A few weeks ago I listened to Debbie Cohen-Abravanel's speech at the Apps World event, invited by Perion in London. She spoke about their product, Growmobile, and its success on the Google Apps Store. Here are the tactics she used to climb the rankings and hit huge download numbers - without any prior experience.
No Prior Mobile App Marketing Experience Necessary
Debbie has been involved in web programming and marketing for the past 15 years and has worked mainly in companies developing cyber security products.
She started working at Tekoia in March 2015 as VP Marketing, and was very excited to have the opportunity to market a mobile app and to develop her B2C marketing skills.
Tekoia develops a very cool app for Android called SURE Universal. You can download it from Google Play onto phones or tablets that have an infrared blaster. This app can replace all your remotes, anything from your TV to your air conditioner.
How to Get 1 Million Installs in 7 Months
In March last year, when she started working at Tekoia, they already had around 200,000 installs and a daily average of 2,000 new installs. Debbie's goal was to reach 1 million installs by November 1st, 2015. It was obvious that at that install rate she wasn’t going to reach that goal, and as a startup they didn’t have a huge user acquisition budget - so she started reading everything she could set her eyes on regarding App Store Optimization. Debbie quickly understood the importance of the quantity and quality of the reviews on Google Play.
Taking App Store Reviews to the Next Level
"It was very clear to me that we were offering a great product" Debbie says, "We were getting amazing reviews on Google Play. We were already answering every single review, but I had an idea. Instead of just thanking people for leaving a review, I would ask them to help share the app with their friends and family."
And so she added links in her review response to their Facebook and Twitter profiles, and requested that the customer help share the app by following Tekoia and sharing the app or posts.
Fans and Critics are Necessary
Debbie's team also decided to start building a beta community. Once again, she used this as a way of connecting to their customers: if she saw a reviewer who mentioned that they had added multiple devices to the app, or if they stated that they have tried other similar apps and preferred SURE Universal, Debbie invited them to send an email to their support email in order to join the beta testing community. "I also invited some of the reviewers who left negative reviews too as it is vital to learn from them," Debbie adds. "You can learn so much from customers who are critical about your product."
Caring is Sharing
Certainly not everyone shares their app, follows them, or for that matter is willing to become a beta tester, but you only need a few a day to make a difference, according to Debbie. This process also helps your customer realize that there are actual people behind the app who care about their input.
"I decided to take the same approach on my Facebook campaigns. I was already astounded at how many people comment under an ad. They share the ad with their friends and ask questions. It became obvious to me that they don’t expect the app owner to reply to these comments, as I often see comments that show their surprise, but once I started replying, others noticed and also asked questions or made statements that were obviously for our attention." she adds.
Even though Tekoia runs ads worldwide in a variety of languages, they still respond in English. Admittedly they do get the occasional comment asking why they don’t reply in the language of the ad, but Debbie just explain politely that her Portuguese, for example, is not great, so they will have to excuse her.
"If someone makes a nice comment about the app under an ad I use the opportunity to thank them, “Like” their comment and ask them if they could add a review on Google Play too and also to share our app." says Debbie describing their creative strategy.
Campaign to Gain
As this was Debbie's first campaign with Growmobile she did not want to annoy her customers with unnecessary notifications, so she created a non-intrusive, multi-stage campaign that hopefully would help gain additional positive customer reviews on Google Play.
"This campaign runs on my engaged customers" Debbie describes the campaign - "those who are using the app for more than two days and had added more than two devices. They receive an in-app notification asking if they are happy with the app. They have a choice of two buttons which basically said Yes or No. If they clicked the Yes button they receive another in-app notification that asks them to rate the app on Google Play. If they aren’t happy they get a different message which asks them to share their feedback via a form on our site, so we can improve the app."
This campaign has been a great success and has increased the total reviews by 200% and the positive reviews by more than 300%.
Right or Left - That is the Question
As a side-note, there was an interesting observation when Debbie tested out this campaign, luckily before it was released to the public.
"I ran the campaign on our employees and some family members and friends. Initially I had the negative button on the right. I actually hadn’t put much thought into which button would be on the right and which on the left. I noticed, very quickly, that most of the people who were testing my campaign clicked the right button, that meant they didn’t like the app. They had clicked it even faster than they had read the text on the button. I certainly don’t want anyone mistakenly clicking a button that basically means they don’t like the app, so I updated the campaign and swapped the buttons. Positive on the right, negative on the left. The result was clear when I retested. Now more people were clicking the positive response."
Thinking about this logically also applies to the web. How many of us have completed long forms on a web page and after scrolling to the end of the form clicked a button, only to be left with an empty form, and all the data we entered disappearing? Why? Because it is a “reset” button and not a “submit” button, and it has been placed on the right side of the submit button.
Our minds seem to be used to moving forward to a next step by clicking a right button (a positive reaction) and moving back with a left button (a negative reaction). It seems that the same applies for in-app notifications too. So, if you have an in-app campaign with two buttons, remember, the positive button should be placed on the right!
Did the Strategy Work?
So, by now you might be wondering if Debbie reached her target of 1 million installs by November 1st. Well, no - she actually reached 2.2 million installs, and by the end of the year had reached over 3 million installs.
Below you can see how the quantity of reviews increased at the beginning of September when Debbie started to run the in-app review campaign.
Debbie says that Growmobile’s product helped her reach her goal, but the main advice is to remember that a human-being is using your product. Communicate with them. Help them communicate with you. Make sure they know you care and that they will want to be part of your success.
Wishing you all the greatest success with your app!