has been written about the impact of COVID on the mobile industry, less has focused on a key split in how apps that saw a “pandemic bump” experienced growth. Specifically, in comparison to paid channels, organic app growth is up:

The best thing about this development from a LTV-focused mobile growth perspective? Owned channels are statistically more effective at driving value to your business. Branch research has found that organic channels (such as email, smart banners, and referrals) are up to 4.4X more effective at driving purchases than paid acquisition channels.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 16 Users who find your company organically usually have a much higher intent, and are more likely to go on to become your most loyal app users. They’re already aligned with either the brand, value thesis from the business, or the source that referred them, which reduces the chance that they won’t find utility in what the app delivers and maximizes the ROI behind the organically-aligned growth efforts that drove the install.

Additionally, although iOS 14 changes heavily affect paid mobile advertising, organic acquisition is unaffected. This presents new opportunities for owned-media and earned-media campaigns brands should take advantage of. We expect to see more emphasis on organic channels, as well as a shift to acquiring users on desktop and mobile websites and converting them into the app. Ensuring that your brand’s links across platforms take users into your app will become even more critical to provide the best experience and facilitate user acquisition, engagement, and retention. Investing in owned, organic channels will be imperative to create connected, holistic journeys for your users across digital touchpoints as the effectiveness of paid mobile advertising diminishes. Although there will be changes and difficulties measuring paid app install ad campaigns, we are excited to see a world where brands think of their campaigns from a user journey perspective first, instead of focusing narrowly on tracking install ads.

Other platforms (mobile, web, desktop, OTT, etc.)

iOS iOS owned/earned paid ads

- Not impacted

Saket Toshniwal Senior Product Manager (Growth and CRM)

"It’s a lot easier to acquire users who have already visited your website, or downloaded your app but haven’t been using it, or dropped from the registration form. It reduces CPAs. We use FB, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest. It makes sense to experiment and try every channel in order to see which one works."

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO is a core strategy for building and optimizing a content marketing engine to acquire users. Using SEO to build an organic audience for mobile growth is still underutilized and therefore a prime opportunity for the savvy growth team. High-intent users, searching for keywords related to your app or product, are more likely to move from search to your content if you build it around those words. However, choosing keywords is a strategy in itself.

The new, more effective way to think about your SEO strategy is by funneling intent, as shown below:

Eli Schwartz Growth Advisor

“The overall meaning of organic is non-paid, and it's not necessarily driven intentionally. There are things you can do once you discover that organic vein. Organic vegetables need to be watered and given sunlight, but there's a natural process to it. You are not paying for it and when it comes to SEO, it is a link that you should be naturally getting without manipulating anything directly.”

Start with considering the user’s holistic intent, not with the isolated keywords that define it. What is their end goal? For example, say you’re a makeup company. Instead of throwing out keywords that could describe your array of products from the start, narrow down your keyword phrases by the distinct actions you think users would take when learning about or looking for a hero product. This might look like:

• Intent to Learn - How to apply liquid eyeliner

• Intent to buy - Fenty eyeliner

• Intent to Browse/Shop - Eyeliner

Here are some more examples:

Intent Topics Key Phrases

• Best LCD TVs

• LCD TV reviews LCD TVs • New CD TVs

• LCD TV 2019

• Black homecoming dress

• Red homecoming dress Browse Product Homecoming dress • Black homecoming dress near me

• Junior homecoming dress

• Eye liner liquid

• Eye liner make up Eyeliner • Eye liner pencil

• Eye liner

Design the user experience to move the user down the funnel by mapping the type of content you create to that intent. For example, a user who’s just browsing about a topic or wants to find a specific product likely won’t want to read an editorial-style article, but might respond to a listicle. In the case of our eyeliner example, a user who wants to browse eyeliner products could easily translate that intent to a piece of content like “The best liquid eyeliners” over a longform article explaining how to put on liquid eyeliner:

Source: https://editorialist.com/beauty/best-eyeliner/

Because designing UX to fulfill intent considers not only the keyword itself, but the user’s current goals and mindset, the content you create is likely to rank higher:

Creating valuable content to fulfill the user’s intent is the key to turn a less-directed query into an intention, then a purchase. This can range from a sub-topic to a long-form editorial style article for a user who wants to learn about a topic in depth, to a more media-driven piece, or even a specific niche or subtopic.

Keep in mind that Google increasingly favors editorial content over SEO-optimized auto-generated pages that don’t bring actual value to readers. This ongoing shift again returns dividends for a growth team investing in intent-to-content based, rather than keyword-based SEO optimization.

Some examples of content that fulfills intent:

This content covers a subtopic (cat eye eyeliner).

This shorter-form, media-heavy content is also great for users with the intent to learn.

While this tutorial is more long-form, editorial style content for users whose keyword intent was learning actually best mapped to granular education.

Executing the intent-to-authority path by building aligned content, as shown above, places your platform at the forefront for a user’s subsequent conversion. By creating content and designing the user experience specifically around the intents and desires of the user, they’re more likely to take the action you want them to — whether it be to visit a web page or purchase a product. Make sure that you fulfill their needs and don’t preemptively bombard them with aggressive messaging or content, such as an immediate sign in box, if it does not build value by fitting their intent.

Web to App Intent-based SEO can create brand alignment and begin a user path to conversion, but for the advanced growth team, it is also a core top-of-funnel expansion strategy for high-ROI app installs.

Your existing mobile website is an often-overlooked resource to turn existing mobile visitors into loyal app users. In fact, doing so is 82% less expensive than running app install ads.

If our mantra at every stage of the funnel is to maximize the number of users who take the next step, how do you best convert web users to app users? Smart banners like Branch’s Journeys are the best way to persuade users from your mobile website to move their brand relationship into your app. Smart banners exploded in the early days of the pandemic, likely correlated with a time of market uncertainty when many paid marketing budgets were frozen or cut, putting a spotlight on their value as a low-cost acquisition strategy.

Personalization

As with any user interaction personalization matters - to the tune of making your banners 5x more effective. You can personalize your smart banners at scale in a variety of ways, based on many number of attributes that signal specific user intent.

Source: Branch

• Presenting an interstitial to a high-frequency visitor already familiar with your brand, while slowly building the relationship with a first-time user by presenting a smaller, less assertive floating button.

• Encouraging a user who has just converted on web (by making a purchase, starting a subscription, creating a profile or anything else that is meaningful for your team) to take the next step in their “relationship” with your brand with a half or full page banner that connects their action to a tangible benefit of your app.

» Calls to action that give context to what the user has just done and tease how the app is the next logical step, like “track your purchase in the app”, “get real time-updates on your item with the app”, or “download the app to get the most out of your subscription” provide continuity that has outsized results in getting users to see the value in downloading in the moment.

As you build out your strategy, treat web-to-app optimization with the same degree of rigour that you approach paid ads iteration with advanced plays, like:

• Creating banners that consider the context of where your user is coming from:

» Users who find your website through SEO are in a different mindframe than those who come because a friend sent them a link. Honoring those differences through different calls to action - targeted by referring URL - has a dramatic impact on view-to-click rates and starts your “app relationship” off right with your users feeling like you understand them.

» Even in a single channel, users coming from a “new in stock” email have a different mindframe from those coming from a blast about an annual sale or even an abandoned cart email. By personalizing the CTA on your banner to the specific campaigns your marketing team runs, you can create the kind of cross-channel personalization that reinforces loyalty and makes the ask for a user to download your app make more sense in the moment.

• Creating banners with graphics that mirror direct mail, out-of-home, TV, over-the-top, or awareness- centered campaigns, and changing the banners as those campaigns change by season or geography. Users are more likely to give you dedicated space on their phone by downloading the app when it feels like a core part of the overall brand experience. Shortcut that by mirroring other high-impact campaigns while providing copy that highlights a unique benefit of the app.

• Using targeted onsite banners as an extension of your SEM campaigns by creating banners that only show to users who come from paid web campaigns. This acquires users through a paid “two hop” approach that is far more cost effective from a CPI perspective than more traditional install-focused networks.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 25 Sephora presents different banners to users in different mindframes. A simple banner is used to call users browsing the mobile website to the app, while a full-page interstitial is presented to a user who already has a relationship with Sephora via email.

Continually A/B test your smart banners to understand what resonates with your audience at every step of their journey. Branch’s dashboard makes it easy for non-technical teams to create and deploy banner campaigns, letting your marketing team scale the impact of this channel without having to wait for engineering to dedicate sprint time for every micro-optimization. Some ideas to start testing:

• Serve different versions of your Journeys smart banners to the same audience. Running separate tests that seek optimizations in copy, creative, and placement will help drive best-in-class results.

• Diversify the value-add of your banners. The app has different perceived benefits to users depending on their lifecycle status, intent, and mindframe. Highlighting separate benefits of the app at different times will help you determine what kind of users are receptive to each one.

• Double down on re-engagement. The benefits of a higher LTV for users with your app only applies if you consistently drive them there. Targeting users with the app already installed to engage there, rather than face roadblocks on mobile web, helps improve the return on ad spend of the campaigns that made your user adopt the app originally.

A/B testing Journeys in the Branch dashboard.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 27 QR Codes QR codes are a savvy way to bring traditionally offline users online, whether they’re incorporated into a mailer, closing out an in-store brochure, printed on product packaging, or even on display in a store window. In addition to bridging the offline/online gap, QR codes on your desktop website can create a path for desktop users to access the unique functionality of your app and take their experience on the go with just a scan.

We increasingly see brands using QR codes to both introduce and re-engage consumers with their app. The unique circumstances of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have functionally required people to become more aware of and use QR codes as social distancing drove interactions like ordering a coffee, looking at a menu, or scheduling a time to workout online. QR codes put people at ease by providing a contactless, anxiety-free interaction while delivering a seamless user experience. Now is the perfect time to start or expand your usage of QR codes to scale user acquisition and educate your customers on how the app fits into their daily life.

Follow these tips to get the most out of your QR code strategy:

Prevent broken experiences and create cohesive experiences through direct and deferred deep linking. If your QR code is advertising a specific product, ensure the QR code opens the app directly to that specific advertised product. This not only builds trust with your customers, but teaches them how to use the app by short-cutting right to the place where they’ll find immediate value.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 28 Incorporate QR codes on products/product packaging. Users who purchase a product already have a built- in reason to explore a closer relationship with you, so adding in a QR code is a low-lift, high-reward strategy. Attributing app installs back to the specific products where QR codes are placed can also give your team insight into the categories that best make the case for your app and help you decide where to invest more in cross-promotion.

Ensure your link/QR code generator can update the link destination after deployment. By their nature, QR codes exist printed in the physical world and can stay in the hands of your users for longer than a typical online deployment. You’ll want the flexibility to re-direct users to new messaging or destinations if your original content loses relevance or promotion expires, or if you might want to later change the content or the promotion associated with it. With a tool like Branch’s link generator, you can easily refresh a user’s destination even when the QR code has been in the field for months.

Add a QR code to your desktop experience that minimizes friction when people download your app. This removes friction and steps from the path to download, and allows you to add nuance to your onboarding experience. For instance, if you know a user came from a QR code via desktop, you could customize their onboarding in a way that adds value and makes sense given the install source, for example, encouraging them to use a magic link to sign in.

Place QR Codes on storefront locations. We’ve seen this become increasingly common, especially with the pandemic across verticals. For example, the Quick Serve Restaurant space has increasingly implemented QR codes as stores look to limit the number of patrons inside, while maintaining per-store revenue and giving their users the benefit of a faster ordering experience. This has the brand-facing benefit of building a “mobile order ahead” habit that can persist far past the pandemic restrictions.

