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OK, you got the app install, but what’s next? This is the question that successful businesses need to ask as mobile continues to grow in popularity across almost every industry from e-commerce to gaming to financial services. Sophisticated advertisers who spend millions of dollars in paid media for app installs now use Facebook in sophisticated ways to generate better return on investment for their businesses.
Over the past several years advertisers have shifted their thinking about mobile app installs goals from just the cost to acquiring a new user (cost per install, or CPI) to what actually happens beyond that install that creates measurable business results. As part of this shift, Facebook announced a new free tool called Facebook App Analytics during their F8 Developers Conference in March, 2015. It gives advertisers more insight into what’s happening within their app in areas such as cross-device insights, cohort analyses, and even the creation of audience segments using these insights.
What are we talking about? Optimizing towards in-app activity for your mobile apps to generate real business value from events such as purchases in your e-commerce app, flights booked during flash sales for your airlines, deposits into your mobile game used to advance quickly to the next level, and any other measurable in-app activity that your business is aiming to generate after an app user is acquired.
The question becomes, “what are new app users doing after they install your app?” Different variations of Facebook targeting can be utilized to acquire users at lower costs than others, but are these users valuable? Will your business benefit from these lower cost users? Often the answer is no because these users may not utilize your app for the goals that your business has in mind for new users.
Many of our Salesforce Marketing Cloud clients are thinking about their digital media spend in this way and thus are doing some very powerful advertising for their businesses. Two key examples we’ve worked with recently:
A major e-commerce company that uses Salesforce to manage their Facebook ad spend looks beyond the cost-per install (CPI) and optimizes towards acquired users who are checking-out or completing purchases of goods within their app. To do this, this company has integrated with a mobile measurement partner (MMP) to embed the MMP’s SDK into their mobile app. This SDK allows advertisers to track in-app data such as purchases, add to carts, checkouts, etc. Once a user installs their mobile app and purchases an item, the MMP returns a ‘post-back’ or notification to the Salesforce advertising platform. This data allows the company to track if a particular campaign or ad has generated a conversion for them, and exactly how much the customer purchased. If users are installing the advertiser’s mobile app but not purchasing items in the store beyond the install, these users do not carry any business value and will not be included in the targeting of their advertising efforts moving forward.
In a very different industry, TripIt (owned by Concur), focuses their mobile app efforts beyond the install. TripIt was created in 2006 to simplify the travel experience. Now it’s the world’s highest-rated travel-organizing app with over 11 million users. TripIt evaluates its advertising results based on app installs and also specific in-app events which correspond to successful engagement with the travelers they acquired. TripIt integrates with an MMP to provide specific in-app metrics such as confirmed registrations, and if newly acquired users install the mobile app but do not register as a confirmed user, then these users carry limited value and this type of targeting should not be used in their digital media strategy. Because TripIt profits from subscription memberships, users who do not register will not provide any business value to TripIt.
These are two of many different digital media strategies from clients who are utilizing Facebook advertising for user acquisition today. If these ideas sounds like powerful tools to help grow your business, show this article to your manager to begin strategizing on how your company can develop measurable business value from your app installs—beyond the install.
To learn more about how TripIt measures success of its mobile app install campaigns, check out our success story!
