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Mick Rigby Yodel Mobile

3. The mobile ecosystem, and how to grow a mobile app with Mick Rigby

 April 21, 2020

By  Will

In this episode of the Customers Who Click podcast I speak with Mick Rigby, the CEO of Yodel Mobile, a leading mobile and app marketing consultancy. He ensures the smooth operation of the business and likes to get on the road to present and share his years of mobile insights at conferences and industry events.

Yodel Mobile have helped launch and grow hundreds of apps, including top huge brands such as MyTaxi, trivago, and Gymshark.

Will Laurenson 0:05 Hello and welcome to the Customers Who Click podcast. Today I’ll be speaking with Mick Rigby, the CEO of Yodel Mobile, one of the best mobile growth agencies around. We’re going to be chatting about mobile customer journey and how it differs to the standard digital journey you’d expect online. How the marketing mix differs, particularly as channels such as Facebook become congested. And some top tips on how to approach launching a mobile proposition for your business. Having worked in mobile from the very start of my career, I know how different it is for both the customer and the business. Your approach to acquisition is different, onboarding is different, and retention is different. And I think a big part of this is that in a lot of cases, the app itself is the product or service. And there’s definitely an attitude of if you build it, they will come. And because of this, a lot of businesses are failing to properly engage and retain their customers. But without further ado, here’s Mick Rigby. Hi, Mick. Welcome to the podcast. Do you want to tell us a bit about yourself. Why do you do what you do? Mick Rigby 1:02 Hi Will, wow, straight in there, mate. Do you know what, I’ve been working in business for probably 25 years or more. And I guess at the moment, this is the most exciting time, in the most exciting industry I’ve ever been in. So I genuinely enjoy working in this app marketing and being part of the the mobile infrastructure.Will Laurenson 1:25 So what’s a standard daily like in the life of Mick Rigby?Mick Rigby 1:29 So, just for your listeners this is currently being recorded 24th of March so we’re just on Coronavirus lockdown, so very different to normal. But yeah a typical day, which will hopefully be back in the next sort of couple of months time. What would I do so I normally get the train early in the morning, usually just after seven. So I’ll probably do about 15 minutes of headspace meditation on the train. And then just crack on with emails, doing working documentation, planning the day out, so when I do get into work, I tend to spend the morning sitting down with various members of teams, troubleshooting, putting together new business proposals that kind of stuff. Afternoon tends to be sort of documentation work. And then pretty much same on the train journey home, but I’m a great believer in making the most of my time, my work time. And then when I do get home, I’m at home. And that’s it for that for the day. I try not to look at emails or respond in the evening or night times to requests.Will Laurenson 2:42 Yes, so you’re not a get up at 5am do an hour of work. Then you know, get on the train and then when you’re back, do an extra hour and always on slack or emails.Mick Rigby 2:52 No, I mean, interesting you mentioned Slack, Slack is a challenge. Slack can infiltrate your life when you least expect it on your mobile phone or your laptop or your iPad. So learning to manage Slack is I think something that I’m really trying to get my head around at the moment.Will Laurenson 3:13 Yeah, definitely. I love it, really great tool, but it can dominate your day. If you’re not careful, you can get really bogged down.Mick Rigby 3:23 That’s it. I mean, you know, if you don’t turn it off, or you don’t turn off your notifications and you’re trying to write some strategic work or do some planning, it’s really difficult to concentrate.Will Laurenson 3:35 Yeah. And so tell us a bit about the company. Tell us a bit about Yodel.Mick Rigby 3:40 Yeah, so we are an app growth agency. We are a global player. Although we’re primarily based in London. We do have representatives over in the States. Most of our business is over there. But we’ve been around for about 13 years now, we launched before the iPhone as a mobile agency. So hence the name Yodel Mobile, rather than Yodel Growth or Yodel App. But our focuses are, I guess, ensuring that our clients app businesses are as successful as possible. So we do full end-to-end app growth support on any client from a marketing perspective. So everything from organic discovery, paid user acquisition through to virality, user retention, data, data architecture, that kind of stuff. We’re pretty much a one stop shop for anybody that has an app, and they want the app to be as successful as it possibly can be.Will Laurenson 4:49 Okay, great. And when you mentioned retention, does that include things like CRM, or are you more focused on how the app itself can work to retain people?Mick Rigby 4:58 Yeah, I mean, CRM plays a really big part of that, you know, the biggest