💎 Growth Gems #57 - Onboarding, Paid UA and Influencer Marketing
Hi there,
This week I’m sharing gems on influencer marketing, paid UA vs. organics post-ATT and onboarding/paywall optimization. These insights come from Ludmilla Veloso, Eric Seufert, Marissa Hsu and Paulo Golovattei.
🥇 TOP GEM OF THE WEEK
💎 Organics is never going to be the ultimate scale channel: it’s going to flatten out. At your app’s greatest potential, paid is probably 60-80% of daily new users. If you’ve only grown via organic traction and have optimized your product accordingly, then you have only optimized for the minority. The sooner you layer in paid traffic, the more efficient your paid traffic will be.
by Eric Seufert (Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Heracles Media)
at 49:45 in How to Thrive Despite Apple’s ATT
Onboarding: onboarding funnel, paywall optimization
💎 Onboarding starts with acquisition. A lot of onboarding problems come from a misalignment between promises made or expectations on the user acquisition side. Ensure continuity by delivering on the expectations that are set in the app stores.
by Marissa Hsu (Senior Designer at Phiture)
at 05:12 in A Guide to Effective Mobile App Onboarding at APS Berlin
💎 Leveraging value propositions during onboarding doesn’t have to be just on the welcome screen with a slider, it can also be done throughout: value props between personalization questions, on a “loading screen”, etc. Example: Fastic.
by Marissa Hsu (Senior Designer at Phiture)
at 08:06 in A Guide to Effective Mobile App Onboarding at APS Berlin
💎 Celebrate progress and success so that users feel as though they are accomplishing things. It encourages them to engage more. This can be done through progress indicators (progress bars) and animations.
by Marissa Hsu (Senior Designer at Phiture)
at 09:05 in A Guide to Effective Mobile App Onboarding at APS Berlin
💎 Registration is a high friction point. Depending on your user account model, it might be better to show registration right away because users have a higher motivation on the first app open. If you do, make sure you state the value propositions on that initial screen.
by Marissa Hsu (Senior Designer at Phiture)
at 10:05 in A Guide to Effective Mobile App Onboarding at APS Berlin
⛏️ Going Deeper: like other onboarding funnel changes, this is one you’ll want to test because it might very well depend on your app. Some longer and personalized onboarding funnels might lead users to want to “save their preferences” at the end, even though they would have dropped off if registration was at the start. Marissa also mentioned examples like Adidas for eCommerce where the account creation comes only when you try to checkout. Registration could come in conflict with free trial opt-in as well, and some apps like Curio have tested delaying registration (cf. Growth Gems #40 “How Habit Formation Can Fast-Forward Sub Growth” for more on their overall approach).
💎 For users with indirect intent: apply personalization on the paywall to increase the relevance of your upsell efforts. Example: Fastic showing the user weight goal, Babbel showing the learned language.
by Paulo Golovattei (Growth Consultant at Phiture)
at 21:55 in Unlocking Subscription Optimization
💎 For direct intent: customize the upsell pages based on the user’s intent. Example: Headspace showing a “Focus” upsell or a “Sleep better” upsell depending on which CTA the user interacted with.
by Paulo Golovattei (Growth Consultant at Phiture)
at 22:28 in Unlocking Subscription Optimization
💎 For users that showed both direct and indirect intent, use a combination: prioritize direct-intent campaigns and try indirect-intent campaigns as a fallback.
by Paulo Golovattei (Growth Consultant at Phiture)
at 23:53 in Unlocking Subscription Optimization
💎 For cart abandonment, leverage limited incentives like one-time offers and discounts. This can be used for users abandoning checkout but also interacting with the paywall (clicking through different packages and prices).
by Paulo Golovattei (Growth Consultant at Phiture)
at 24:26 in Unlocking Subscription Optimization
💎 Always reinforce the value of your premium features: keep showcasing the value of the paid experience to subscribers to get them to retain as subscribers. Example: Soundcloud telling subscribers they’re skipping ads.
by Paulo Golovattei (Growth Consultant at Phiture)
at 25:30 in Unlocking Subscription Optimization
💎 On your paywall, use copy that clearly explains the outcomes that users will get from the paid experience. Don’t just promote the features: focus on the benefits and how the user will feel. Frame things in a way that resonates with your users.