Tip: If you have multiple locations, each QR code should be different so you can deduce which ones drive the most app installs or in-app purchases. This will also help you understand which locations QR codes don’t drive as many app installs, so you can take a different approach such as targeted online advertising.

A Peets QR code on a storefront location.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 30 Text-Me-The-App Placing a QR code on your desktop website can convert desktop users to app users, increasing the variety of platforms where they intentionally connect with your product. Another option to let users go from desktop to web is to empower them to text themselves a link to your app by inputting their phone number on your desktop website — also known as Text-Me-The-App (TMTA).

With this method, you can customize the SMS message your users receive, and include any promos or discounts within the message. By doing so, you can test whether additional short-term incentives like a discount code for first-time users who download via TMTA creates better retention and LTV. TMTA also allows you to understand information such as the install source, campaign reach and efficacy, and lets you customize the onboarding experience of users coming from TMTA.

You can use TMTA strategically on certain pages, such as order confirmation or buy online and pickup in store, to show users why downloading the app at that certain point is the right next step. For teams where speed is of the essence or an integrated effort isn't in the cards short-term, a simple TMTA landing page can be a solution that provides a bridge for your users between desktop and app, while eliminating the need for a separate project from your front-end eng team. You can give a clear acquisition call to action with a simple TMTA landing page.

CQ Hotels and Chewy take its users to the app via TMTA. After entering their phone number, users receive a text with a link to the app. If the app is not installed, they are routed to the App store to download.

• Improve your SEO strategy by uncovering and matching user intent. Tweak the user experience and create content that fulfills that intent. Google prioritizes content that adds value.

• Turn your mobile website into a core app acquisition channel by using web-to-app smart banners that deep link users to relevant in-app content. Personalizing the banners based on previous user activity is 5x more effective than generic banners. Prioritize A/B testing different messaging and creatives to audiences based on demographic and behavioral criteria to find out what resonates for distinct segments.

• QR codes are an effective way to bring offline users online and build bridges between your desktop and mobile platforms. Best practices include using QR link parameters to personalize and shortcut onboarding, incorporating QR codes into products/product packaging or storefronts, and ensuring your QR generator supports updating the associated link destination post-deployment.

• Bring your desktop users into your app with Text-me-the-App (TMTA), which allows users to text themselves a link to your app. Leverage custom parameters to customize your SMS messages and measure associated performance.

• Is your SEO strategy capitalizing on the available types of user intent? Is your SEO-based content providing value and fulfilling that intent?

• What kinds of new content and experiences can we create that align with the different types of user intent?

• Are we utilizing our existing platforms like the mobile and desktop web to convert web visitors into loyal app users? If so, how do we further personalize and optimize smart banners?

• How can we use QR codes to bring our offline users online? How can we leverage storefronts, direct mail campaigns, or product packaging to better facilitate and expand their use?

Paid media weaves through our offline and online existence across every conceivable channel: print ads in hard copy publications, display ads on every website, product feeds, dynamic retargeting, and paid social are just a few examples of what an average person will experience daily. Given the cost, ecosystem challenges and rampant fraud, why do companies place such a premium on paid media?

Paid media reliably broadens a brand’s reach at every stage in the funnel, from awareness to conversion to winback. Place a dynamic bid and you can reach a uniquely tailored audience at exactly the right time. This is especially critical with channels where the accessible audience for a brand’s organic outreach can get lost in the noise or lack the requisite scale to reliably achieve holistic growth goals. Sophisticated networks provide both scale and granular targeting that can introduce new, highly tailored customers to a brand on a regular basis, specifically by creating a paradigm that favors paid placements above “earned” views.

There are various ways to both structure ad buys, align paid media KPIs and measure paid efforts/ effectiveness:

CPM – Cost Per Mille. Strongly favored by the supply side of mobile advertising because higher volume can be sold more efficiently, this measures the cost an advertiser pays per 1,000 impressions on an ad.

Pros: Publishers are often willing to offer less expensive engagements because the ad does not require down-funnel conversion for payment. Therefore, CPM can be cheaper on a per-install basis if the placement is very well-aligned with an app’s core audience. CPMs are also good for branding and awareness campaigns where the goal is to get a message in front of as many eyes as possible.

Cons: A challenge with CPM is “backing out,” or ensuring performance metrics make sense. For example, if you buy a CPM for $10 but are only getting paid on a CPI of $, you would need to achieve conversions for 10 installs from that $10 CPM buy to just break even.

Pros: Analyzing CPC provides fast feedback on the types of content, keyword bets, or audience targets that get targeted users to take the first step and these insights can be translated to more effective aggregate CPI over time. Awareness-focused campaigns, without down-funnel goals, may benefit from CPC as the main KPI.

Cons: CPC has inherently less value to the mobile marketer than post-click or post-install metrics due to the degree of dropoff in the click-to-install funnel. Well intentioned content that poorly maps to the app’s core purpose or “click-bait” creatives may result in strong CPC but poor CPI/CPA and be a drain on marketing budget with poor incrementality.

CPI – Cost Per Install. Favored by app acquisition advertisers, CPI aligns spend with a broadly applicable top-of-funnel metric.

Pros: CPI is a metric that can be easily Optimization Targeting incorporated into an evolving full- funnel ARPU or LTV model that aligns the acquisition team with broader scale Impression or monetization targets. In addition, Click Install many networks are built to provide CPI Open Purchase Purchase

optimization based on both pre-install Sign Up Un-install/Dormant demographic targeting and post-install

success metric ingestion, helping your Cost per Install budget stretch as far as possible. (CPI)

Cons: Install is rarely the standalone

indicator of success. Unless other internal This graph shows how CPI campaigns work — an advertiser pays ad networks for each install driven by paid ads the network publishes. Installs metrics align product, user acquisition and are targeted as the core metric that determines success. lifecycle marketing teams, singular reliance on CPI can lead to wasted spend and poor incrementality.

Easy to justify ROI by showing how ad Pros: Optimization Targeting spend led to a specific in-app action, such as a purchase. Impression Install Click Cons: Paying for CPA may not be as cost- Open Purchase Purchase effective as a well-designed CPM or CPI Sign Up Un-install/Dormant campaign, as not everyone who clicks an ad or visits your website will take the specific action you want them to. And if Cost per Install (CPI) the actions you want users to take aren’t contributing to your bottom line, you risk losing money long-term. Plus, it’s harder to get conversions, since your payout depends CPA campaigns target specific actions, such as a purchase. on a post-install action. Ensure you align your bids with your ad network’s payout structure as much as possible.

Gallant Chen Growth Advisor, Ex-VP Digital Marketing

“There's 2 key benefits of paid [advertising]. One is it's more measurable than organic in most cases and you can typically see results much more quickly. In most cases, organic investments take much longer to play out - so you have the benefit of speed and being able to measure it with paid acquisition.”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 37 Types of Paid Advertising Paid media continues to evolve novel formats and placements due in no small part to factors including ongoing platform proliferation, the premium value of trackable performance marketing, and the dominant forward-facing role of tech giants that monetize through targeted advertising. This means brands must put forward a cohesive strategy that incorporates everything from traditional web display banner ads, to in-app retargeting placements, to commercials on across both set-top boxes and OTT, and sponsored placements on podcasts and traditional radio. More generally, paid advertising can be put into 3 buckets:

More generally, paid advertising can be put into 3 buckets:

With this type of advertising, you’re targeting an audience with an assumed interest in your brand. Display, social media ads, billboard and print ads are all examples of targeted audience advertising, as they can be put in places where the target audience frequents.

This is also a great way to discover what resonates with your target audience. Start at a low spend, initially cast a wide net across different strategies and tactics, then cut what isn’t working and reinvest in the strategies that do work. The wide net is crucial to ensure you get a full picture into what works.

Intent-based advertising/contextual targeting

With this type of advertising, you are basing your bets on someone’s stated rather than assumed interest in something. Search ads are a great example—a user who already performs a search has high intent and has stated interest. Another example: you could target users who are on ESPN with sports related ads. Users go to these categorized sites or apps which tells advertisers what they are already inherently interested in.

Most search ads are based on intent rather than a specific persona, though you can technically target both. These types of ads are great to use when you know you have a type of product someone knows they need or want.

Chris Stevens CMO

“In a lot of eCommerce companies, social really doesn't perform on par with transactional intent where you can buy transactional intent. It usually ends up being an issue of mix. How much do you want in each of those buckets and how do you optimize that media spend for return? That mix is going to depend on the organization you're in.”

The Alpha-Beta strategy was pioneered over a decade ago by an agency called 3Q Digital. It is a paid search strategy that involves isolating high performing keywords into “alpha” campaigns so you can understand which keywords are most profitable, while at the same time creating a “beta” campaign that allows you to explore and grow your campaigns over time. Although a proven success method for many large companies, smaller brands with more budget constraints can get tremendous value from this tactic too.

Beta - Explore and Capture Beta campaigns are created to identify profitable queries and to eliminate unprofitable queries. Using broad and broad modified match keywords, Google shows your ads to a variety of user queries that can then be grouped into three categories: those that performed well, those that performed poorly, and anything that did not have sufficient data to make a decision. Top-performing queries should be entered into Alpha campaigns as exact match keywords, poor-performing queries should be added as exact match negatives at the campaign level, and queries with inconclusive data should remain in the beta campaign and be monitored over time.

Alpha - Isolate The purpose of Alpha campaigns is to isolate your profitable keywords and exercise greater control over them since we know they drive higher performance. In Alpha campaigns, you use single-keyword ad groups, or “SKAGs,” using exact match. This allows you to optimize bids and targeting, and to create more relevant ad copy at a detailed level.

Advanced Search Engine Marketing Strategy: Leverage Google Ads Smart Bidding AI

It used to be that sophisticated marketers manually bid and optimized their campaigns. However, over the past 2-3 years Google’s Smart Bidding tools have become much more effective. In most cases, using Google’s Target CPA or Target ROAS tools will outperform manual bidding. Part of the reason why is that Google leverages Artificial Intelligence to process proprietary data signals that are not available to you as an advertiser.

The key to leverage Smart Bidding AI effectively is to share accurate data with Google on conversions and revenue so they can use this data to optimize your campaigns.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 40 Discovery-Based Advertising While other advertising methods tend to happen during moments when consumers are engaged in other activities - at a pause in a game, reading content, browsing a feed - consumers also are increasingly discovering new apps outside those moments. These app discovery moments - for example during phone setup, changing screens, or organizing apps - are what our friends at Digital Turbine define as Discovery-Based Advertising.

App installs have become less frequent the longer we own a smartphone - people with 10 years of smartphone ownership install 40% fewer apps than someone with under 2 years. While COVID may have slowed this trend,

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 41 the reasons behind it remain. Put simply, once we have enough apps to occupy us and satisfy our daily needs, our desire to find new ones wane. Which makes intent-based advertising challenging for marketers. That’s why Discovery-based methods have been increasing as they provide seamless experiences that don't distract people from an activity they are already engaged in. For example:

During Device Set-up - Setup wizards display recommended apps when consumers are configuring their new device

Scrolling Between Apps - Preloads can generate brand impressions during the considerable amount of time spent thumbing through devices looking for what’s next.

Organizing Their Device - Smart Game folders will organize a consumer’s games in one convenient place - and then recommend new games within the folder to the user.