challenge for any app business is retaining their users. It’s not often talked about in the space where most businesses and most, I guess most app publishers are all looking for user acquisition, that’s great. But if you’re not retaining those users, then you don’t have a business. And, you know, I think it’s on average, it’s about, you lose about 80% of your users within three months, on average across the app space. So you know, arguably 80% of every penny you spend in user acquisition has been wasted after three months. So CRM, utilising the tools, whether that be email or push notification, in app messaging, to bring people back into the app at the right time, for the right reasons, is a vital part of building up that relationship with those users. Will Laurenson 5:54 Glad you mentioned that, you know, the right time for the user, the right reasons, I think some companies get a bit over enthusiastic about it and send out a few too many pushes, or that they might pick up on what they feel is an opportunity to send someone a push. But actually, it’s just it’s a bit intrusive, there’s there’s no real need for the message. Whereas the opposite do it on behaviour and absolutely have smart triggers in place that want to do really well.Mick Rigby 6:25 Absolutely. I mean, you know, every single one of your listeners out there will have had annoying push messages coming to them time and time again, undoubtedly, most of those apps that do that then get deleted. So yeah, you’re right, having the right strategy in place, understanding how your users would want to be communicated to and also just putting in place, the right kind of functionality that understands that if somebody hasn’t responded to a push you know, over the last two or three days, and you’ve pushed every day is okay, we need to try something different and we need to do it at a different time, and we have to make it more relevant. And the payoff is huge. But if you can get it right, the payoff is huge. It means that you can minimise or reduce your acquisition spends, it means that you are building up a strong relationship with those users and arguably building out a virality strategy because you’re building a strong relationship with those guys, and getting those users to share with other users to bring their friends and family into the app for whatever reason. So, you know, can’t say enough how important it is.Will Laurenson 7:42 Yeah, completely agree. You know, it’s a bit like, online, on normal kind of web based businesses as well. You know, emails aren’t being read, aren’t being clicked. Don’t keep sending the same thing. You know, look at how you can change things up, experiment, segment your customers better. Have you got push notifications that going out that aren’t being interacted with? Is it? Is it the right push notification? Or could you target that customer with something different? Cool. Do you want to tell us a bit about how does the customer journey differ for a mobile first or mobile mobile only business compared to one that is maybe focused on online or traditionally more of a browser based online business?Mick Rigby 8:27 Yeah, that is completely chalk and cheese. They you know, the digital journey is very much you know, a search or a click on an ad or a click on a link and it takes you straight through to the website. You know, so there is one step, with a specifically an app based journey, you know, times it by four or five because, you know, you’ve got a search or an ad that you click on it takes you through to the App Store. And then you, you have to have a compelling reason for that individual that’s on the App Store listing to then press the get button. And then once they’ve pressed the get button, that app has been downloaded to their device, they still haven’t opened it. And then you need to get them to open it. And then once they’ve opened it, they’ve got a very small screen, probably with a brand or experience they’ve never come across before. So there’s an education piece. So suddenly, you’ve got that comparison between the digital journey which is one step through to the app journey, which is five or six steps. And understanding that every single one of those steps is an opportunity for your potential customer, user to walk away from you is really, really important because you then need to understand them. Focus on building out that initial download funnel to make sure it’s as effective as possible. And then we could talk about the in app funnel a little bit later on if you want to. But you know, that is absolutely key, understanding there are a number of steps you have to go through is, is the difference between success and failure when you’re coming from a digital background.Will Laurenson 10:22 Yeah, so I suppose you could almost compare it to, like an e commerce purchase on a website. But for the app, you’re going through that entire ecommerce purchase just to download the app. And then you’ve actually got the real customer purchase experience. Does that make sense?Mick Rigby 10:40 Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the hard work doesn’t just stop there. You know, you’ve got these guys. They’ve registered, they’re in