by Paulo Golovattei (Growth Consultant at Phiture)
at 31:10 in Unlocking Subscription Optimization
Paid UA: organic vs. paid, influencer marketing
💎 Organics is never going to be the ultimate scale channel: it’s going to flatten out. At your app’s greatest potential, paid is probably 60-80% of daily new users. If you’ve only grown via organic traction and have optimized your product accordingly, then you have only optimized for the minority. The sooner you layer in paid traffic, the more efficient your paid traffic will be.
by Eric Seufert (Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Heracles Media)
at 49:45 in How to Thrive Despite Apple’s ATT
⛏️ Going Deeper: I shared some gems from Thomas Petit in Growth Gems #41 where he talks about how running paid UA from the start can be healthy because it allows you to avoid having the biases your early adopters bring (mostly from organic).
💎 You have to change your approach over the lifecycle of your app. Initially, most users are new users and that’s who you’re optimizing for. But later on (for a really good app), due to retention, you will actually have older users which means you then have to optimize mostly for these retained users.
by Eric Seufert (Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Heracles Media)
at 51:59 in How to Thrive Despite Apple’s ATT
💎 If you get to any point where your distribution between organics and paid or between new users and older users gets to either extreme, you probably have a problem. If you’re all organic, you’re leaving money on the table. If you’re all old timers, you’re not growing anymore. If you’re all new users, you’re not retaining enough.
by Eric Seufert (Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Heracles Media)
at 53:23 in How to Thrive Despite Apple’s ATT
💎 In the beginning, work with micro-influencers. This is how you’ll be able to learn how to work with them, define your processes or even know how to outsource correctly.
by Ludmilla Veloso (VP Operations for Airbrush at Meitu)
at 6:57:20 in Influencer marketing: the good, the bad, the profitable at App Growth Summit Berlin (live only)
💎 After you’re seeing some first results and know how to work with influencers, add some bigger influencers to the mix.
by Ludmilla Veloso (VP Operations for Airbrush at Meitu)
at 7:01:10 in Influencer marketing: the good, the bad, the profitable at App Growth Summit Berlin (live only)
⛏️ Going Deeper: Rodolphe Heldewerdt shared at APS Berlin that Tandem maximized their install rates by directing the influencer video traffic towards landing pages rephrasing the offer and customized with the influencer’s name and picture.
💎 US is not the place where you can actually manage to run influencer campaigns yourself. Doing it yourself is much easier in geos where there are not a lot of agencies and consultants working in influencer marketing and where you can talk the native language.
by Ludmilla Veloso (VP Operations for Airbrush at Meitu)
at 7:01:54 in Influencer marketing: the good, the bad, the profitable at App Growth Summit Berlin (live only)
💎 Things to solve for before getting started on influencer marketing:
Build a community
Learn about the business (what you are and where you want to go)
Understand that it demands time
by Ludmilla Veloso (VP Operations for Airbrush at Meitu)
at 7:04:36 in Influencer marketing: the good, the bad, the profitable at App Growth Summit Berlin (live only)
💎 Stopping your influencer campaigns might not lead to big rankings loss but it can impact your sales number. It makes more sense to have continuous investment in order to generate a more even revenue distribution.
by Ludmilla Veloso (VP Operations for Airbrush at Meitu)
at 7:06:10 in Influencer marketing: the good, the bad, the profitable at App Growth Summit Berlin (live only)
💎 Successful influencer marketing should give you a convex response curve when plotting revenue, cost and ROAS. The more money you put in, the more money is coming back to you. Looking at this response curve per geo helps you understand which countries to invest in.
by Ludmilla Veloso (VP Operations for Airbrush at Meitu)
at 7:07:05 in Influencer marketing: the good, the bad, the profitable at App Growth Summit Berlin (live only)
💎 If you’re actually interested in getting started with influencer campaigns, get influencers in a group chat (Whatsapp, Telegram, etc.) and start talking to them to understand their issues and what they don’t like about working with other brands. Influencers need to be partners: you’ll be working with them long term and they’ll keep growing their audiences.
by Ludmilla Veloso (VP Operations for Airbrush at Meitu)
at 7:09:40 in Influencer marketing: the good, the bad, the profitable at App Growth Summit Berlin (live only)
And before I leave, a take on the importance of ASO shared at APS Berlin:
“ASO is the foundation of your app marketing house” - David Bell (CEO at Gummicube)
See you next time. Stay savvy!
⛏️ Sylvain