Here are 3 things to remember about Discovery-Based Advertising:

1. It’s all About Removing Consumer Friction - By providing experiences that are outside the app, Discovery-Based Advertising allows for installs outside the ad-to-store framework that has bogged down the install process. Instead, this allows the app to take an organic route to being discovered by being available when the consumer is ready rather than trying to find intent. Other forms of Discovery-based advertising focus on friction within the traditional ad-to-store framework, one form of which is called SingleTap technology. SingleTap bypasses the friction of visiting the app store altogether, allowing a user to confirm interest in the app and then auto- installing it in the background.

2. Evaluation is Based on Different Metrics - Since discovery is more organic, conversions happen on a different timeline. Consider, for example, a travel app. While someone may be looking to immediately book a vacation, it’s more likely that the urge to use the app will come weeks or months later. But when they do get that urge, the app is there waiting to be used. The key is that just like all cars will accelerate from 0-60, some app categories tend to take longer to be discovered. One metric that is helpful is a “Days to 25” metric that tracks the amount of time it takes for 25% of preloads installed on a new device to be opened and used. These metrics are, of course, overall averages and are heavily influenced by both macro and individual factors, but here is how some common app categories rank:

Days to 25 App Categories

Less than 7 (Fast Discovered) Social, Video/On-Demand, Music & Audio

30 or Less Games, Communication

60 or Less Shopping, News, Transportation, Finance

60+ Lifestyle, Travel

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 42 3. Best Solution to Target New Devices - While the amount of apps installed by users has been decreasing, one time where people are more amenable to new apps is after they buy a new device - where data shows that people install 3x more devices during the first 3 months of phone ownership than they do later. Discovery-based advertising is the only solution that has specific ways to target this high-install moment through solutions like setup wizards and preloads.

Trust-based Advertising Many people buy things because their friends or people they admire tell them to — in fact, 90% of people trust recommendations from friends and family.

Trust-based advertising encapsulates affiliate marketing and influencer marketing, both of which are based on an assumed interest due to trust in others. While this falls under paid advertising, it has a very different dynamic. These methods can be used alongside virality practices when you have a product that can inspire others — but works best when the referrals and influencers are authentic. Paying an influencer who is a good fit for your brand and has a similar target audience to yours goes a long way, rather than choosing an influencer who might have a large following but doesn’t match your brand.

Affiliate Marketing

Deep linking users from a campaign to the advertised product into the app and subsequently attributing in- app conversions back to the affiliate source optimizes both sides of the this unique funnel:

The end advertiser sees increased campaign impact by reducing friction to conversion. While ideal in any campaign, eliminating unnecessary steps in a “trusted source” intent path is critical to both the short- term conversion and the long-term “halo effect” a user perceives from influencer/ brand affinity. This often translates to higher ongoing LTV for the brand.

The affiliates/publishers/partners get credit for their true impact, including cross-platform user conversion paths, unencumbered by false positives or negatives. For well aligned publisher/ brand relationships, this typically results in higher payouts for the influencer (by eliminating holes in attributing click-to-conversion rate and minimizing mid-funnel dropoff) and gives stronger signals about whether the brand/ influencer pairing is a good ongoing fit.

The end user gets a seamless transition into the app with fewer steps between them and the desired action, which reinforces trust with the influencer and mirrors some of that affinity onto the brand itself. Because the destination app preserves context of the user’s click and delivers them directly to the content they expected, with any promised offers and coupons are automatically applied, there is a continuity of experience and trust. This reduces likelihood for churn and increases the opportunity for ongoing conversions.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 43 We see here that by integrating app tracking in an affiliate marketing campaign, revenue grew an additional 360% between the integration month and month 2, while sales grew 147%. If you’re not unlocking the app for your affiliate programs, you’re missing out huge amounts of revenue growth that drastically increases over time.

Business looking to improve their advertising impact and margins on mobile should make app-focused affiliate marketing campaigns a core tenet of their strategy because:

1. They’re low risk Since the payouts are usually on the basis of actual transactions that are driven by each affiliate/partner, the risk for marketers is low and can be tied to a tangible return/ROI.

2. They come with a high degree of tailored relevance and influence With affiliate marketing, marketers have a way to reach affiliates/partners whose audience is relevant for the advertiser’s business. This effectively removes the need to independently target demographic and behavioral attributes while still ensuring a higher average propensity to convert.

3. They’re increasingly accessible Finding good quality affiliates/partners has become far easier, thanks to affiliate platforms/ partner networks like Awin, CJ Affiliate, Impact, Partnerize, Rakuten, TUNE etc.

4. Innovative Technology Platforms that support affiliate marketing have made huge strides. Building and rolling out affiliate programs, making creatives and links available, tracking and attributing conversions and paying out affiliates based on their performance have all been automated to a large extent.

An influencer is defined as a person with a following and audience who promotes your brand in order for you to achieve your business goals. Influencers can help you drive awareness, engagement, product sales, app installs, or another metric important to your team by advertising on your behalf to reach a wider audience.

Mada Seghete Co-founder and Head of Marketing

“Influencers can work really well if you find the right influencer. There was an age in which Instagram influencers did really well. I think it's somewhat saturated now and it's become a lot more expensive than it used to be. But I think there's still this opportunity to either pay a lot and work with a big influencer... but also using these micro-influencers who have a smaller network but can promote your product.”

ENGAGEMENT COST

Is this influencer getting a high engagement What would the all-in rate be for partnering rate relative to their follower count? with this influencer? Do they expect a one- time fee, a CPA revshare agreement or some RELEVANCY AND AUTHENTICITY combination thereof? Based on previous brand work and their engagement metrics, Does this influencer create content in what kind of ROI can I anticipate? What my niche? Will their users perceive our sort of ROI have I seen in campaigns with partnership as a natural extension of audiences similar to theirs? their previous work and interests? Is this someone I will want affiliated with my brand long-term? SPONSORED CONTENT

Has this influencer worked with brands DEMOGRAPHICS before? What were the results? Are there Would the audience that follows this brands they would not work with again? influencer buy my product? How does AUTHENTICITY this influencer's demographics compare to my typical audience targets? Does this Do they appear to be authentic in their influencer offer me access to an audience posts? that is costly to target on other platforms? PROFESSIONALISM

Is working with this influencer easy? What does the collaboration process look like? What do changes or reshoots look like and what will they commit to contractually?

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 46 Not all types influencers have the same levels of reach or engagement either, and subscriber or follower count doesn’t necessarily translate into making more sales or driving more app downloads:

Industry Brand Brand Bloggers & Brand Influencers Advocates Brand Fans Ambassadors Affiliates Influencers

Engagement Low High Medium Medium Low High with Brand

Social High High-Low Low High Medium High Influence

Neoreach, Apptentive, Fans, Affiliate Finding Social media Branch Moz, Localytics, students, job networks, engagement Influencer Tab Them Appentive Mixpanel posts research

There are many different paths to finding value through paid media. But regardless of your media mix, overall spend or team size, one thing’s clear across the board - context and personalization doesn’t stop at the ad click. If you can meet a user you’ve brought into the app for the first time with an experience that connects to the ad they saw, you’re far more likely to create a lasting relationship that results in long-term ROI. Deferred deep linking can provide that context, making your users more likely to convert by removing friction and enhancing their experience.

Here are some fantastic examples of deferred deep linking from paid ads straight into the app, bolstering engagement:

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 47 ©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 48 Paid Advertising in an IDFA-Less World With the deprecation of the IDFA in iOS 14 and beyond, the efficacy of paid mobile advertising will go down on iOS. This is because users must opt in to ad tracking via Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework in order for you to receive user-level attribution data (such as the IDFA) for your paid campaigns. If they don’t, you are barred from using granular, user-level data to run and measure your campaigns.

Here’s an overview of how mobile advertising on iOS will be affected without IDFAS:

Personalization

User-level data like the IDFA and GAID allow advertisers and ad networks to understand which users to show certain ads to. Because this data is unique to each device, this data can also be used to serve highly personalized ads based on user characteristics and activities. For example, certain user segments could be targeted to show ads to download the Dominos app because they’re part of an audience that has indicated they enjoy pizza. Without granular-level data, though, this type of personalization becomes impossible unless users opt in to ad tracking.

Retargeting

As mentioned above, advertisers and ad networks traditionally used the IDFA and GAID to understand which users to show ads to. This is useful in retargeting and re-engagement campaigns to win back users at risk of lapsing or who have already lapsed. However, if users do not opt in to ad tracking, it will be impossible for your ad networks to find the right users to show retargeting ads to, decreasing the effectiveness of your campaigns and increasing the potential for wasted ad spend, ultimately making it more difficult to reach your business goals.

Although advertisers could still technically retarget using an identifier like an email address or phone number, many apps simply don’t have that kind of user information. The implications of lack of retargeting functionality are wasted time and spend acquiring users who end up churning quickly.

Frequency Capping

Advertisers use frequency capping to limit the number of times a user is shown a certain ad within a time frame. Advertisers can ask ad networks to set parameters for the frequency and time period for which devices with certain IDFAs would see an ad, such as capping views to 5 times within 48 hours. This will be much harder to do without IDFAs, meaning users will be more likely to be inundated with ads irrelevant to them.

The IDFA allows advertisers to understand which users clicked on what ads, and if those ads led to an install or purchase. A brand can then further invest in high-performing channels or redistribute spend based on different campaigns’ performance. Without the IDFA, this ability is gone. If users do not opt in to ad tracking, SKAdNetwork, Apple’s attribution model, is the only acceptable attribution framework on iOS. SKAdNetwork prevents advertisers from accessing device-level data or any real-time data that would allow advertisers to trace an event back to a certain user. Instead of using detailed, granular data to understand campaign performance, advertisers will have to rely on aggregate level data, which shows just enough information about a campaign without revealing specific details, making campaign and spend optimization more difficult. We go more into detail about this topic in the ‘Measurement’ section of this paper.

How to Achieve High User Opt-In Rates on iOS 14 We highly recommend attempting to preserve granular, device-level data for your ad campaigns in order to get the most accurate reporting and measurement possible. To do so, you must request user permission for ad tracking and sharing their IDFA on iOS via Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework only. Here are some tips and strategies to implement when showing users Apple’s ATT modals to help you achieve higher opt-in rates on iOS:

1. Explain the value of opting in

Users likely won’t willingly share their data with you unless they receive some tangible benefit. Show users why opting in brings them value by explaining how their data will be used and how opting in improves their experience and. This could be through:

Monetary benefits – Remind users that by opting in, they’re keeping your app free for them to use. “Opting in keeps this ad free for you to use.”

Personalization – Explain how opting in gets rid of content users don’t care about. “Opt in to get rid of ads not relevant to you.” “Opt in to only see ads relevant to you.”

Addressing privacy concerns – Include why and how users’ data is used, and ensure them that their data is in safe hands. “We use your data to serve you more relevant ads and to help keep this app free. We never rent or sell your data.”

Urgency + FOMO-Inducing Language – Emphasize the importance and timeliness of opting in now rather than waiting. “Opt in now to stop seeing irrelevant ads.” “Allow tracking now to ensure you never see irrelevant ads.” “Allow tracking so you don’t see irrelevant ads later.”

Keep in mind that you cannot provide any incentive for granting permission to ad tracking or prevent access to any app functionality for users to opt out, nor can you show an image of Apple’s ATT modal in your own prompt. You can reference Apple’s guidelines here for more detailed information.