the app. You know, that’s when the real hard work starts. We touched on the CRM process, you know, building relationships. You’ve got that continuous onboarding piece. You’ve got an education piece within there. With overlays, and, and various pop ups to take people into other apps. Will Laurenson 11:05 Yes. You mentioned that in app experience as well. So we might as well, we’ll move straight on to that. Yeah. What differences do you see with the actual kind of on site versus in app experience?Mick Rigby 11:20 Yeah. You know, I think the technology, you know, the technology is fantastic. In the app space, the tendency for people to build in, in native languages for iOS or Android, and the tools and functionality. It tends to be very, very good. I think a lot of app developers, you know, are building very intuitive products now. And so you’ve got a lot of ease of use, and, you know, this intuitive nature of usage, which is great. But for people coming to the app for the first time, who perhaps never used the service. Let’s say you’re in a ride hailing app or you’re a holiday booking app, you’ve got a small screen. And you know, you have to maybe spend a bit of time educating yourself how to use that. When you come to the digital space, it’s second nature. So you know, that in-app experience from an education perspective becomes really important, especially for a brand, an app that has perhaps, you know, new to the market, and doesn’t have a particular relationship or, or brand saliency understanding, you know, that, like some of the bigger brands that are out there in the digital space. So you’ve got to work a little bit harder as an app business to really sort of help the user through those initial education steps.Will Laurenson 12:53 Yeah, definitely. Obviously, on the screen, you’ve got there’s different ways of actually interacting with the screen as well. You know, on some of the more modern phones you’ve got, I’m not sure exactly what the term is. But you know, the amount of pressure that you actually place on the screen can change how you interact with that. You’ve got swiping from the side, up and down. And none of which you have on the website, you would have, you’d have pretty much everything there on the screen. You’ve just got your menus on one side and whatever. So yeah, kind of trying to almost, in a sense, rely on people understanding that those features are there, and they can do that with their phone. But also nudging them a little bit and making obvious that that feature is there in your app.Mick Rigby 13:43 Yeah, you know, and interesting you’re talking about features and nudging them. I think this brings us into a really, really interesting area as well, which is the ability to continually test. So using the right tools within your app and testing how people are using the app, you know, the buttons they’re pressing, the placement of buttons on the page, on the screen, and the colour of the buttons, for instance, the size, all these kind of things can be done either natively or on the fly with various tools. And, you know, I’m a great believer in continually testing, learning and making changes if it’s relevant to make those changes. Because those small improvements, you make multiple small improvements, they add up and can have a genuinely decent impact in the, you know, user retention and user usage and arguably, pushing people down to subscription or purchase if required.Will Laurenson 14:49 Yeah, absolutely, is testing within an app as easy as it is on the website. So you know, on a website you can install a bit of JavaScript and kind of just get going.Mick Rigby 15:03 Yes, yes, it can be I mean that what you have to do is integrate certain SDKs. SDKs are I believe it’s a system development kit. It’s a piece of coding basically, that you put in, and that coding allows you to do certain things. So, you know, certain tools allow you to do push notifications and manage that, certain tools allow you to do testing. So as long as you code it in, it gives you the opportunity to do that kind of testing.Will Laurenson 15:37 What about the marketing mix? So when you’re actually looking at growing your clients apps, does the mix differ at all. I mean, obviously, you have mobile specific channels. But do you tend to use traditional channels as well and websites to grow apps? Or do you find that actually, the majority of mobile growth comes through the app specific channels?Mick Rigby 15:59 I mean, I’m a, I’m a great believer in picking the lowest hanging fruit. And what I mean by that is if people are in that app environment, they’re using apps, they’re more likely to consider downloading an app at that particular time. So, you know, the vast majority of what we do as a business or what the channels we utilise, the business are specifically driven to, they also specifically fit into the mobile and the app space. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think there’s an awful lot of value with non app specific channels, for various reasons, whether that’d be a branding reason, an education reason, or even in the digital space, you know, allowing individuals to then go through from digital to the mobile space. And so you know, lots of good reasons to do it, but nine times out of ten the real focus and certainly our focus as a business is within the app environment and the mobile environment.Will Laurenson 17:09 What are the important things a business should consider if they’re maybe launching their first app or maybe if they’re going to revamp an existing app. Are there a couple of things you do really recommend focusing on? And do you see any common or big mistakes that, you know, a lot of apps tend to do in the process of actually launching an app?Mick Rigby 17:35 Yeah, I think one of the biggest mistakes most app businesses tend to do if they’re launching an app and obviously talking specifically about that launch, and, you know, the run up to that launch itself, is launching completely unprepared. You know, it can be a very expensive business, driving users to your app, but launching without having the right data architecture in place, the right tools and analytics suite in place to give you the insight you need on your users, both from where they’re coming from to you, whether that’s from ads, or what channels within the ad space, Facebook’s, and so on and so forth. And also understanding what those users are doing within the app when they’re there. And you’d be surprised how many businesses launch and then come to us and say, Hey, things aren’t working, what do we do, and those particular businesses haven’t got the right kind of data architecture in place. You know building an organic strategy for discoverability is really important as well. And we touched on it a little bit earlier in in the podcast, but virality, if you can factor virality into it in terms of getting members to share with members or by the usage of the app, you’re able to draw in other data points that can allow you through the user, to share with other people, are all really important. But I think the biggest mistake most that businesses take when they launch is, they tend to come at it from a perspective as this is the next best best thing. This is going to be super big app these, our users are going to really want this. And a lot of the time, those businesses haven’t researched it. They haven’t asked those users if they really want it. They haven’t done research groups to really understand what the key points are within the app, or how the app should be delivered, what the journeys will be within the app. But really importantly, as I say, just making sure that those users really want the app because, you know, if they don’t, if there is no real reason for that app, then you know why are people going to download it, they’re not.Will Laurenson 20:01 Yeah, I’ve definitely seen that happen a few times where maybe there’s no actual real need for the app. But also apps get a bit over engineered. And people get too close to the project, and start to kind of lose sight of it, lose sight of the actual user experience. So when users do come into it, they’re looking at it going, this is a bit complicated, or, you know, I don’t know why I have to jump through these steps. And then actually, when you step back a bit, and get some user research in or you kind of, you know, get some new staff members, for example, to run through that user experience, you kind of find those problem points where even the new staff are going well, I didn’t get why I had to fill in this form or why I had to upload this in order to use the app.Mick Rigby 20:51 Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s very easy for individuals in the business to get too close to it. And you know that old saying you don’t see the wood for the trees. You know, there’s fundamental things going on with the app that you just can’t see. And it does take a fresh pair of eyes to really point that out.Will Laurenson 21:11 Yeah. And you mentioned virality, quite a few times. Have you got any examples of companies doing well, or just examples of features and processes around making that work really well, for apps that maybe don’t have it as a natural feature? So obviously, something like WhatsApp, it’s a communication tool, you’re going to share it you’re going to, you’re going to invite your friends. But there might be other apps out there where they want, the business wants to get the referral, because it’s a cheap way of getting new customers in. But as a user, you might not have any real reason to do that, except for maybe a 10 pound referral fee.Mick Rigby 21:51 Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there’s two you’ve caught it. You kind of said it, there’s two kind of strategies that they’re not exclusive but you’ve got non incentivized referral and you’ve got incentivized referral. And non incentivized referral tends to happen if there is a need for that app user to be able to contact other people. So your comments about WhatsApp is very valid. In addition to that, you have non incentivized referrals, which are done because the app is is having a positive benefit to that individual. And they want to share that positive benefit with other people or just enjoy what they’re enjoying. So making sure that that is communicated and actionable within the app becomes very much part