Mobile Summit 2016 will reveal secrets of mobile app distribution

Our Mobile Summit is just two weeks away.

The event, at the scenic Cavallo Point resort in Sausalito, California on April 4-5, is going to be an unbeatable networking event, with leaders from some of the world’s top apps sharing insights into achieving growth in an age of endless mobile distribution possibilities.

We’ll adhere pretty closely to the key themes of how to best acquire customers in this period of unprecedented opportunity but also of incredible fragmentation. And we’ll look at another key question: After you acquire customers, how do you engage and nurture them?

We liken the Mobile Summit to the United Nations. But instead of sovereign nations, we have 180 senior executives participating on equal footing. At the heart of the event are the boardroom sessions, where we go for an hour in-depth on key areas, such as how exactly to market in an age of 80 different channels (Yes, there’s Facebook and Google, but there’s also SnapChat, Pinterest, and a bunch of other relevant networks and apps you can use to get your message out effectively.)

Cavallo Point is just across from the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s the perfect place to mingle, first in the sun during the day, then over cocktails in the evenings.

While it is invite-only, we do have some seats set aside so you can apply to register.

Take a gander at the agenda below. 

Day 1: Monday, April 4

1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.: Registration

3:00 p.m. – 3:10 p.m.: Welcome Address

3:10 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.: How to achieve extreme mobile growth through simple design

Speaker: Jonathan Badeen (Tinder), Blaise Zerega (VentureBeat)

Learn how dating app Tinder dominated the dating space through simple, compelling design. Founded three years ago, Tinder dominates 18 Western nations as the top app for dating traffic. Learn other mobile design and feature tips from the Tinder cofounder and inventor of the app’s “swipe right.”

3:30 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.: Secrets to building the perfect feedback loop

Speaker: Barbara Martin Coppola (GrubHub)

When she joined GrubHub nine months ago as CMO, Barbara Martin Coppola realized that to keep customers loyal, she needed to build an instantaneous feedback loop on mobile — one that engages customers every step of the way. Learn how GrubHub mined its data on this loop, which has allowed it to be more predictive of customers’ needs and preferences and make the experience more enjoyable for the customer.

3:50 p.m. – 4:10 p.m.: How to get 1 million app users — even for the most complex of tasks

Speakers: Nat Natarajan, Intuit (TurboTax Group), Matt Marshall (VentureBeat)

Two years ago, Intuit had very few customers filling out their taxes on its TurboTax app. Tax returns are extremely difficult, right? Turns out, they don’t have to be. Learn from Intuit how to change your entire team to focus on mobile, one mobile platform at a time — to make even a challenging mobile service a dead-simple one.

4:10 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.: Different apps for different folks

Speaker: Ryan Roslansky (LinkedIn)

LinkedIn was early to see different customer needs and to create multiple apps and experiences to serve those needs. Learn key lessons from LinkedIn’s VP of product, who has been instrumental to the company’s launch of several content experiences, such as the Influencer program, LinkedIn Today, Company Pages, Sharing, and the acquisitions of Lynda.com, SlideShare, Pulse, and Newsle.

4:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m: ‘Streets of SF’ evening reception

Day 2: Tuesday, April 5

8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.: Breakfast

9:40 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.: The future of mobile app distribution

Speakers: Jonathan Pelosi (Google), Ryan Lysne (Amazon)

Learn from the app experts at two of the most significant companies in mobile: Google, the largest ad company, and Amazon, the largest ecommerce company in the world. They’ll discuss how major ad, app, and distribution platforms are developing, and offer tips on how to drive app distribution while keeping scale and quality in mind. They’ll also talk about what metrics to look at and how to think about things like lifetime value and engagement.

10:00 a.m. – 10:20 a.m.: Break

10:20 a.m. – 10:50 a.m.: Fireside powwow

This dynamic lightning round will put speakers on the spot, where they will respond to the MC’s questions in 5 minutes or less. (Stay tuned for more information!)

10:50 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Boat race team challenge

12:00 p.m. – 12:15 p.m.: Break

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.: Lunch boardroom: Harnessing data for mobile engagement

Chairs: Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn), Michael Fedor (Pocket Gems), Andy Yang (Upsight)

Facilitator: Jon Cifuentes (VentureBeat)

Small, medium, and large companies alike are overwhelmed with data, much of it being siloed for use by different teams and for varying purposes. What are the best strategies and technologies for gathering it all, making it smaller, and implementing a powerful strategy that can be acted upon for mobile user engagement? — Note: This breakout session will offer a chance for attendees to dive deeper into the topics discussed at Mobile Summit. Working in smaller groups, delegates will have the chance to participate more actively and have real discussions focused around the selected topic. Senior leaders who have demonstrated success in this area will help guide the conversation and provide insight into their own challenges and successes.