2. Implement a custom contextual prompt

We recommend that you implement and test a prompt that provides users information on why you’re asking for their data before they see Apple’s ATT modal. By creating a context-providing prompt, you can control the language and messaging, placement, and design to optimize the chances of user opt-in to ATT. This is key to fully explain to users the benefits and value they gain from opting in, explain what you are asking them for, address privacy concerns, and prime them to take action.

Note that you cannot ask users to opt in via your own permission prompt — users must opt in via Apple’s ATT framework only, so don’t use “Allow” on your call to action button or any other word that might lead users to think they’re granting permission.

In this example, Domino’s UK presents a modal to users that gives additional context to the subsequent Apple prompt. In their contextual modal, Domino’s explains the value of personalized ads, giving users more background information before they see Apple’s prompt. Note how they use ‘continue’ in the call to action button to bring users to the next screen instead of 'allow' to ensure they do not violate Apple's policies.

To increase the rates of user opt-in, we recommend using what customization options you have in Apple’s prompt to give users further information on how their data will be used and why it benefits them. Customize the messaging to assuage any privacy concerns and explain the value users receive from opting in. Build trust and empathy by using language that focuses on the user and their needs, rather than the needs of your business.

Macy’s explains to users how their data is used — to be able to suggest products they’ll love. By tying value and a tangible benefit back to data sharing, Macy’s focuses on providing users the best shopping experience and makes their ask sound less daunting.

4. Make the UX Seamless

If you choose to show your context-providing modal to users before Apple’s modal, tell users what to expect when going through the permission flow to make the opt-in process as easy and seamless as possible. Explain that users will be taken through two prompts and clarify when and where users need to take action to prevent confusion.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 52 Auto Trader clearly tells users where they will be taking action by stating “opt in or out on the next screen” and presents a ‘continue’ button to differentiate the steps in the user flow.

5. Optimize the Timing

Getting the timing right to ask users the big question is critical. There are likely steps in your user flow where it makes more sense to place Apple’s modal and your context-providing modal, such as after a purchase, time frame, or other event or trigger.

We recommend placing both your context-providing modal and the Apple ATT modal where users are most primed to give consent. This could be after moments after achievement, such as completing a game, after they spend a certain amount of time in the app, or after onboarding. Don’t show the modal when users are in the middle of completing a task, such as playing a game or filling in a form. Interrupting users in high-stakes moments is more likely to lead to frustration and drop off than opt-in. Continually test and iterate at which points in your users’ journey are most conducive to higher opt-in rates.

• Paid ads can broaden your reach and increase conversion rates with your target audience.

• Effective channel mixes for paid media are more diverse than ever, including web inventory (both desktop and mobile), in-app ads, and cross-platform ads on TV/OTT (over-the-top) channels, and voice search.

• There are 3 buckets of paid ads:

» Audience targeting based advertising: Ads based on an assumed interest in your brand. For example, if you know your target audience enjoys fitness and frequents fitness websites, you can show ads for workout clothing you sell in your app on those websites.

» Intent-based advertising: Ads based on someone’s stated — not assumed — interest in something. Search ads are considered intent-based advertising.

» Trust-based advertising: Ads based on assumed interest due to trust in others, such as an influencer or affiliate. While this falls under paid advertising, it has a very different dynamic.

• Affiliate marketing is low-risk, broadens your audience, and is easier than ever with today’s technology. Using your app for affiliate marketing can increase conversions and engagement, give publishers greater payout, and enhance the user experience.

• Influencer marketing can be used to reach a broader audience similar to your own. Not all influencers have the same level of reach or engagement – and larger follower count doesn’t necessarily make one influencer better. Some things to keep in mind when choosing an influencer are:

» Engagement

» Relevancy and Authenticity

» Demographics

» Cost

» Sponsored posts

» Professionalism

• What type of paid advertising are you currently running: audience-targeting based, intent-based, or trust-based? How do your CPIs compare to other companies in your vertical? What are your optimization goals? If you haven’t yet started running paid ads, which one would be best to start with for your brand, budget, and quarter-over-quarter goals?

• Are you driving the users to your app in your affiliate campaigns? How often do links fail, dragging users to the mobile web instead?

• Are your influencers aligned with your brand’s values? What is important to you when choosing an influencer? What kind of results do you expect from the influencer and how do you evaluate short vs. long-term benefit?

Virality may be the gold standard of mobile growth, but it’s a unique challenge on a platform where attention spans are minute, choice is rampant, and walled gardens define the user experience. Despite the odds, there are clear best practices to approach and measure your virality goals.

Why does something go viral?

So, what makes two apps with the same advertising budget end up with radically different outcomes: one struggling to acquire 100 new users in a month and the other acquiring 100,000 in a week? Unsurprisingly, virality is deeply rooted in our most basic human instincts, incentive and emotion.

Give people a unique reason to engage via incentives while appealing to a few select emotions, and your team can create the conditions for a chain reaction of interest, excitement, and impact.

Josh Elman Partner @ Greylock, former VP Product

“Virality fundamentally is the way in which you get your current users who love your product to pass it on to more people, so that they will also want to pick up and use your product. It is the best way you can possibly spread because it's free or can be incentivized, and it depends on your existing users and their love — it's all about activating them.”

Incentives Ego Emotion

Mada Seghete Co-founder and Head of Marketing

“[Viral growth] is important because it is a big growth lever to scale your business. Word of mouth is becoming more critical, especially as other growth loops like paid become more saturated, become more competitive and less open. Secondly, historically word-of-mouth has been harder to measure. Because it is harder to measure viral growth, companies tend to ignore word- of-mouth. [And so] they leave growth on the table.”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 59 Incentives Ego Incentives Savvy marketers understand that a great product usually isn’t enough and to receive, you must also give — at least in the case of building virality.

So invest in your users by giving them a tangible incentive to introduce a brand they love to people who will love it too. Your incentive can be wholly tailored to your brand, such as exclusive swag, a discount your users can’t ignore, points or level-up rewards system. Bonus points if it encourages both your original user and the new one to increase their connection to your brand. Emotion Not only does this give your brand the reputation as one who invests in their users, unsurprisingly, incentive- based referrals perform better than non-incentivized ones. In a Branch study on incentivized vs. non- incentivized referrals, the “high converting bucket” made up of incentivized referrals had an average conversion rate of 70%. In comparison, the “low converting bucket” consisting of non-incentivized referrals had an average conversion rate of 30%.

In its early days, Dropbox enticed users with free storage space if they invited a friend to use Dropbox. Each additional user on the platform made the platform itself more protected and got users to depend on the service, paving the way for both better B2C and B2B monetization and defensibility.

Food delivery apps Seamless and Drizly give both the referrer and the referee $5 off when the referee places their first order. It’s a tangible incentive, but since the average order value on both platforms is far above $5, they’re effectively just waiving service fees on a users’ first orders. Given CPAs for paid advertising in the delivery space, it’s a clear win from a business perspective that builds greater long-term loyalty and brand affinity than a generic ad on Facebook might generate.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 61 Commission-free stock & crypto trading app Robinhood incentivizes users to evangelize their platform through their “give a stock get a stock” program - both the referrer and referee land a new stock in their Robinhood account once the new user completes onboarding. Bonus: no manual promo codes are needed when you use Branch referrals.

Well-executed viral campaigns seem simple, but this strategy is fraught with unique obstacles, especially when it comes to referral programs. Some best practices to follow:

• Make sure your links can share the content inside your app, and that they deferred deep link through install. Apps with great content have huge virality potential. Taking new users directly to content, rather than leaving them to figure out how your navigation works, is key to capitalize on your advantage. Make the share feature easy to find, preview the shared content when it’s sent to a new user, and deferred deep link through install to ensure users become obsessed with your app, not let down at the start.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 62 • Make it easy to share on your most used platform by using native share sheets. Native share sheets allow the user to share without ever leaving your app — allowing for an easy, seamless experience and reducing drop-off.

• Share an image in addition to a link. When users send content links to their friends, include a preview of the content to give the receiver a sneak peek. This makes the new user more likely to click on the link and download your app.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 63 • Encourage sharing when a user takes a screenshot by prompting them with a pop-up asking if the user wants to share. This simplifies your user’s experience, as the user can send directly from your app. It also simplifies your ability to attribute results by adding a custom short link. Bonus - the deep link means better UX for the user on the receiving end, who otherwise might not consider downloading the app.

• If you only reward one party, incentivize the new user. While incentivizing both parties always works best, excited users will share apps they love with their friends, especially if the nature of your app itself incentivizes recruiting connections (for example, by benefit from network effect, longer-term inherent benefit for the referrer, etc.).

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 64 Incentives Ego Ego Most people like when they look good, smart, and better than their peers. When offering users a way to share your app with others, highlight a feature that makes them look good. Gamification is a great way to achieve this. From encouraging video challenges, post challenges, or any sort of contest users can take part in, users can spread awareness about your app while sharing content of their own that makes them look good. Walmart capitalized on the challenge trend on TikTok with their #DealDropDance campaign, telling users to upload a video of themselves dancing and using the #DealDropDance hashtag to spread awareness of Walmart’s Black Friday deals. The campaign was a huge success in driving awareness and engagement, with over 3.6 billion views on videos that used the hashtag. Emotion

Courtesy of Mediakix

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 65 Another brand that appeals to the ego as a means of sharing is social fitness app Strava. When users share on social media or through text message, they’re able to show off their fitness accomplishments. Not only that, but they actually let the user customize the share — in this example they allow you to choose the "header" image of your share link. Users are much more likely to share links if they look like their own, rather than some generic text and image.

Incentives Ego

Emotion Emotion People are emotion-driven, and these emotions can be influenced to get users to share your app, content, or product. Different emotions drive different actions, however. In general, positive emotions like joy make people share (the happier the post, the more likely it is to be shared), while negative emotions (anger, fear) drive more actual clicks on the content. High-arousal emotions where you’re more excited, such as anger, have been proven to drive more virality than low- arousal emotions where you’re more subdued, like sadness. Here’s how these high-arousal emotions influence virality:

AWE ANXIETY JOY

If users feel a sense of wonder or If content triggers a specific Happy content makes people admiration, they’re likely to share anxiety, worry, or pain point, feel good — encouraging them to or to comment to spur discussion. it’s likely to be circulated and share it with the world. commented on.

ANGER FEAR LUST

Posts that are likely to make Similar to anxiety, fear is Making users want something users angry make them more characterized as an emotion through use of creative copy and likely to share, and also are where you feel little control. imagery can get them to click. prone to more comments (ever Users want to regain that control see a political post on your by reading or sharing something newsfeed? It’s no wonder they’re that soothes their fear. filled with commentary).

SURPRISE

Showing something unexpected drives curiosity.

Testing out various copy and creatives that drive different emotions can help hit your growth KPIs. By tweaking your copy and creative to stir up various emotions in your user base, you can push them towards the action you want them to take, whether that be to share, click, or comment in order to build your app or product’s virality. One example: test out high-arousal, negative, “angry” copy like “10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Use This App” against low-arousal, positive copy meant to arouse surprise like “10 Reasons This App is the Best. You Won’t Believe Number 3.”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 67 How is virality measured? Virality is measured by the k-factor: a measurement used to describe the “growth rate of websites, apps, or a customer base.” It specifically measures how many new users are generated from one existing user and is calculated by the following formula:

K = i * c where: i= number of total shares sent by your users (ex. If you have 1 user who shares to 5 friends, i = 5)

c= average conversion rate of those shares (ex. If 1 of those 5 friends download the app, c = .2)

So k in this case = 5 x .2, which is 1. This essentially means that every new user you gain will bring in an average of 1 more user. Higher k values indicate higher virality, and a value over 1 indicates that your app is exponentially growing — because for every new user acquired, they are bringing in over 1 more new user to hopefully become active and engaged. Thus, to achieve exponential growth you want a k value over 1.