of that non incentivized strategy. So asking users within the app if they’re enjoying it, they want to share it with friends, making sure that you have, you know, buttons for sharing and making sharing as easy as possible within the app through the tools that are available both natively or can be integrated through SDKs, you know, again, really sort of works to push that, that kind of strategy, then you’ve got the incentivized viral strategies, which are built built around the reason that the individuals, you know, benefit from sharing it with their friends, and their friends can benefit from that particular from the app being sent to them by you know, whatever, it is a discount on this subscription. And the key there is to really understand your metrics. So if you’re incentivizing making sure that whatever the incentive is to encourage those people to A share and B download and use, is a financially viable incentive. Yeah, you know, so in a very simplistic way, let’s say the cost per acquisition of a registered user for an app, for a particular app business was $3. You know, if you can get people to share, and you can get new users for $2.50 utilising an incentivized process, and those users are valuable users, then that is by far a more cost effective way of acquiring those users, or supplementing your paid user acquisition activity to bring in a lower cost user.Will Laurenson 24:34 Yeah, okay. Yeah. So yeah, both work in the right circumstances. What do you think about, or do you have a particular opinion on incentivizing with cash or incentivizing with, cash or credit, or incentivizing with usage of the tool or the product. So for example, you know, Netflix might have the option of giving 10 pounds, cash or credit to you or giving you a free month, just that messaging, whether that impacts it, whether you think one is maybe better than the other.Mick Rigby 25:08 Yeah, I think I think it depends. I don’t think there’s one definitive answer here. I think it all depends on what the app is, the category, clearly what the offer is, you know, psychologically, there’s real value in understanding, you know, the financial value of, or the perceived financial value of what the user gets. And if you can translate that into you know, dollars or pounds in their heads, you know, psychologically that works far better than ‘Oh, you get a free month’. And you know, it’s age old marketing tactics, and, you know, age old marketing tactics still work today. And we shouldn’t forget that. Some of the learnings of the past, and because we’ve got this wonderful, brave new world of digital and app, and app marketing solutions, is some of the stuff that has been, you know, instrumental in driving consumer usage for the last hundred years. The principles are still very, very relevant today. And marrying them with the tools that we’ve got in this new wonderful digital age will undoubtedly make any app marketing or mobile marketing solution more effective.Will Laurenson 26:34 Yeah, absolutely, you know, do stuff from 50-60 years ago might not be completely relevant now. But there’s still something there. There’s a reason it worked back then. And then we’re still kind of the same. Kind of the same people, you know, so it’s applying kind of learnings and knowledge from back then and applying it to different channels and you methods for acquiring users.Mick Rigby 27:02 Yeah, absolutely. You know, you’re right. I mean, consumers are very different to where they were. But some of those principles are still very relevant.Will Laurenson 27:12 What are some common myths or misconceptions around mobile marketing that you, you either hear from clients or potential clients or maybe see on social media?Mick Rigby 27:22 I think it’s this. It’s this myth that if you build it, they will come. And I still think it’s very prevalent today. You know, the newspapers when they’re having a bad news day or a slow news day, you know, that there’s often a story of the 19 year old that built an app in his bedroom, he’s just sold it for, you know, $50 million. And it’s hard work, it is really hard work to make an app successful. And the reason being is because there are a good 6 million plus apps out there across both stores. So you’ve got a hugely crowded marketplace, even if you believe that your app is unique. Every single app that’s in that space is looking for app users, like the users that you’re looking for, for your particular app. So, you know, it’s a hugely crowded marketplace. The users are sophisticated. You know, we in the UK download less than one app a month now. So to convince somebody in the app space that’s on the App Store, to download your app rather than somebody else’s, is vitally important. You know, so how do you do that, you know, you’ve got to have a good product, you’ve got to have five star ratings, and so on and so forth. So there’s an awful lot of hard work that goes into making sure that all of those marketing elements and product elements are working in order to encourage somebody to download that app and it’s getting harder because, you know, two years ago, you could spend a few hundred dollars on Facebook and get a few hundred downloads. Now