App Install Campaigns At Scale: How To Develop An Effective App User Acquisition Strategy

Mapendo Team
May 30, 2022
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App Install Campaigns At Scale: How To Develop An Effective App User Acquisition Strategy

Before the launch of an app install campaign, advertisers and app developers often ask their marketing partners how long it will take for them to scale the volume of installs and new users acquired. That’s the million dollar question and it’s not so easy to give accurate projections, because the performance of an app install campaign depends on multiple factors and not all of them are under campaign managers’ control. For instance, some creatives may be not so effective or the target audience may be too niche for a successful app install campaign. However, here we try to give you some tips that can help your app install campaign strategy and allow you to scale your app user base through app campaign optimization:

  • Design an overall app user acquisition strategy;
  • Target high-quality users;
  • Enable View-Through Attribution.

Now let’s dive deep into these three aspects one by one!

Design An Overall App User Acquisition Strategy

Before setting up and running an app install campaign it is crucial to have in mind a bigger app user acquisition strategy. Indeed, especially for brand new mobile apps, it may be more difficult to stand out in the current fierce competition and scale the volumes of new users as soon as possible. An effective app install campaign strategy should be combined with other advertising activities aimed at raising brand awareness and growing the app user base also with organic channels. In addition, promotions and referral programs can be powerful tools for a successful app user acquisition strategy, because they encourage word of mouth and are effective at attracting new users after the app’s launch phase. The more advertising activities are included in your app user acquisition strategy the faster you will be able to scale the volume of new users through app install campaigns.

Target High-Quality Users

Once the app install campaign is up and running, the two most important tasks are monitoring the results and looking for an effective app campaign optimization in order to improve the performance as early as possible. By collecting data about new users, you will be able to target the so-called high quality users, who engage the most with your app and carry out post-install events relevant to your business KPIs. Indeed, when targeting a huge amount of users without any criteria, you may even acquire lots of users in a first stage, but if they are not high-quality users, it is likely that they will delete the app sooner or later and you will be back at square one. Therefore, high-quality users must be the focus of your app campaign optimization in order to grow the volume of installs faster.

Enable View-Through Attribution

View-Through Attribution may provide great help to your app install campaign strategy. This setting allows the attribution of installs and post-install events generated by users who had not clicked on the ad but had only seen it. By enabling view-through attribution, you will have a better overview of your app install campaign performance, which otherwise could be misleading because of only click-attributed installs. Instead, when VTA is on, your user acquisition efforts will be rewarded also for those users who did not click on the ad but were triggered by it in order to download your app and scaling the volume of new installs will be faster than ever. Since view-through attribution works also for post-install events, it will definitely benefit your app campaign optimization too.

In conclusion, it takes many efforts to scale the volume of installs as soon as possible, but a complete app install campaign strategy can speed up the process. Also, monitoring real time results and looking for the best app campaign optimization are two essential steps required for achieving success in the short and long term.