Virality can be further explained with this diagram:

The double viral loop indicates that once a new user joins because of a referral, invite, or share from an existing user or influencer, when the original user is notified, they are likely to re-engage with your app and share again.

“You've seen somebody else have this amazing experience and you ask that question: "How did you do that!" A lot of great viral loops use what I call 'demonstration virality', where somebody else in using a product is demonstrating to you how that product gets used, is super viral.”

“Every viral growth loop is an extension of an awesome product that people get value from and you want to help them tell their friends or incentivize them to do so, but it starts with providing real product value and then enabling them to do that more easily.”

• Virality is measured by the k-factor, which specifically measures how many new users are generated from one existing user. The formula is k = i*c. Aim for a k value greater than 1 to achieve exponential growth.

• Providing incentives, and appealing to ego and emotion give you the best shot of tapping into user- driven viral growth.

• Give your users an incentive to promote and share your app. In a Branch study, incentivized referrals had an average conversion rate of 70%, while non-incentivized referrals had an average conversion rate of 30%.

• Referral programs can create virality. Ensure that your referrals deep link and rewards are automatically applied to improve overall conversion rate.

• Appeal to users’ ego to get them to share. When offering users a way to share your app with others, highlight a feature that makes them look good, and tweak copy and creatives that play to the ego.

• Positive emotions like joy make people share (the happier the post, the more likely it is to be shared), while negative emotions (anger, fear) drive more actual clicks on the content. Use these emotions to drive the user behavior that helps crush your KPIs, such as increasing install rate, in-app actions, or purchase rate.

• Are you actively measuring your virality efforts with the k-factor?

• Are you using incentives, ego and emotion to entice users to share your app or content? Which emotions could we stimulate with our content?

• Are your referral programs easy to use? Is the user experience optimized for success? Does the referral directly take users into the app? Is it personalized?

Activation is the rate at which new installs become active users. Think of it as the space between a user not knowing why they’re in your app and becoming a loyal user. Any user can download your app, but their value to your business is negligible until they identify and align with its value, and perform actions that contribute to your business’ goals.

Users “activate” when they complete actions in your app engagement funnel that lead to your north star metric, as shown in the figure below. Some brands have one particular action that defines activation, while others have a series of actions but assign certain actions more value. Consider how your engagement funnel KPIs tie into measurable team objectives across the organization, as well as how external partners, including ad networks, can help you best optimize against them.

Company Acquisition Activation North Star Metric

Twitter Signup Rate Active Users

Ticketmaster • Paid Advertising App Install Rate App Users • SEO MasterClass Subscription Rate Subscribers • Direct Honey • Sharing & Social Extension Install Rate Extension Users

Wish • Referral Purchase Rate GMV

Pinterest First Pin Rate Active Pinners

Here’s an example of a user activation scenario from Yelp. The user finds Yelp through their team’s SEO efforts, browses until they find a restaurant they like, and attempts to bookmark it. To bookmark, they must step up their relationship with Yelp and sign up. Signups are likely a metric that Yelp tracks as part of its user activation efforts.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 74 We recommend that our clients balance having enough leading indicators to make good product and marketing decisions without waiting for the entire customer lifecycle to take place, particularly if their North Star Metric doesn't typically occur within 7 days of install. However, we also encourage clients to balance this against overcrowding their definition of KPIs to keep focus between different functional groups.

How to Encourage User Activation So, how do you take users to that golden moment of activation? A lot of it rests on your onboarding process, which can determine whether a user stays or leaves. Just like a first date, making a good first impression on your user is critical. If it takes just 50 milliseconds for a user to form an opinion about a website — and an app isn’t much different. Woo your users with frictionless onboarding that entices them to stay the course and convert. Some key tips for better onboarding:

Personalize

If you can personalize the onboarding process to your users, even in the simplest of ways, you’re starting out ahead of the game in terms of retention. While much has been written about best practices to personalize the onboarding process, here are three strategies we recommend in particular:

» Leverage your product analytics tool or team to understand what new user flows are best correlated with long-term retention, then tailor questions to define which of these flows will be most compelling for your new user, thereby tailoring their onboarding experience.

» Think holistically about personalization of not only the initial product interaction, but also how you can tailor marketing touches over the next 3 and 7 days to reinforce onboarding personalization. For example:

◊ By coupling personalization of the onboarding emails a user receives to their preference, you double down on the benefits of providing a custom experience and reinforce differentiation.

◊ If initial dropoff is a recurring concern, consider running either awareness or re- engagement ads targeted to new users to reinforce the “habit building” component of app adoption and keep your brand top of mind during this critical period.

• Customize the onboarding flow based on user segment.

» Having different onboarding flows for different personas (such as a teacher vs student for education app) will help deliver relevant-content faster and incentivize first-session exploration.

» Understanding user context is key for persona-based onboarding personalization. In addition to tailored questions, consider using deferred deep linking to provide context about the campaign parameters associated with your new user and map the referring campaign back to persona segment. Using this data may give you enough information to pre-identify their persona without tailored questions or cut unnecessary data entry out of the onboarding flow.

• Create shortcuts to trust and belonging.

» The experience of app-install can be alienating. As users move from a contextual ask to download your app to the app store, distractions like reviews, nutrition labels and unrelated screenshots can interrupt the built-in motivation of the initial campaign. Re-building identification with the app quickly during onboarding mitigates dropoff from install to activation. This could include:

◊ Showing the name of the referrer if the user is coming from a referral. Capture deferred deep link parameters about referring users and create continuity by displaying their name or user profile picture to remind your new user that a trusted source wants to introduce them to your app.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 76 ◊ Taking users straight to content. If a user’s install was associated with specific content - an ad showing a specific product, a share from another user or moving from a distinct page on the mobile web - consider integrating that content directly into the onboarding flow. On the content page, highlight similar ways to use the app and make the ask for a user to opt-into push notifications through a value-add that considers this intent.

Yummly personalizes the user’s onboarding experience by asking for food preferences during onboarding.

“The more personalized you make something and the more you understand their intent, the more likely you are to actually activate that user.”

Shannon Cook Director of GTM Mobile Enablement

“Mobile personalization doesn’t have to be a struggle. It all comes down to how marketers connect the dots across their tech and data. Some brands that we’ve seen be successful have leveraged APIs and other data sources to generate personalized content within their mobile campaigns, and have seen results like a 27% increase in notification opens, 5x lift in click rate, and 30% lift in conversions - mobile personalization works!”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 78 Show value during onboarding Remind users why they signed up — include your value proposition during onboarding to reinforce why your app deserves their attention. This is particularly necessary if your app’s onboarding flow requires users to input personal information like a phone number or zip code. Telling users why and how that information will enhance their experience and deliver value creates rapport by showing that you understand a user’s potential concerns and thereby minimizes the chance of dropoff.

PicsArt reminds users of the app’s value by reminding users that value is just a moment away. One quick sign-up and they’ll be able to “start making awesome pictures!”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 79 Ease in complex features over time When moving a user along your onboarding process, only show the features that are most important for them to get started. Show more features as the user moves along deeper into the use of your app, and uncover what they need when they reach appropriate stages of their journey. Showing edge cases too early can distract users from completing an initial (and usually basic) conversion, purchase, or other goal.

Pinterest keeps things simple by showing users how to pick topics and pin something, which is the main feature of the app.

Make action part of the onboarding process - show, don’t tell Build onboarding experiences that relate directly to user flows. Having the user click and tap is more valuable than words, and helps them learn your app’s functionality faster. Apps that treat onboarding as a form of orientation quickly exhibit how they ground their value prop in reality. From simple explanations to clear calls to action, effective onboarding places users at the center.

Smule has users complete actions as part of the onboarding process, showing the app’s value by making sure that the user knows how to get what they need to complete core actions.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 80 The “Aha!” Moment Strategic growth marketing can fill your top-of-funnel, but to translate that into LTV, making a good first impression on your user is critical. That’s why you should make it as easy as possible for users to understand the unique value of your product, known as the “Aha!” moment. According to the Fogg Behavioral Model, when getting a user to perform an action, you can either make performing that action easy or increase their motivation.

In mobile, the user’s inherently short attention span amplifies the need to simplify. Making things easy, even when motivation might be lower, increases the chances an action is taken.

Activation Threshold

(Fogg behavior model)

High

Motivation Triggers succeed

Triggers fail Low

Hard to do Easy to do Easy to do

“Aha!” moments are also crucial to your retention rates. The more the user engages in an “Aha!” moments during their onboarding (in this case, sending a message), the higher chance they will be retained long-term.

FACEBOOK: UBER: DOORDASH: PINTEREST: Facebook’s mission is to Uber’s “Aha” moment is Doordash, a food delivery Pinterest aims to give people the power when users book a ride, app, counts its “Aha” empower users to to build a community which ties into the value moment as the moment “discover the things they and stay connected. The they bring the user — a user places an order love.” It’s no surprise that “Aha” moment is when a bringing transportation through the app. their “Aha” moment is user adds a friend. at their fingertips. when a user discovers content they love and “pin” (save) it to a board.

• Activation is the rate at which acquired users become active users. Making a user active increases their lifetime value, engagement, and retention.

• Acquired users become active users when they complete actions in your app that lead to your north star metric/KPIs.

• You can increase activation by improving your onboarding process, including:

» Personalized onboarding for different user groups

» Asking for user preferences during onboarding

» Building belonging and identification by highlighting either a trusted voice (in onboarding flows where the new user was referred, show the referrer’s name during onboarding) or delivering on the promise of desired content.

» Ease in multiple app features over time — show the most important feature of your app first.

» Make action part of the onboarding process.

• The “Aha” Moment is when users actively understand the value of your app/product. The more a user engages with an “Aha” moment, the more likely you are to retain them.

• Aim to make the “Aha” moment as easy to accomplish as possible.

• What is your north star metric? What KPIs do you use to measure it? How quickly can you guide users to accomplishing this?

• Is your onboarding flow optimized to fulfill your north star metric? Does your onboarding provide sufficient value? Is it personalized to fulfill user needs and improve the user experience?

• What is your “Aha!” moment? How hard is it for users to find it?

As the pandemic forced advertising and budget cuts across industries in 2020, we witnessed an increase in businesses shifting focus to mobile retention. We’ve also seen industries like online retail and gaming experience a massive influx in growth that mobile marketers are trying to sustain as the pandemic slowly lifts. While certain industries have exploded in terms of new user growth, retention should be of equal importance at all stages of the funnel. Acquiring users that churn quickly isn’t just a waste of money, it can actually be a detraction from your brand. Just as virality can accelerate growth, confused or unhappy users can stop you in your tracks. This is especially important to consider in order to sustain the massive momentum and growth in newly acquired users in a post-pandemic world.

Ethan Smith CEO

“Retention is probably the most important part of your growth funnel. If you acquire users and you don't activate them or retain them, then you have to keep on buying more ads and getting more people coming in. So focusing on retention is probably the most important thing.”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 86 What Does Strong Retention Look Like? Any number by itself provides little context and even less strategy. While growth and retention goals should be built in tandem by a cross-functional team, your individual numbers should take into consideration nuances like LTV, vertical, path to conversion, average revenue per user (ARPU), and even investor/ analyst perception.