there’s such a demand for Facebook as an app download channel, the prices have gone up, there’s, there’s more competition in the space, you know, so acquiring users, in many ways has actually gone up as well. So you know, coming back to that myth, if you build it, people will come, that’s not the case. The most important thing is, is to have a good solid product, that works, that people want, is to make sure you’ve got enough cash in the bank to be able to support the growth of that product. And also, getting the right experience and understanding as part of your team, whether that’s internally or externally through an agency or a consultant like ourselves, and by doing that you’re going to avoid some of the big mistakes, big expensive mistakes that a lot of businesses have made and will continue to make. And so there you go. It’s not easy to launch an app and make it successful. But you need to have the right tools in place to do it.Will Laurenson 30:16 Yeah, absolutely. And so you mentioned Facebook’s getting more expensive. I think that’s true of a lot of channels. In mobile are there any other channels where you pretty much have to go through an agency to get into? Or is everything open to anyone? So if I went on to upwork or freelancer.com got someone to build me an app, would I as an individual have access to everything?Mick Rigby 30:45 Yeah, I guess, I guess you would. I mean, that’s a really interesting question that’s never been asked me before. But you know, you’re right. I think. I think most of the channels most of the tools are out there. I think where an agency can make a massive difference is in their knowledge and expertise and experience. You know, if a business like ourselves, you know, we’ve launched, I don’t know, 200, 250, 300 apps over the last 10-12 years and you know, we’ve had some great success, we’ve also made mistakes and on the back of that we as a business understand what the more likely channels, solutions, tools are that you need to, the levers are that you need to pull to be successful. We also know what the big pitfalls are. So as a consequence of that, you know, we can help our clients to avoid those very expensive pitfalls that invariably most app businesses can make.Will Laurenson 31:54 Yeah, and I suppose as an agency, you’ve got a much better, much more visibility over the entire app ecosystem, so you know, what’s working in other categories, what’s not working in those categories. And whether, you know, if suddenly downloads spike in a certain category, you might be able to use that knowledge to actually benefit other category apps.Mick Rigby 32:20 Yeah, you know, I would say this, because obviously, I run a run an agency, but I think the value in that experience and knowledge across, you know, the broad app ecosystem, it’s hugely valuable. It’s hugely valuable, and as I say, can save can save a huge amount of money.Will Laurenson 32:43 What about pet peeves? Do you have any pet peeves in marketing? Or particularly, I guess, particularly when it comes to apps, but I’m guessing there’s something else there. Yeah, feel free to mention that.Mick Rigby 32:56 Yeah, let’s touch on what we talked about a little bit earlier, which is Old School marketing, you know that, I think with all the tools, with the speed of distribution of advertising opportunity, with the scale that you can generate very quickly, utilising lights of Facebook or Google universal ads or whatever you know that there’s a tendency I think for a lot of marketers to be driven down the channels and be excited about all the tech that’s available to you to try and reach those users and bring them into the app but you know, the old some of the old ideals of typical marketing, price, place, price, promotion, strategy, all those kind of things are still very, very valid. And as I said before, you know if you can marry old school thinking and success with the modern tools and You’ve got, you’re going to be far more successful than just throwing everything at Facebook. So yeah, I think, you know, you asked about pet peeves. You know, really don’t forget about some of the good stuff of the past. You know, it’s still very relevant today.Will Laurenson 34:15 Yeah, I think a lot of people learn marketers, a lot of companies focus on short term. And, you know, what’s, what’s getting results now. And while I’m not the biggest fan of brand marketing, I think there’s, yeah, there’s a tendency to try and get the sale right now. put an ad in front of someone, we want to purchase it. Whereas people could probably be spent a bit more time building up relationships with customers and showing off what their brand is about. I read a really interesting thing. today or yesterday about Marks and Spencers actually, and they I think in World War Two, they shifted a lot of their production into certain types of clothing that were Really, really useful for the country during the war. And then people remember that afterwards. And they got a lot of, you know, they built up a lot of goodwill during that. Yeah, obviously, it’s not something something every every company can do. But, you know, it’s kind of looking for those opportunities just to make yourself