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.: Lunch boardroom: Mobile video and the advertising frontier

Chairs: Matt Gillis (AOL Platforms), Ben Webley (Zynga), Mark Rosner (AppLovin)

Facilitator: Blaise Zerega (VentureBeat)

The volume of mobile video is exploding, along with the ad formats and distribution channels to facilitate it all (check the YouTube versus Facebook debate). Now that you’ve got your content strategy down, what are the magic ingredients for a mobile video growth recipe in 2016? — Note: This breakout session will offer a chance for attendees to dive deeper into the topics discussed at Mobile Summit. Working in smaller groups, delegates will have the chance to participate more actively and have real discussions focused around the selected topic. Senior leaders who have demonstrated success in this area will help guide the conversation and provide insight into their own challenges and successes. *Lunch will be served.

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.: Lunch boardroom: How to market across 300 channels

For most advertisers, Facebook and Google are the big dogs when it comes to distribution across mobile. Then there are the emerging platforms, like Pinterest and Snapchat. And of course, there are the existing ad networks. But with competing standards and measurements across each, how do you implement a strategy to make sure you get an effective ROI across them all? — Note: This breakout session will offer a chance for attendees to dive deeper into the topics discussed at Mobile Summit. Working in smaller groups, delegates will have the chance to participate more actively and have real discussions focused around the selected topic. Senior leaders who have demonstrated success in this area will help guide the conversation and provide insight into their own challenges and successes. *Lunch will be served.

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.: Lunch Boardroom: Monetization: mixing the right ad, subscription and other in-app strategies for explosive growth

Chairs: Josh Shaeffer (Runtastic), Jerry Hum (Touch of Modern), Peter Hamilton (Tune)

Facilitator: Stewart Rogers (VentureBeat)

M-commerce is exploding and will reach $1 trillion in the U.S. alone within the next decade (from just around $100 billion today). And a number of apps are riding that wave — with advertising, with subscriptions, or with a mix. What are the lessons we can learn from leading apps about the magic of monetization? —- Note: This breakout session will offer a chance for attendees to dive deeper into the topics discussed at Mobile Summit. Working in smaller groups, delegates will have the chance to participate more actively and have real discussions focused around the selected topic. Senior leaders who have demonstrated success in this area will help guide the conversation and provide insight into their own challenges and successes. *Lunch will be served.

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.: Lunch Boardroom: customer experience – predicting and measuring

Chairs: Jill Soley (Freshdesk), Danny Bernstein (Google)

Facilitator: Matt Asay (Adobe)

As the mobile economy has grown increasingly crowded, the old challenge of acquiring new customers has been replaced by the question of how to effectively engage and nurture the right customers. A host of new predictive technologies — like Google Now, and those provided by a host of vendors, such as IronSource — are anticipating customers’ needs and actions. Now it’s time to ask how best to apply them. —- Note: This breakout session will offer a chance for attendees to dive deeper into the topics discussed at Mobile Summit. Working in smaller groups, delegates will have the chance to participate more actively and have real discussions focused around the selected topic. Senior leaders who have demonstrated success in this area will help guide the conversation and provide insight into their own challenges and successes. *Lunch will be served.

12:15 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.: Lunch Boardroom: targeting your mobile marketing in real-time

Chairs: Ethan Smith (Yummly), Domenic, Venuto (The Weather Company)

Facilitator: Matt Marshall (VentureBeat)

What are the best engagement tactics, now that sophisticated messaging, location, and interest-based targeting technologies have emerged? We’re inviting a discussion of the best precedents out there for contextual, relevant and intelligent targeting and debating the degree to which they can be automated — since this is bound to radically increase ROI on campaigns. —- Note: This breakout session will offer a chance for attendees to dive deeper into the topics discussed at Mobile Summit. Working in smaller groups, delegates will have the chance to participate more actively and have real discussions focused around the selected topic. Senior leaders who have demonstrated success in this area will help guide the conversation and provide insight into their own challenges and successes. *Lunch will be served.

1:15 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.: Break

1:30 p.m. – 1:50 p.m.: Learn about your customers, and engage them with the right message at the right time

Speaker: Lizzie Widhelm (Pandora)

Music-streaming service Pandora has collected a significant amount of customer data and has learned the importance of engaging with customers at the right time with the right message. Pandora understands that in certain modes, customers are more likely to engage in certain types of behavior or consume certain types of content. Wilhelm will touch on key trends, including the need to move to engagement-based marketing and to adopt more innovative and native visual ad experiences.

1:50 p.m. – 2:10 p.m.: How to organize your mobile growth team for rapid feature release

Speakers: Peter Morelli (Lyft), Michael Abbott (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)

Lyft’s leading engineer will talk about how the company has created a team that can handle rapid innovation as well as how the fast-growing transportation app has pushed UI, customer support, and app performance to drive significant growth.

2:10 p.m. – 2:20 p.m.: Closing comments

2:20 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.: ‘S’more Booze’ Party

Register now.