A good place to start is benchmarking based on the space you’re in. These are general benchmarks from Lenny Rachitsky (Former Product Lead at Airbnb) and Casey Winters (CPO of Eventbrite):

Category Good Great

Consumer Social 25% 45%

Consumer Transactional 30% 50%

Consumer SaaS* 40% 70%

SMB* 60% 80%

Enterprise SaaS* 70% 90%

User Retention at Month 6

Equally important is defining what indicates retention for a healthy user. Benchmarking here requires a conversation on how often you expect different types of users to interact with your product. For example, a user likely isn’t going to be booking Airbnb’s each day, but they might use Slack everyday:

Source: Use Case Frequency Spectrum - Reforge

Notice how products with more frequent use are in the “habit zone?” Building habits with your users is an effective way to get them coming back for more in the context of your app’s unique value.

*Footnote: We left these categories in to show how hard it is in the B2C space to keep customers around and show how leaky the customer funnel really is.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 87 During this process, it’s critical to be specific around retention goals to each one of your key personas and communicate any nuance clearly across the business. For example, while a traveler might not book an Airbnb every day, indexing the on the same retention standard for a “host” persona - where far more frequent visits to the app for communication, posting, and managing properties occurs for the different persona - might indicate something entirely different. Working together to identify nuance and re-evaluate personas as you grow and add new features is the best way to stay ahead of the curve.

Archie Abrams VP Product, Shopify, former VP of Growth at Lyft

“We have a variety of use cases [at Lyft] that people would use rideshare for. Going to an airport is the most common activation case, but it's not a very retentive behavior because most people don't fly that often. So it's important for us to bring folks in on use cases that get very episodic with long gaps between rides and then move folks to a much more habitual use case, like commuting to work, when running late, going out to the bar, etc.”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 88 Engagement and Retention: A Perfect Pair Engagement and retention are like two peas in a pod; you can’t expect to retain users if they don’t see enough value to engage. On the flip side, high retention rates allow for more chances for the user to engage with you, and a user with higher engagement is likely to stick around rather than a lower-engaged user.

Engage and Retain with Habits

Create habits in your users that lead them to continuously re-engage. To form a habit, you need the following ingredients:

• A cue • A reward

This often takes the form of push notifications, which if done right, can be a powerful way to create a habit of continuously engaging with your app/product. Here are some examples of forming habits with cues and rewards in pushes:

Cue Reward

Fitbit presents a cue to users encouraging them to hit their daily goal, and lets them know when they do. Users feel a sense of urgency at the cue, then a sense of accomplishment after the reward. By putting your brand and message in front of your users during a moment of achievement, over time users are likely to associate positive feelings with your brand.

Netflix sends a push notification announcing a new season of a TV show the user watches. The reward: being deep linked right into the show’s homepage in the Netflix app.

Dominic Coryell former Growth at Facebook

“We rely on this gigantic network that we have called Facebook and Instagram — and the hooks that we have are largely happening because people are communicating on these platforms. For successful retention, the process of discovering what features to build that will create better user habits and help us compete against other messaging apps is important.”

“One of the most important things we do to drive growth at United is make it easy for customers to sign up for our loyalty program, Mileage Plus, through one-click enrollment at United.com and on our mobile app. MileagePlus powers a robust consent-backed behavioral data set that helps us understand each customer – from channels used, routes flown, product and partner use, clicks and conversions, and willingness to pay. These insights inform the expected value of each customer, and drive our growth marketing activity and automation across acquisition, engagement, retention and yield growth goals, all while delivering a more valuable travel experience for each customer so United is the airline they choose to fly, motivating them to move up through higher levels of status in MileagePlus at the same time.”

Creating new and engaging content is a cost-effective method to delight current users. Your content could range from educational, actionable articles to help users with a specific issue, lighthearted content to keep them entertained, and can take many forms from blog posts to polls to social media posts. If you can, make content that users can easily respond to, like interactive Instagram stories, polls, video challenges, and competitions. This kind of low-effort content takes only minutes or seconds for users to engage with, making it an easy win for both you and the user.

Under Armour encourages customers to practice healthy habits while staying home. To do this, they send multiple newsletter emails throughout the week such as “The Daily 3” to increase user engagement. Users who click the CTA are brought into the Under Armour app to read the newsletter.

In the early days of the pandemic, Chipotle ran the #ChipotleLidFlip challenge on TikTok, a hashtag and video challenge that received over 300M views, and their #GuacDance challenge which received over 1 billion views. Proof that creating easy, actionable content for your users to engage with and respond to pays off big time!

Creating content targeted to solve a specific pain point engages users and brings them value. This could be through blogs, a video series, podcast, ebook, or mini online course. Content could range from how-to guides to walk a user through a problem, to industry guides, and more. To get to know user pain points to create content from, dig through reviews on the App/Play store, ask users for feedback on the app, and conduct user research. Although focusing on pain points that help users through the pandemic is a big one, also focus on those you can fix that will give customers better experiences once the pandemic lifts.

Nerdwallet consistently creates articles on its mobile website and in the app about all things personal finance not only to acquire new users, but to educate them and bring them value. Since the pandemic, they’ve made an effort to include actionable COVID- focused content to help users navigate their finances in this time, responding to the pain point of financial uncertainty.

Mada Seghete Co-founder and Head of Marketing

“Right now is a crucial time to keep users informed and entertained when you think about retention. So if you can't offer them your product, you can still build a relationship with them. So I think this idea of relationship building as part of retention is really important.”

“Testing and iteration are critical in a modern marketing program. You have to be able to do it quickly because customer preferences can change as fast as the wind changes direction. Pizza Hut has really taken this to heart by empowering its team to run continuous multivariate tests on their cross-channel messaging to improve customer engagement. One of their campaigns registered a 30% increase in transactions and a 21% revenue increase, and a 10% profit increase all thanks to testing, iterating, and thoughtful personalization.”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 94 Win Back and Retain Churned Users According to Amplitude, churned users are the largest percentage of most products’ potential user pools. These users are typically high value, especially if they’re using a competitor product. Resurrecting these users improves your retention rate and provides critical product feedback about where and why ideal persona users can fall short on adoption.

Ethan Smith CEO

“When thinking about retention, you want to think about the different states of the user throughout their lifecycle. First they start as a new user, then we activate them. So now they are a current user and then ultimately we want to push them to become a power user. So somebody who's coming back many times, they've built a habit around the app, they're ordering from DoorDash every single week. But a lot of the time they do not become that power user. So they might churn. And when they churn we can potentially resurrect them or we might lose them forever.”

“Winning back churned users is one of the most cost-effective approaches to a solid growth marketing strategy. Engaging churned audiences is, in a sense, similar to a new user acquisition strategy in the sense that churned audiences are not your customers; they are essentially no different than a new user. This approach however, is dissimilar from UA in the sense that churned audiences have already expressed interest in your product. Ultimately, engaging churned users with ads that demonstrate value, new product features, promotion, and relevant content is arguably the most sensible form of UA an advertiser can explore. This form of UA allows for lower cost because you do not need to spend time and money targeting users you know little about; rather, you can engage churned audiences with precision and relevancy to ultimately drive growth.”

• Lack of Product Market Fit - Users did not see sufficient value to solve their perceived need or enough differentiated value compared to your competitors.

• Lack of Activation - Users aren’t activating properly because they’re not finding that “Aha!” Moment.

• Low Usage Frequency - Users activate, but don’t use your product with the expected frequently.

• Cost - Users find potential value in the product, but either don’t convert or display high churn rates because the product is too expensive.

• Bugs - Users become frustrated because key aspects of your product break or become inaccessible, disturbing their usage and leading to frustration.

• Acquiring the Wrong Users - If you’re not acquiring the right audience, then you risk attracting low- value, low-intent users unlikely to stick around.

While churn is typically associated with many factors, diagnosing exactly what categories are most impacting your app is the first step to remediation. We recommend the following research methods as a part of your diagnosis:

Reason Research Method

Product Marker Fit Net Promoter Score

Activation Completion of onboarding / new user experience

Usage Frequency Compare against similar products

Cost Pricing analysis

Bugs Customer support

Acquiring the Wrong Users Surveys, screen recording

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 97 Existential causes of churn - product market fit, activation issues, cost, and bugs- should be handled first as they often require broad-scale strategy or functional re-prioritization. Once remediated, ongoing monitoring and iteration over time can provide ongoing, incremental wins. Once these critical blockers are addressed, there are various tactics to attack churn as a result of low intent or low usage frequency as a growth team:

Email can highlight unique new value propositions to remind and entice churned users back to remind them about your app. Make sure your winback and re-engagement emails deep link your users into the app for a seamless experience; you don’t want users to churn again because of a broken link and fragmented experience that was entirely preventable. Some examples of email campaigns that optimize the user experience to increase conversions:

Push

Push notifications are a unique tool in the mobile growth playbook to re-engage and retain users, especially those who have lapsed for a significant period. Push notifications are most effective when personalized based on user demographic data, behavior, interests, and any other factors that support increased relevance and value. For example, if a user added items to their cart in your app, failed to complete purchase, and did not return to your app for a while, you could send them a push personalized to highlight the items they’ve left behind and encourage them to complete their purchase.

Many networks support showing retargeting ads to custom user segments based on time since last engagement. These ads can be particularly effective on a CPA basis because they do not have the dropoff rates of install ads, where a user must first download the app to transact.

To optimize your CPA, make sure that placements take users with the app directly to advertised products and content with minimal friction. Buying intent that lands on your app’s homepage, rather than on a relevant product, will result in CPAs that shutter this channel’s viability before you have a chance to truly build it out.

Boohoo utilizes deferred deep linking to take users from a Facebook ad right into the relevant in-app product page.

SEO

The same principles that make intent-based SEO a key tool for app acquisition also serve as a favorable tactic for lapsed user re-engagement. Understanding the intent and behavior of long-term engaged users can provide insight into the keywords or phrases that similar lapsed users may search outside your app. Building content that incorporates them in your SEO strategy is a low-cost way to help users with high-intent but low usage find their way back into your app.

Outside the paradigm of “grow at all costs”, it’s important to incorporate long-term retention into the core work of your growth goals. Not every acquisition channel brings in the highest-value users when we move from a CPI to CPA viewpoint. This is particularly visible when growth teams deduplicate cross-channel touches, instead of narrowly defining acquisition as “installs driven by paid ads”. In fact, users acquired from organic channels are more likely to be retained than those acquired by paid channels, as shown in a Branch study:

Source: Branch

This year, make it a priority to dig deeper into which acquisition channels see the most churn, and prioritize developing a retention strategy for the types of users most often sourced from that specific channel. The top- performing channels, copy and creative that worked for you pre-COVID may not reflect your best opportunities today. Shifting user pain points and perception of value can mean that ad spend isn’t working as well as previously expected, or that SEO efforts could benefit from additional fine-tuning.

• Similar to how you should think about topline growth, think of retention as a tangible outcome that should inform all stages of the funnel.

• “Good” retention rates vary based on your vertical, monetization strategy, and how often users interact with your product.

• Engagement and retention go hand in hand - you must proactively engage your users to keep value alignment with their evolving needs and effectively retain them.

• Building habits with your users is an effective way to increase engagement and retention.

• To form a habit, focus on cue and reward. For apps, this often takes the form of a push notification, a powerful way to facilitate a habit of continuous engagement with your product.

• Engage users with compelling content that:

» Helps with a tangible pain point or solves a distinct problem

» Adds lighthearted entertainment to their day, or

» Involves an interactive component like Instagram stories, polls, video challenges, and competitions

• Churned users are large percentages of most brands’ potential user pools — resurrect them to capitalize on a high-intent audience that already shows brand awareness and improve your retention rate.