front of mind for a customer so they come to you. And you’re not just relying on putting ads out there to bring bring customers andMick Rigby 35:26 I think it’s really interesting that I didn’t know I didn’t know that Marks and Spencer have done that. But, you know, I think again, it is coming back to something we’ve kind of touched on in this chat today is that you know, the the fundament fundamental psychology of individuals, I think, you know, people in general like like other people or companies that do positive things that do good. And, you know, that I guess what you’re what you’re saying with Marxism Because what they did at a time of need was was was very relevant and very beneficial that the resonance of what they did in the sense of doing goods had an impact to continue to impact ongoing after, after the Second World War. And, you know, it’s clearly gonna be very relevant now with with what’s going on as we fight Coronavirus. And, you know, those businesses that do something to help in this day and age, in whatever way they do. Will will benefit from the good things they’re doing now. Further down the line, hopefully three, six months from now. You know, that goodwill will be remembered.Will Laurenson 36:46 Yeah, absolutely. There’s definitely quite a few companies out there doing things particularly for the NHS. Right? God God bless him. So finally found a question for health or for the podcast if you can kill off one marketing channel or tactic? What would it be?Mick Rigby 37:04 Oh, not a channel or a tactic, but ad fraud in the app space were very, very good at filtering it out. And there are a lot of tools out there. There’s, you know, a lot of the ad tech attribution businesses do a really good job of it. But, you know, for, for a lot of a lot of AP businesses that are going into the acquisition space with without real understanding and and get tempted into buying cheap downloads of networks that are utilising. More often than not, not intentionally, you know, pour traffic that has that is, you know, fraudulent in many ways. You know, whether that’s bot traffic, whether it’s um, you know, organic traffic that is being being plasters, especially You know, it’s a huge frustration. It has a big impact on the quality of clearly of downloads, the cost of real downloads, and user retention. So fundamentally, it has a massive impact in overall user acquisition in the space if it’s not managed. And I, you know, I would say it’s potentially put a lot of a lot of startups out of business where where they’ve actually unwittingly been been forced down channels where that they’re actually buying poor, fraudulent quality users.Will Laurenson 38:39 And just, yeah, just so does this tend to happen where the business itself is, has gone into a channel and accidentally bought, you know, paying for really bad traffic, or is there a case that potentially companies are attacking other companies with it I’m not sure if it happens much. ButMick Rigby 39:03 no, it’s interesting. I don’t think I don’t think that the company is attacking other companies is is, is the case. I think I think, you know, we’re all very complicit in this because, you know, there’s a tendency for people for businesses to go to networks and say, you know, I want the cheapest download possible, I want to get a download for 10 cents. And as a consequence of that, the network’s would then go out and find a download for 10 cents. More often than not, that download is going to be a fraudulent download. So you know, it’s not it. What I’m saying here is, is we have to be whether we’re an agency or whether we’re an app owner, whether we’re an intermediary, whether we’re a a network, we have to be responsible to say look You know, there is a value to what we do. And there is a cost to it to gaining a user. And, and realistically, you know, to get a user below what you could potentially be buying on Facebook, less, you know, 20 or 30%, or after a below that, you’re starting to get into areas that that are going to be some, you know, at worst fraudulent at best, naive in terms of, of how you download those individuals. So, we have to understand the value of the user is the value of the user, not a 10 cent download.Will Laurenson 40:41 Yes, it’s that saying you get what you pay for, isn’t it?Mick Rigby 40:44 Absolutely. You know, you don’t want to pay over the odds for them. That’s the key. But you know, if you can make $100 out of the user over 12 months, then trying to get that user for 20 cents is probably not going to work for you because you won’t get that user that downloaded for 20 cents. You might have to pay $5 $6 $7 for that engaged user.Will Laurenson 41:10 Yeah, I think what, obviously everyone wants the cheapest users. I think, you know, every business is going to be thinking, well, we want them at the cheapest possible price. But you’ve got to be looking at, you know, what is the expected lifetime value of these customers? And what are we happy to pay? So I say if you if you’re going to get $100 off someone, then you probably should be happy to pay $10-20, even maybe $30. Because you’re going to pay for yourself, you know, up to 10 times over. That’s