In slightly more than a month, American people will enjoy Thanksgiving celebrations, taking a few days off from work and spending time with family and friends. Moreover, if you are a sports fan you know this well, Thanksgiving day also means NFL day, with some of the best teams of the league facing each other off that day. So what better time than Thanksgiving day for betting and fantasy sports apps’ developers to push their app marketing efforts ?
We will now show how app install campaigns for fantasy sports and betting apps can get a boost on Thanksgiving day, backing this up with data we have gathered from our experience promoting some of these apps in the past years. By analyzing the performance of three app install campaigns, two for fantasy sports apps and one for a betting app, we will see the impact of Thanksgiving Day games on the apps’ performance, and we’ll also suggest some app marketing strategies to put in place ahead of the next November 24th.
Mobile user acquisition and Thanksgiving day
As stated in our introduction, Thanksgiving day provides a great opportunity for some app developers to give a boost to their mobile user acquisition efforts. Betting and fantasy sports apps benefit from Thanksgiving day multiple NFL games, acquiring new users and having the existing ones generating in-app purchases and revenues.
These apps usually get better results during weekends or in game days, when there are multiple games played and, as a consequence, millions of users watching those games and placing bets on them. But the game alone is not enough. The best way to unleash the apps’ full potential is to expand the reach generated by the games with brand-focused advertising, which raises attention and awareness of the events, and with performance-based app install campaigns, highly targeted and effective in increasing in-app events.
The impact of Thanksgiving on betting and fantasy sports app install campaigns
Last year Thanksgiving Day took place on November 25th, and there were three big NFL games. Based on what we observed in our app install campaigns, the impact of those games was impressive!
We looked at three metrics in order to assess the performance of the apps and the impact of Thanksgiving day games: the volume of installs, the in-app purchase rate and the ROI.
On average, the volume of installs of the three apps on Thanksgiving day was 3x higher than the November daily average. And the comparison with the previous Thursday is even more massive, with an increase of about 572% in the number of installs.
In-app purchases followed a similar path, compared to the week before, but also the previous Sunday, when there were multiple NFL games. We measured only the in-app events which generate revenues for advertisers, in order to tie the games with the revenues generated. And the in-app purchase rate on Thanksgiving date was higher than both the rate of the previous thursday and the one of the previous Sunday, as you can see in the chart below
The in-app purchase rate growth more than balances the increase in advertising spend, due to the higher volumes of installs. Indeed, the higher purchase rate led to increased revenues and an improved marketing ROI, 2x higher than the one achieved on the previous Sunday.
Get ready for the next Thanksgiving with these mobile user acquisition strategies
At this point, it becomes crucial to understand how to leverage the next Thanksgiving day, learning from these data and the past results. Based on our experience, we suggest to work on these three app marketing strategies:
- Consider promotions and special deals in order to attract new users and encourage them to spend money in-app during Thanksgiving Day Games;
- Combine app install campaign and performance-based marketing efforts with brand-focused advertising activities, increasing awareness of both the events and the possible promotions.
- A/B test multiple creatives, with highly targeted calls to action. Creative A/B testing can be a valuable tool for in-app events optimization and also to improve app campaign ROI.
A well-thought strategy is essential to be sure that all the buzz around NFL games on Thanksgiving day can be converted into new users and revenues for your apps. The right combination of organic traffic and paid user acquisition allows advertisers to maximize their efforts and marketing ROI.
It’s only a month before Thanksgiving arrives with its NFL games, and advertisers should get ready with an effective strategy on how to capitalize the opportunities brought by that event. By leveraging app marketing to expand and make use of the reach generated by Thanksgiving NFL games advertisers can achieve a significant increase in all mobile apps performance metrics.
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