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“If you build it, they will come.” That famous quote from Field of Dreams may have been on the money when it came to attracting dead baseball players, but when it comes to winning over mobile users, things aren’t so simple.
There are thousands of apps available on iOS and Google Play on a daily basis; and users can tolerate only so many on their tablets and phones. This means if you want your business to prosper, you need to learn how to effectively advertise your app and earn a dedicated audience in the process.
Rob Singer, CMO of Ancestry.com, shared with VentureBeat his thoughts on user acquisition and how it applied to the company’s success of accumulating over a million users in its database filled with 70 million family trees — all of which relates to the upcoming webinar about how top publishers can get the best users for less money.
“Consumers are continually moving further into more immersive mobile product experiences, which has continued to drive our evolution and prioritization of mobile acquisition,” Singer says. “Our marketing is designed to ensure awareness of our new user experiences and products that have specifically been built for the mobile user.
“All Ancestry’s marketing assets — from emails to landing pages — are designed for mobile and then converted to desktop. One common real-world example is our TV ads which represent 50 percent of our spend. This spend converts to mobile visits in which viewers explore our brand and products on the device most convenient to them.
Ancestry put mobile first and foremost in its strategy, ensuring users have the best experience possible so they’ll keep coming back for more. “Our funnel points mobile users toward the mobile web — which we’ve found leads to longer customer retention rates via a more engaging, personalized user experience,” says Singer.
But one can’t just dump a mobilized version of their website and expect instant success, as the audience for mobile and desktop are vastly different.
“It’s important to understand the dramatic difference in the user journey between mobile and desktop,” Singer urges first-time mobile marketers. “A common mistake is thinking that the only large difference with these consumers is the device. Consumer segmentation is an art that needs to break out consumer type and consumption style. It’s important to understand how people interact with your product/service to accurately tailor their mobile experience.”
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However, not everything came easily to Ancestry when it released its app as the company had to work hard to raise its mobile conversation rates to be at an acceptable rate compared to its desktop’s. It’s why mobile companies need to be open about adjusting and rethinking their strategies if they want to make a big splash on the market. Sticking to outdated strategies unsuited for mobile will only lead to a weak belly flop.
“Ancestry’s mobile user acquisition strategy has changed dramatically since we first launched our app,” Singer said. “Initially, we we were focused on sending traffic to App Store or Google Play. However, when we tested this, we found significantly better user acquisition rates by sending users to the mobile site. With continued focus on rich engagement, we’ll see even greater percentages of long-term customers acquired by mobile.”
Join Singer and Robin Joy of Docusign who will share first-hand best practices as well as VentureBeat’s John Koetsier who will share the most important findings of VB’s recent report on mobile user acquisition. The report surveyed 731 mobile developers with over a billion users among them. It also studied data summarizing the results of almost 14 billion mobile ads, and reported on discussions with leading user acquisition experts.
Learn the best strategies in gaining new user and how to make sure they stay satisfied customers. Because it takes more than simply building an app to make sure customer come to you.
Speakers:
John Koetsier, VP Research, VentureBeat
Rob Singer, CMO, Ancestry
Robin Joy, VP of Web & Mobile Business, DocuSign