fine. There’s money there to then pay for your costs, pay for staff and things. And if you want to scale it up, and you’re doing 10s of thousands of people at that at those prices, you know, it works. Yeah, yeah, like you said, I mean, I’ve had it. In fact, I think it was just before I did a little bit of work with you. And I was working for an app, and we got installs for about 50 pence. And these installs were, and it was a particular type of ad that worked really well. So obviously, the company started spending more money on them, pushing them out wider. And then when we looked at the actual user metrics, people weren’t, people were basically using the free trial, doing what they’d come to do through that particular ad, and then leaving because they were super cheap people who are never going to pay the subscription price we were asking for at that time. Yeah. And so once you kind of dig into the metrics, you go, actually these these ads might be generating hundreds of users at such a cheap cost. But they’re just, there’s no value at all. They’re not getting any subscribers. So actually, our CPA might have been like 3-400 pounds, because we weren’t actually converting any of them.Mick Rigby 42:59 Yeah. Absolutely. And that also highlights another key thing we talked about earlier, which is the data architecture, understanding, getting clear understanding of who your users are, where they’re coming from what they’re doing within the app, you know, so I can’t, again, I can’t emphasise emphasise enough, how important getting the right data is, in terms of your overall success, because again, that’s a great example of how understanding your users can make a big impact on where you spend your advertising money.Will Laurenson 43:33 Yeah, and then the same on the other kind of the other end of the system. You know, the really valuable users, if you’re identifying where they’re coming from, what they’re doing, what you know, what they’re spending money on, or what their engagement is with the subscription. You can then tailor your onboarding experience, the actual product experience itself, your emails, your push notifications, and your ads. And you should be able to find more of those customers, convert more of those customers and you hopefully got successful business. Mick Rigby 44:01 That’s it. Simple, as easy as that Will.Will Laurenson 44:09 Cool. Well, Mick, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Really, really interesting stuff about apps. And I’ve done a bit of work in Apps before, but obviously, speaking to an expert, you know, I’ve learned a lot today.Mick Rigby 44:22 Yeah, no, great. Thank you very much Will, for the opportunity to chat to you, answer your questions, and obviously be part of this podcast. I hope it’s a huge success.Will Laurenson 44:32 Thank you. Cheers, lovely stuff there from Mick. I think one of the biggest things to come out of that is that you need to be focusing on product engagement and customer retention. If you’re not doing this properly, you lose about 80% of your users within about three months. And it’s a huge amount of money and time and effort that you’ve wasted. And I’ve seen this happen myself. I’ve seen what happens if you rely on customer service, email marketing and other marketing communications, no matter how good you are at those channels. If the product itself isn’t working hard to retain your customers, they’ll churn. And once the churn, they’re gone for good. About one in four people abandon an app off the first use. So you haven’t even got time to rely on these other channels to, you know, explain what your app does or you know, answer questions. Once they’ve deleted the app, it’s gone. And pretty soon after that the unsubscribe from marketing will come as well. So make sure you’ve got proper analytics set up within your app. So you can see not only what individuals and different cohorts are achieving with the product or service, but also how they move around and engage with the functionality of the app. In a similar way to an e commerce store where you’d want to know what items individuals are purchasing what the average order values are, etc. So you can personalise communications, begin to segment customers. You also want to know more generally how people are actually browsing the app or website, are you making them take a more complicated journey than necessary. If you’re new to the mobile space and want some advice, or even have an existing mobile app, please don’t hesitate to contact Mick or myself. That’s all for today. If you liked what you heard, don’t forget to subscribe for future episodes. And if you have any questions about mobile apps and growth, please send them over to Will@customerswhoclick.com.

In the next episode of Customers Who Click I’ll be speaking with James Bott founder of the ASO Co, now part of Jellyfish Group where he’s the Chief Solutions Officer for mobile. We’ll be talking about ASO, mobile strategy and of course some marketing pet peeves.But until then, keep those customers clicking.

If you’d like to learn more about Yodel Mobile please visit their website here.

Will


W.Laurenson

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