• Churn from product market fit, activation issues, cost, and bugs should be remediated first.

• Low intent or low usage based churn can be mitigated by:

» Creating deep linked email campaigns that highlight unique promotions or targeted incentives and remind users about your app/product

» Deploying push notifications personalized to user behavior that deep link to relevant content in the app

» Testing retargeting ads shown specifically to lapsed user segments

» Including keywords or phrases in your SEO strategy that incorporate learnings from your most successful users

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 102 • Reassess your acquisition channels; it’s possible not every acquisition channel you use brings the highest-value users, especially when deduplicating cross-channel touchpoints. We find that organic channel touchpoints often outperform paid at delivering users with higher retention rates.

• Discover which acquisition channels result in the most churn, then develop a customized retention strategy for that specific channel.

Questions to Align Your Team

• What retention numbers make sense for your team given user LTV and growth goals? How should these evolve over 12-18 months?

• How can you identify and build habits among your users to keep them coming back?

• What content creation should you prioritize to entertain, address pain points, or provide value to your users that drives engagement?

• How can you resurrect churned users? Why have these users churned in the first place? Is addressing this cause of churn an existential or incremental project?

• What data can your team use to reassess acquisition channels to see if they’re attracting high-value users?

Aggregate growth without insight into the channels and campaigns that provide incrementality does little to inform and direct your teams’ efforts. Measurement at every stage of the funnel is critical to both improve outcomes and increase the budget and resources available to your team. If you can’t measure your efforts defensibly, it’s difficult to encourage and expand investment.

Key growth metrics to measure and highlight depend on your goals and whether you’re optimizing for B2C or B2B success, but common metrics include:

• Brand awareness • Lead generation • Customer acquisition • Engagement • Revenue • Customer retention or loyalty • Lead management and down-funnel progression

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 105 Challenges to Measurement Measuring your marketing impact should be easy in an age of data accessibility, but attributing value correctly amongst the vast range of campaigns, channels, and platforms can be surprisingly difficult. Some common challenges that accompany the push for full visibility into individual campaign performance include:

Measuring Awareness

“Awareness” is a purposefully broad term that describes campaigns focused on making potential customers more familiar with your business. This breadth makes awareness a difficult KPI to directly measure and attribute. As marketing leaders push for performance-based outcomes, fewer and fewer companies consider pure awareness a core KPI unless they can tie it back to business goals.

Despite the difficulty of tying awareness to specific down-funnel conversions, growth teams should continue to invest in awareness as a best practice. Because awareness can be hard to attribute, we recommend measuring the efficacy of your awareness efforts through associated metrics around direct traffic, brand searches, and non-branded searches.

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic can provide directional feedback about the effectiveness of an awareness campaign. Because non-referred users don’t come to your platform through a campaign link or keyword search, we know that they’re directly typing your website into an address bar. This indicates preexisting brand awareness. Word of mouth, billboards, or ads that create interest but not short-term intent are all expressions of effective awareness campaigns that causally impact direct traffic. Therefore, measuring your direct traffic growth over time is a useful tool to understand how your awareness campaigns contribute to growth.

Branded vs non-branded searches

Branded searches indicate a specific intent to interact from people who already know about and intentionally seek your product. These users come to your site from the intermediary of an intentional/organic search instead of a marketing campaign like a referral link. In short, these prospects are already aware of your brand. Since these people are already aware of your brand and are taking effort to find you, you can use branded searches over time to measure your awareness campaigns.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, non-branded searches originate from people who searched for a general term, rather than branded content and found your website. SEO commonly drives non-branded search traffic by identifying search queries that are related to your brand but don’t directly reference the brand itself and building content that can turn directional intent into brand interaction and awareness.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 106 Winding User Journeys and Cross-Platform Challenges Today’s mobile ecosystem is increasingly fragmented. The increase of connected devices, walled gardens, and siloed platforms make even a single user’s journey winded, complex, and nonlinear. As a result, it’s incredibly complex for marketers to attribute and deduplicate their efforts unless a user is authenticated at every touchpoint. On mobile, where fleeting cookies, app-siloed device identifiers, and limited log-ins are the best proxies for pre-conversion identity, this process of de-duplication and inferring incrementality is especially difficult.

While many vendors gloss over this complexity, it defines the mobile experience in our personal day-to-day brand interactions. Imagine, for example, a typical interaction with a fitness app from a bird’s eye view:

• A user sees a video ad for the app on Facebook but doesn’t click the ad itself.

• The next day, they search for the app and watches a sponsored post from an influencer on Youtube then click the influencer’s link, but they get distracted by a colleague and forget to install.

• A few hours later, they remember your brand and organically search for the app on the App Store and finally install.

When we know the full picture, it’s easy to discern the multiple required touchpoints that impact awareness, intent, and conversion. The complexity here is technological limitation - different, siloed cookies and device identifiers are the best proxy for this user’s identity at each touchpoint. That means most mobile attribution providers must rely on short-half life metadata, like a point-in-time IP address, to distribute credit amongst the campaigns that drove our user to install. The result is attribution that appears to be data-driven, but is often defined by false positives and false negatives. This “clear” but inherently flawed data often leads well- intentioned marketers to optimize campaigns and channels with poor incrementality.

Such intricate journeys are now the norm as users jump from various channels, platforms, and devices as they interact with your brand before finally converting. The challenge for modern brands is to understand these touchpoints are a connected part of a user’s journey, and to attribute these fragments to one user. To achieve this, a robust attribution model is a necessity. Simply put, measurement of your efforts starts with accurate attribution. Understanding which channels work best for you, understanding your ROI, and optimizing your strategies are simply not possible without a robust attribution system.

As the time between touchpoint and conversion grows, the attribution problem magnifies, leaving companies that use mobile to drive purchase of “big ticket” (houses, cars, etc.) or seasonal (vacations, seasonal sports) items especially vulnerable to the impact of flawed data.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 107 Types of Attribution Models Each attribution model has distinct benefits and drawbacks. While standardizing on a single attribution model provides internal consistency and a common language amongst the teams responsible for growth, accounting for the downsides of a model must remain top-of-mind for teams approaching growth from an advanced perspective. Even when working off a single attribution model best fits your team’s resources and needs, consider periodically running your data through an alternative model to avoid ongoing blind spots whenever possible. The attribution models below are most frequently employed by consumer apps and ad networks. Last-Click Last-click is the most common type of attribution model in mobile. It gives all credit to the last user interaction before a conversion, disregarding prior touches. Most ad networks reflect their individual impact on a client’s business through a last-click model, and networks that charge on a CPI or CPA model typically bill on last-click.

Pros: Using this attribution model is straightforward, as it assigns credit to only the last user interaction for a conversion. Last-click lets you gain visibility into the campaign that was the final driver in convincing a user to convert.

Cons: Because this attribution model disregards any touchpoints prior to the last click, you don’t get a full picture of the user journey that led to the conversion. By failing to give credit to touchpoints before the last click, you miss out on understanding what other touchpoints led to conversion, and understanding what other touchpoints you can optimize. Using last-click as your single source of truth potentially could misrepresent your users’ journeys, as other touchpoints are not given credit they might deserve.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 108 First-Click First-click is exactly what it sounds like: this attribution model gives all credit to the first touch in the user journey, despite all subsequent interactions. This gives insight into the first interaction with your brand that started the user journey to conversion, allowing you to view and optimize how users discover your brand.

Pros: First-click gives you full insight into the interaction that led users to discover your brand.

Cons: Because all touchpoints after first-click are given no credit, you fail to understand what other touchpoints that influenced conversion. Using first-click as your single source of truth potentially could misrepresent your users’ journeys, as other touchpoints are not given credit they might deserve.

Last Non-Direct Click The last non-direct click model gives credit to the last non-direct touchpoint before conversion. This eliminates any “direct” interactions with your brand that occur before conversion, like a user entering your brand’s website in a search bar before finding a product then purchasing, which implies the user already previously knew about you. Eliminating direct interactions lets you determine how users learned about your brand and what prompted them to interact with you.

Pros: Eliminating direct interactions lets you determine how users learned about your brand and what prompted them to interact with you.

Cons: Last non-direct click gives 100% of credit to a single touchpoint, meaning that other touchpoints could get less credit than they deserve. This could lead to misrepresentation of data, as well as making decisions based off misrepresented data.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 109 Linear Attribution This model gives all different touchpoints in the user journey the same amount of credit. For example, if you made $100 from each user and they have 4 interactions with your brand prior to conversion, each interaction would get 25% of the credit, aka each would be credited with $25 of influence.

Pros: By spreading credit evenly among touchpoints instead of assigning all credit to one touchpoint, you can view a full picture of users’ journeys and better optimize every down-funnel campaign for conversion.

Cons: Because credit is equal among all touchpoints, a touchpoint that influenced conversion more than others would get less than the credit it deserves. Similarly, a touchpoint that had very little influence on conversion could get more credit than it deserves. This could lead to an inaccurate view of the touchpoints in the user journey, and lead to campaign decisions based on misrepresented data.

Time Decay This model gives all interactions in the user journey credit, but gives more credit to the interactions close to the actual click/conversion.

Pros: Rather than assigning equal credit to all touchpoints or all credit to one touchpoint, time decay recognizes that touchpoints in user journeys have different degrees of influence over conversion. Because it gives touchpoints closer to conversion more influence,

Cons: Because it gives touchpoints closer to conversion more influence, earlier touchpoints might not get the credit they deserve, potentially misrepresenting the user journey.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 110 Position-Based Also known as “U shaped” attribution, this model is used more often in B2B rather than B2C marketing. It gives the first and last touch the most and equal credit, while splitting the rest of the credit among touchpoints in between them.

Pros: Like time decay, the position-based attribution model recognizes that different touchpoints have different degrees of influence. By giving first and last touches the most weight, the position- based attribution model views the moment a user discovers your brand and the last interaction before conversion as the most influential. This helps you better understand and optimize these touchpoints while still considering those in between them.

Cons: By giving first and last touches the majority of credit, touchpoints in the middle may not get the credit they deserve, leading to campaign decisions based on misrepresented data.

Cohort Analysis

Cohort analysis is the study of user groups based on related behaviors over time, rather than the study of specific metrics. As a marketer or product leader, a cohort would be a subgroup of users grouped by certain interactions with your properties (e.g. app/website) and campaigns (e.g. email/text), as well as certain qualifying events, such as the first time a user downloads an app.

Why is this so valuable? Because cohort analysis empowers you to understand user behavior over time, you gain a deeper, more granular understanding of your data. For example, you could ask yourself “which ad campaign drives the most revenue from acquired users over a seven-day window?” and derive insights across campaigns around both (1) how revenue accumulates with each additional day, and (2) how aggregate revenue compares over the entire first 7-day period:

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 111 Cohort analysis should be a frequent part of your campaign analysis to avoid comparing apples to oranges when evaluating campaign performance. If your team is approaching cohort analysis for the first time, consider diving into questions like the below as you build cohort analysis into your standard motion:

• How does my retention of users from different ad networks differ over time? How does this compare to ARPU from the same set of networks?

• Which sub publishers statistically deliver low ROI? Should I have a conversation with my network partners about these outliers?

• Are conversion rates higher for users acquired through paid or organic channels? How can insights around effective copy or creative from organic channels increase the day 7 efficacy of my paid campaigns?

