The Best of Growth Gems

Things Learned After Mining Hundreds of Podcast, Panels & Webinars

Sr. Manager, Growth Product & Mobile Marketing at Babbel

Advisor at Elia Games

Chief Mining Officer at Growth Gems

growthgems.co
 GROWTH STRATEGY 💎

Your mobile growth stack and strategy depends on the stage you’re at:

● Early stage: take big swings that bring big results and allow to reach product-market fit. You don’t need

sophisticated measurement or sophisticated A/B testing.

● Growth stage: explore. You don’t know where the big levers for scale are yet, and it’s about discovering them.

● Mature/scaled stage: even incremental gains can be meaningful so you want to focus more on monetization

and subscription optimization.

Andy Carvell (Partner at Phiture)

Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary
Growth Tactics from the Top Apps - Sub Club
growthgems.co
 GROWTH STRATEGY - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Early stage: less A/B

tests, more bold bets
Thomas Petit - Growth Gems #30

❖ When and How to Take

Big Swings →

growthgems.co
 GROWTH STRATEGY - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ No matter the stage: talk to users

Matthieu Rouif - Growth Gems #53

❖ No matter the stage: work on your brand/positioning

❖ Mobile Growth Stack 2022

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Early stage

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 DATA 💎

Data taxonomy is critical: everything rests on how clean and

well-structured your data is. That starts by documenting what
you’re currently collecting, where it sits, how it’s encoded, etc.
From there, you can identify gaps.

Andy Carvell (Partner at Phiture)

Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary
Optimization Through Strategic Lifecycle Marketing - Tech in Asia
growthgems.co
 DATA - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Run QA checks for similar trends/direction

Thomas Petit - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ Understand growth stack and how events are triggered

Abdala Pineda - Growth Gems
#52

growthgems.co
 ORGANIC ACQUISITION 💎

Especially post-ATT, it’s important to focus on organic (and more

cost-effective ways) to attract customers, instead of just pumping
ads through Facebook. Spend more time defining your niche and
finding ways to find your product organically.

Eric Crowley (Partner at GP.Bullhound)

Growth Gems #56
Optimizing Your Subscription App for Growth - Sub Club
growthgems.co
 ORGANIC UA - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Greg (plant care app) partnering with nurseries

Alex Ross - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ GP.Bullhound’s Consumer Subscription Software Insights 2021

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but…

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 PAID UA 💎

Organics is never going to be the ultimate scale channel: it’s going to flatten
out. At your app’s greatest potential, paid is probably 60-80% of daily new users.
If you’ve only grown via organic traction and have optimized your product
accordingly, then you have only optimized for the minority. The sooner you layer
in paid traffic, the more efficient your paid traffic will be.

Eric Seufert (Analyst and Strategy Consultant at Heracles Media)

Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary
How to Thrive Despite Apple’s ATT - Sub Club

growthgems.co
 PAID UA - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Iterating monetization requires acquiring data through paid marketing

Eric Seufert

❖ Don't acquire at scale before you understand the user path and monetization
Lior Barak

❖ Don’t start with too many channels

Eric Seufert

growthgems.co
 ASO 💎

💎 Keyword duplication between fields can really hurt your ranks.

Keyword repetition is ignored for scoring and the algorithm ignores
all instances of the keyword except for the last one. Example: same
keyword in title, subtitle or keyword field.

Ryan Kelley (Mobile Growth Consultant)

Growth Gems #56
Secrets of ASO - App Growth Summit Berlin
growthgems.co
 ASO - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Focus beats performance: where you put keywords makes a huge difference

❖ Don’t update too often: give it at least 30 days

❖ Keywords can stay indexed even after you remove them

Ryan Kelley - Growth Gems #56

growthgems.co
 ONBOARDING 💎

There are two main schools of thought for onboarding:

1. Make it very brief and simple

2. Make it longer while making it interactive and valuable

Darius Mora (CMO at Reflectly)

Growth Gems #50
Acquiring Apps as a Growth Strategy - AppMasters
growthgems.co
 ONBOARDING - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Possible in a few taps? Brief and simple.

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 ONBOARDING - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Real value only perceived after a long time? Longer.

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 ONBOARDING - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ The Psych’d Framework →

❖ Activation: be more explicit

about the action that users
need to take in the app.
Simplify the experience.
Thomas Petit - Growth Gems #60

growthgems.co
 ONBOARDING - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Growth.Design & AppFuel

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 RETENTION 💎

There are very different kinds of subscriptions, and the retention tactics and levers are entirely different for each category:

● Content - music, books, video, comics, news, etc. → retention lever is the amount of content you're offering

● Motivation - health & fitness, dating, education (language learning, brain training) → retention lever is more about how

you onboard people and re-engage them

● Utilities - photo/video editors, dropbox, grammarly, etc. → retention depends more on the value you provide to users on a

regular basis.

