Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for Ecommerce
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Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce A Practical Guide on How to Let Data Work for You Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Introduction Mobile commerce is on a tear. There’s no other way to put it. To name just one study from the many out there — PayPal-Ipsus research paper covering 22 countries found that mCommerce is growing at three times the rate of eCommerce. Between 2013 and 2016 the compound annual growth rate for mCommerce is projected at 42 percent vs. 13% for eCommerce. To put growth in actual sales, mCommerce sales are expected to eclipse $290 billion worldwide by 2016. With such numbers, it’s no wonder that usage of shopping apps is the fastest-growing app category, with sessions on shopping apps on iOS and Android devices increasing by 174% year-over-year, including 220% on Android alone. That’s up from 77% last year as more and more retailers are building apps on top of their mobile-optimized sites despite the hefty price tag of developing and maintaining a commerce app. www.appsflyer.com 2 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Mobile Browser vs. App Funnel Metrics Mobile Browser App Products viewed per user x3.3 Products viewed per user Basket x1.2 Basket Purchase x0.8 Purchase Conversion Rate x3.0 Conversion Rate Source: Criteo, State of Mobile Commerce, Q2 2015 Apps also generated almost 50% of mobile transactions for retailers who have made their app experience a priority. In fact, mobile apps perform better than any other channel, including desktop. Why are apps becoming a must-have touchpoint for retailers? Beyond the fact that mobile is dominated by apps (86% of time spent on mobile is on apps), there are several factors at play here: speed, optimal native mobile experience, ability to use mobile payments and push notifications, not to mention the impact on loyalty and lifetime value from a user who actually made a commitment to the brand by downloading its app. www.appsflyer.com 3 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Today’s savviest retailers (online & offline) are embracing big data as a major facilitator of business growth. Consumer information from anonymous shopping patterns to cross-channel loyalty programs is collected, sliced and diced to provide a more relevant and seamless consumer shopping experience - whether from a brick & mortar location, the website, mobile site or app. A key communication channel merchants have with consumers on mobile is advertising, where relevancy and personalization play a big part. However, unlike the web, the ability to track, measure and ultimately optimize app install and retargeting campaigns is a challenge because of the mobile world’s inherent fragmentation (different OSs, different environments, different devices). The good news is that advertising attribution and analytics platforms utilize sophisticated technology to connect the dots and provide retail app marketers with rich data to enable smart marketing decisions across the omni-channel user journey. This guide will cover the latest of what is possible in this area and how it applies to retail marketing. Getting Started with Mobile Advertising Analytics? We recommend reading this first: THE BEGINNERS GUIDE TO MOBILE ADVERTISING ANALYTICS http://appsflyer.com/begin www.appsflyer.com 4 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce A View From Above Setting Goals Defining Key In-App Events to Track Relevant/ Smart Personalized Consumer Consumer Acquisition Communication Retention & Cohort Analysis The Bottom Line Retention Uplift LTV Uplift ROI Uplift www.appsflyer.com 5 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Let’s Dive In Defining Rich In-App Events that Matter to Your Business A retail app, as you’re well aware, is one of the most complex apps to develop. The diversity ORDER NOW of in-app actions that can be taken by consumers is vast. The ability to track user behavior on a granular level and then view aggregated analytics is the basis of making smart marketing and advertising decisions across all acquisition and engagement channels. It is therefore important that you clearly define your goals and pinpoint the in-app events that are directly related to these goals. Here’s a list of key in-app events in retail apps: • Login • Wishlist • Registration • Add to Cart • Content Viewed (product/ • Initiated Checkout category screens) • Search String • Purchase www.appsflyer.com 6 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Diving deeper into the data involves one more crucial step: defining the right parameters of each in-app event - thus making it “rich.” For example: Purchase Content Viewed Revenue Search String Content Type Price Content ID Currency Quantity Content Id Currency Quantify Customer User ID So how can rich in-app events lead to the ability to meet specific business objectives? Well, if one of your goals is to increase the number of consumers who bought at least two electrical products, you’ll want to track the purchase event “enriched” with the quantity and content type parameters. If you want more female shoppers as active consumers, you can track the content viewed event in addition to content type, content ID, quantity and / or search string parameters. www.appsflyer.com 7 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Ultimately… by tracking these rich in-app events, you’ll be able to Expand your knowledge about your users through deep 1 analytics Set the path towards granular segmentation and enhanced 2 targeting with networks that are at the forefront of mobile targeting capabilities (those that are able to create advanced audience targeting campaigns after receiving rich in-app event data in real time from you or your tracking provider) www.appsflyer.com 8 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Smart Customer Acquisition So far we’ve laid out our goals, defined the in-app events that matter to your business and understood why this data is so valuable. Now let’s take a step back and think about what advertising attribution and analytics is all about from a user acquisition standpoint: The idea is to continue to measure what users are doing inside the app after they’ve installed it — particularly if these are rich in-app events. The data is then aggregated to get an in-depth picture of your audience and which channels (paid or owned), ad networks, campaigns and/or creatives have led users you want — not just any users — to install the app. Measuring Paid Acquisition Here’s a table that shows which networks did well and which did not when aggregating rich in-app event data of users who added women fashion items to the cart. Key takeaway: Networks 4 and 5 reign supreme, while Network 2 should be dropped. www.appsflyer.com 9 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Another example depicts Network 6 acquiring the largest number volume of users who logged-in and made at least two purchases within their first two weeks of activity. Key takeaway: An interesting insight comes from Network 5: although it delivered the lowest number of users, in terms of the install to in-app action conversion rate, 8.48% is a great figure so an even bigger investment in this network makes sense. Enabling Lookalike Targeting By measuring in-app events you can get a clear picture of the types of consumers that generate the highest value to your brand. You can then use this knowledge to find users that “look like them” from a variety of sources by: 1) Increasing spend in a top performing network to maximize reach of its quality audience (make sure you don’t go overboard and end up targeting the same users) 2) Replicating the same targeting criteria used by the performing network with other networks 3) Utilizing the capabilities of the most advanced networks that support real-time data transfer of rich in-app events from a tracking provider and automatically turn it into a lookalike campaign www.appsflyer.com 10 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Measuring Activities on Owned Channels Leveraging your own assets on owned channels, particularly emails and phone numbers of your existing segmented consumers who have yet to install your app, is something you’ll definitely want to measure, and compare to other channels — including paid ones. Key takeaway: The advertiser's email campaign is doing very well compared to other channels with the highest conversion rate and the second highest average revenue per user. www.appsflyer.com 11 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Measuring the Consumer Journey with Multi-Touch Attribution Another important layer to track in order to optimize user acquisition campaigns runs higher up in the funnel, and it involves the ability to go beyond last click attribution. Flawed as giving all the credit to the network that delivered the last click is, it’s the industry standard. However, it serves its purpose when looking from a pure billing perspective. If a marketer is able to see the most common conversion paths that led users to install an app, he/she will continue to invest in these contributing networks. After all, these networks drove your users down the funnel and made them “sales-ready.” Let’s explore the following scenarios: Network A Network B Network C Network D 1,500 view click click last click installs Network A Network B Network D 900 view click last click installs Key takeaway: Network C plays a key role in driving installs www.appsflyer.com 12 Mobile Attribution & Marketing Analytics for eCommerce Measuring (True) Omni-Channel LTV The proliferation of mobile devices, on top of web and brick & mortar touchpoints have created an amazing opportunity for omni-channel retailers. However, it has also generated a massive challenge of connecting the dots to provide a seamless and consistent user experience.