Fabien-Pierre Nicolas VP US Marketing

“We measure over the period of 28 days the number of times people are engaging with our product. Since we are in the news business and it is an ad driven business, we need people to come pretty often - so at least 1 day out of 2. So if they come all 14 days, they become a medium heavy user. And this has a very strong correlation to revenue.”

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 112 Challenges to Mobile Measurement as a Result of iOS 14 Because the IDFA is deprecated on iOS 14 and beyond, this means that you will not be able to access granular, user-level data such as the IDFA unless users explicitly consent to ad tracking on iOS via Apple’s App Tracking Transparency Framework. Otherwise, the only other acceptable attribution method on iOS is SKAdNetwork, which provides aggregate-level data only. Instead of using detailed, granular data to understand campaign performance, advertisers will have to rely on aggregate level data, which shows just enough information about a campaign without revealing specific details. This makes understanding, attributing, and optimizing campaigns much more difficult. For example, aggregate data would show that Campaign 12 drove X installs (without disclosing any information that could potentially reveal a specific user). Relying on aggregate data means the ability of advertisers to accurately track the ROI of their spend is limited — the days of identifying specific high-performing ads and channels are gone.

How does SKAdNetwork work exactly? When a user clicks on an ad that takes them to the App Store, the ad network can pass basic attribution parameters along with the click. Should the click result in a conversion (install), the App Store will notify the ad network accordingly. Apple will report the campaign information — network, publisher, and campaign ID (limited to 100 values for details such as campaign, creative, placement, etc.) devoid of device-level details via postbacks to the ad network. They’ll also pass the conversion value — a scale of 0-63 which the advertiser can set to give some estimates to the users’ quality.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 113 Since conversion values are one of the few data points SKAdNetwork offers, it’s in marketers’ best interest to test, iterate, and determine how to best use them to drive as many campaign insights as possible.

Remember that how you implement Conversion Values will depend on what matters most to your business. How you implement these values for your company may lie somewhere in-between the options we propose.

Business Goal: Increasing Lifetime Value

One of the major deficiencies of SKAdNetwork is that there is no easy way to fully attribute lifetime value, both due to the 24 hour timer as well as the fact that only one Conversion Value is reported for each user, ever.

If your company cannot function without attributing lifetime value to your campaigns, we suggest you work with your analytics team to work through how to best model this. Feel free to reach out to your Branch representative to include them in those conversations.

Business Goal: App Installs or Post-Install Activity

If your company is in a period of their growth in which installs are the most important thing and all app-related activity is simply geared towards getting as many installs as possible, or if you know that for your business, installs nearly always has a direct correlation with more business value, you may want to decide if it’s worth tracking conversion values at all. As installs are your holy grail, getting the install postbacks sent to the ad networks you’re utilizing as quickly as possible will mean they will be able to optimize between campaigns

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 114 as quickly as possible. By tracking a lot of Conversion Values, you could be continually resetting the postback timer, delaying this optimization ability.

What about if you have an app in which the only action(s) you care about must happen right after install, such as a login or purchase of a subscription that gates your app? In this case, you could just track one or two Conversion Values. In this example, where a login/subscription gates all content, we would suggest assigning each action a conversion value to know if an ad network is driving installs for people with an account already, or driving net-new subscribers.

Conversion Value In-App Action

1 Login

2 Subscribe

In order to do this, you could set Conversion Value “1” for the Login action and Conversion Value “2” for the Subscribe action. Existing users would log in, triggering the value “1,” and then never reset the timer after that (since they have already subscribed in the past). New users would subscribe, triggering the value “2,” which would reset the timer. Since this is the higher of the two conversion values, when these users then log in after subscribing (thus triggering a lower Conversion Value), the timer would not reset again. In both scenarios, the install postback would be delayed by at most 24 hours, giving your ad networks some ability to quickly optimize campaigns.

Business Goal: Understanding which ad campaigns are driving installs that convert

If your company’s KPIs are defined by the user taking a specific action, like making a purchase or converting to a paid membership, and you must know if your ad campaign is driving this action, consider doing whatever you can to delay the install postback timer from reaching zero before the user completes this action.

Doing this is a bit more of an art than a science, but the general idea is to try to think of a customer’s path to that final action and assign each step along the way an increasing value, trying to max out the 64 available values if you can.

Conversion Value In-App Action

63 Purchase

62 Add Payment Info

61 Clicking Checkout Button

60 View Cart

59 Add to Wishlist

-- --

31 View Item Dimensions

30 View Item Dimensions

29 View Item

28 View Product Category

-- --

10 Views In-App Ad

9 Reads Article in Blog Tab

-- --

2 Views Homescreen

1 Starts Onboarding Flow

It’s impossible to predict the path everyone will take. The basic goal is to create a framework that will hopefully delay the postback as long as possible until the user completes the “final” action that you care about.

There are a few things to keep in mind if you go this route. First, there are several actions that could be used early in the process or late in the process, depending on your app. One key example of this is a login. Does a user have to login to view your content? If so, then login action would get a low conversion value. If they don’t have to, your initial thinking may be to make it a higher conversion value. However, remember that the postback timer only resets if a higher conversion value is triggered. So if you put login as conversion value 58, and a user decides to login right when they install the app, they will have to move through the rest of the conversion process very quickly compared to someone who only logs in when they’re about to purchase something.

©2021 Branch The 2021 Mobile Growth Handbook | 116 It is also important to consider your entire app engagement strategy for new users. Since you will want to keep Apple’s 24-hour timer from hitting zero, consider more robust push notification and email-to-app strategies for new app users aimed at getting them back in the app as much as possible from the moment they install.

Finally, due to Apple’s privacy threshold mentioned above, you will want to be careful about assigning conversion values to actions that are too infrequently completed as this may mean a decrease in the total number of conversion values received.

Business Goal: Quick Optimization with Down-Funnel Reporting

Many still want some insight into down-funnel metrics, but not if it means that your ad networks don’t get the install postbacks for days, weeks, or even months. If this is the case for your business, then you can just focus on a few major in-app events:

Conversion Value In-App Action

58 Purchase

32 Add to Cart

20 View Item

5 Login/Sign-up

While you won’t get insight into slower paths to purchase, this will at least give you an idea if certain ad networks are driving installs that lead to quick conversions. It would also be worth spreading out the values used in order to make tweaks in the future easier.

Nowhere in the Install/Conversion postback is there a place to attach revenue data to a conversion. This means that tracking revenue requires ‘hacking’ the conversion values to represent revenue.

One way you can do this is to assign conversion values to revenue buckets:

Conversion Value In-App Action

63 Purchase Above $150

62 Purchase Between $120 and $149.99

-- --

58 Purchase under $50

Note that this could create more questions than it answers. Does a user’s first-time purchase revenue correlate with their second purchase revenue, and their third? Does the type of campaign you’re running with one network lend itself to higher initial purchase revenue but a campaign with another network is more geared towards users with higher likelihood of continually purchasing? Remember, only one postback per user will ever be sent, with only one conversion value attached to it, so making decisions based on the one revenue bucket could be very misleading. Because of this, it is important to work closely with your analytics team to model out how best to make decisions using this data.

As you can see, there is a lot to consider when tracking events and assigning SKAdNetwork Conversion Values to them. However, the main factor to consider is what matters most to your business. The answer will no doubt change as your business grows and evolves, so how you are tracking Conversion Values should always be a topic for discussion between any relevant teams, from product to marketing to analytics. Create a framework that enables you to start slow, but continually iterate as you learn more about how your users are interacting with your SKAdNetwork campaigns. This means setting up your framework in a way that allows you to evolve your strategy without requiring to make code-level changes and App Store updates every time.

• Measurement of all your efforts down the mobile growth funnel is critical to understanding your ROI and to better optimize your growth strategy. A robust attribution model is pivotal to connect fragmented user touchpoints.

• You can measure awareness by looking at direct traffic, branded searches, and non-branded searches over time.

• Enterprise/B2B marketers face a different set of challenges than B2C marketers including various buyers with different personas and a long deal cycle.

• Different attribution models assign credit to different touchpoints:

» Last-click attribution: Gives all credit to the last touchpoint

» First-click: Gives all credit to the first touchpoint

» Last non-direct click: Gives all credit to the second to last touchpoint

» Linear: Splits credit equally among all touchpoints

» Time decay: Gives all interactions in the user journey credit, but gives more credit to the interactions close to the actual click/conversion

» Position-based/U-shaped: Gives the first and last touch the most and equal credit, while splitting the rest of the credit among touchpoints in between them.

• B2B brands use different attribution models:

» W-shaped: Gives the first touch, the lead creation, and the opportunity creation the same credit. Any touches in between these main 3 get 10% of credit attributed amongst all of them.

» Full Path: Also gives credit to the first touch, lead creation, and opportunity creation, but includes the closing touch where the deal is closed. Credit is evenly split by 22.5% amongst the 4 touchpoints with the remaining 10% split among any remaining touchpoints in between those main 4.

• Cohort analysis is the study of user groups based on related behaviors over time, rather than studying specific metrics. You can use cohort analysis to gain a deeper, more granular understanding of your data and understand patterns and behavior by user group over time.

• Are you measuring your growth efforts through every stage of the funnel?

• Are you using a robust attribution model that connects fragmented user touchpoints?

• Which attribution model would work best for your team? What are its pros and cons against others?

• How can you use cohort analysis to better understand your growth efforts?

Although there have been many challenges to mobile growth within the last year, it’s increasingly important to capitalize on the opportunities 2021 presents in order to sustain growth after the pandemic subsides. As users continue to migrate the majority of their attention and wallet share to mobile, nimble, data-driven growth teams will continue to increase in visibility and prominence at both “born in the app” and traditional businesses.

The most valuable step your growth stakeholders can take is to create a cohesive plan for the strategies and tactics you’ll pursue over the next 12 months. Whether you decide to focus on one or two new strategies or implement several across the board, these growth tips will increase your app’s user base and better retain these users throughout the mobile growth funnel. As you go forward in your journey, remember to integrate growth as a key need and stakeholder in every product and marketing initiative, rather than a separate stage of the funnel. Building the muscle of cross-channel, cross-platform growth can be challenging for organizations that have traditionally maintained functional silos, but for businesses that are up to the challenge, the rewards far outweigh the associated change management cost of strategic and communication realignment.

Ready to transform your mobile growth strategy? We’re here to help you every step of the way — chat with our sales team to discover how the techniques and strategies mentioned above can help take your app growth to the next level.

Mada Seghete, Co-founder and Head of Marketing, Steijn Pelle, CEO @ NewCo & former Product Manager, Branch Robinhood

Johanna Lazar, Product Marketing Specialist, Branch Shannon Cook, Director of GTM Mobile Enablement, Movable Ink Olinda Pais, Content Marketing Manager, Branch Archie Abrams, VP Product, Shopify, former VP of Growth Amanda Grady, Strategy Director, Branch at Lyft Kim KooJoe, Design, Branch Dominic Coryell, former Growth at Facebook Coby Berman, COO, Radar Luc Bondar, VP Marketing & Loyalty, United Airlines Saket Toshniwal, Senior Product Manager (Growth and Will Crocker Hay, Vice President, Customer and Partner CRM), Lovoo Marketing, Braze Eli Schwartz, Growth Advisor Tommy Yannopoulos, Director of Sales, Americas, Remerge Gallant Chen, former VP Digital Marketing, Zendesk Ethan Smith, CEO, Graphite Chris Stevens, CMO, Spot Hero Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, VP US Marketing, SmartNews Josh Elman, Partner @ Greylock, former VP Product, Robinhood