Thomas Petit (Independent Growth Consultant)

Growth Gems #20
Subscription Apps Fundamentals - App Growth Summit
growthgems.co
 RETENTION - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Segment based on
subscription status (free
users, trialists, paying users)

❖ Re-engage them accordingly

Thomas Petit - Growth Gems #20

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 RETENTION - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ You need a proxy metric for retention

Anja Obermuller - Growth Gems #8

❖ Monthly plan first so you can see how people churn and talk to them
Matthieu Rouif - Growth Gems #53

❖ Messenger (e.g. Intercom) to engage users then book interviews

Dylan Fournier

growthgems.co
 VIRALITY 💎

If your business is driven by a User Generated Content flywheel that is powered

by both subscribers and free users, putting too much behind a paywall can

damage growth. Example at AllTrails: ratings, reviews, photos, recordings,

curate/create trail content.

Ron Schneidermann (CEO at AllTrails)

Growth Gems #59
Growing Your App to 1M Paid Subscribers - Sub Club
growthgems.co
 VIRALITY - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Growth Loops

❖ Types of Growth Loops

❖ This Growth Strategy Led Strava to a $1.5B

Valuation

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Growth/Mature stages

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 BRAND MARKETING 💎

The uplift that you want to observe from “offline” efforts is not just
consumer acquisition, it is also the behavior of your existing customers
and people that are already in your funnel. The bigger your user base
and your performance marketing spend, the bigger the impact you
can make with brand marketing efforts.

Adam Hadi (VP of Marketing at Current)

Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary
How to Win with Offline Marketing for a Mobile
App - The Mobile User Acquisition Show
growthgems.co
 BRAND - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Brand ads need “follow up”

digital ads
Eric Seufert - Growth Gems #60

❖ Brand ads need initial

understanding of the
product
Adam Hadi - Growth Gems #61 - The
2-year Anniversary

growthgems.co
 CREATIVES 💎

Look for high leverage, big incremental wins: often radical shifts in
concepts/positioning combined with low production costs.
Headlight often starts with static images and invest more effort if
they see good results.

Michael O’Brien (VP of Growth at Headlight)

Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary
The 2021 Mobile Gaming Growth Playbook - MoPub/MDM
growthgems.co
 CREATIVES - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Be more hypothesis-driven for creative optimization

Gabe Kwakyi - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ Put testing cadence first

Sharath Kowligi - Growth Gems #4

❖ Bring the motivation to play the game, to the creative

Alice Guillaume - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

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 CREATIVES - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ A Deep Dive into the 12

Player Motivations →

❖ The Big Catch PlayBook

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 ASO 💎

Custom Product Pages (CPP) should not only be seen as an

upfront conversion enhancement: you also need to consider
how this contextual experience is carried through the life of the
customer.

David Flynn (Sr. Marketing Manager at Netspend)

Growth Gems #58
Everything you need to know about CPPs - Storemaven & AppTweak
growthgems.co
 ASO - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Mapping out your traffic

sources to the app store
and grouping them
contextually
Martin Rusev - Growth Gems #58

growthgems.co
 ASO - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Different CPPs per partner for consistency throughout the journey and a
better understanding of top of funnel metrics
Faith Price - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ First-time user experience to retrieve user intent/motivation and serve the

right content
Alexandre Noirot-Cosson - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

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 MONETIZATION 💎

There is a ton of value in being able to price-discriminate in a way that allows

you to touch as many points of the price sensitivity curve as possible so you

can drive more revenue. This can be done through personalizing prices

and/or breaking down the purchase experience into smaller bits.

Yavuz Acikalin (Data & Insights Lead at N3TWORK)

Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary
Building Offers your Customers Can’t Refuse - MGS
growthgems.co
 MONETIZATION - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ It’s hard to move players to a higher preferred

price point
Kate Nezhura - Growth Gems #44

❖ Personalize/Contextualize your paywalls

Jean-François Grang - Growth Gems #52

❖ Use "abandoned cart"-type tactics

Andy Carvell - Growth Gems #17

growthgems.co
 MONETIZATION - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Apps like Headspace, VSCO, Triler: small price optimizations are worth it
Andy Carvell - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ Increments in monetization can unlock UA

Thomas Petit - Growth Gems #30

growthgems.co
 LIFECYCLE 💎

Lifecycle marketing starts with understanding the user journey and

understanding users better than you currently do. This starts with
asking questions to users, not by diving into analytics and looking at
funnels.

Andy Carvell (Partner at Phiture)

Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary
Growth Tactics from the Top Apps - Sub Club
growthgems.co
 LIFECYCLE - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Untapped upside in push notifications & In-app

messages bridge the gap between marketing
and product
Andy Carvell - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ Best use cases: onboarding, upselling and

content recommendation
Andy Carvell - Growth Gems #6

❖ growthgems.co
 LIFECYCLE - GOING DEEPER ⛏

❖ Change your approach over the lifecycle of your app: from optimizing for
new users to optimizing for retained users
Eric Seufert - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ Balance between Organic & Paid / New users & Old users
Eric Seufert - Growth Gems #61 - The 2-year Anniversary

❖ Fresh content & LiveOps events to grow LTV

Sasha MacKinnon - Growth Gems #29

growthgems.co
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