10 BEST APP DEVELOPMENT

STRATEGIES 2018
TIPS, TRICKS AND INDUSTRY INSIGHTS FOR APP GROWTH

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 INTRODUCTION
THE MOBILE EXPLOSION
Mobile user experiences and interfaces are fast
becoming the model for all of our digital interactions —
with our desktops, our cars, our in-home smart
assistants and even our appliances. As a result,
a mobile-centric approach is the fastest growing way
for brands to connect with their customers.
In just a few years since the rst smartphone was
introduced in 2007:
• Mobile has become the preferred digital experience
over desktop (7 billion devices vs. 2 billion PCs).
• comScore’s latest data shows that, while web
audiences are nearly 3X bigger than app audiences,
app users are 20X more engaged.
• Apps have become the preferred method to engage
with brands.
• Mobile’s influence has grown the fastest, according to
Deloitte, where now more than half of every dollar spent
offline is digitally influenced.
• New in-home, immersive experiences powered by the
Internet of Things (IoT) are on the rise — Gartner
predicts 50 billion IoT devices by 2020.
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 CONTINUED
users at precisely the moment that it will be most useful and
YOUR BUSINESS ON AND THROUGH THE MOBILE PLATFORM
relevant to them — messages that are automatically triggered by
-Users are increasingly wanting a better user experience.

actions your customer has taken to interact with your brand.

• Real-Time: Interactions that meet them in their moment of need,

• User-Level Data: Because mobile analytics provide user-level
whenever and wherever that may be.

data, marketers can pinpoint user interests, attributes and

• Personalized: Users expect personalized content based on their
behavior. Every touch and swipe can be captured with the right
interactions with your brand.

solution to understand user patterns across their journey.

• Seamless: Users expect their experience — what you know about
• Real-Time Fine Tuning: Test multiple variations of a message
them, how you interact with them — to be consistent, no matter
to see what your users are responding to, and move swiftly to
where they are.

make changes that improve the experience and outcomes.

•User-Level Data: Because mobile analytics provide user-level data,
marketers can pinpoint user interests, attributes and behavior. Every
Brands that understand and take advantage of the unique
touch and swipe can be captured with the right solution to
opportunities to connect with customers on mobile — and
understand user patterns across their journey.

the unique real-time, user-level information available on

• In-the-Moment Messaging: The real-time interactions made
mobile — will win.
possible by mobile mean you can send messages to
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 MOBILE IS A MINDSET, NOT A CHANNEL

1 Most marketing leaders still view their mobile marketing as the least mature of their
disciplines. That needs to change. In fact, a “set it and forget it” approach to mobile is a very
easy way for a CMO to nd themselves out of a job, said Mike McGuire, VP research,
Gartner for Marketing Leaders. Consider what your brand could look like through a mobile-
rst lens, then consider what steps, investments and internal alignments you need to get
there. If you don’t get there rst, a disruptor may beat you to it. (Consider Uber, Airbnb,
GrubHub, etc.)

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- Are we thinking big enough about how we can capitalize on mobile’s ability to deliver real-
time, personalized experiences to our customers?
- Are our competitors already taking a mobile-centric approach? How might that impact our
growth opportunities in the future?
- Are we asking and listening to what our users want, need and expect from us on mobile?

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 BE A “MOBILE-CENTRIC” NOT A “MOBILE EXTENDER”

2 According to Gartner’s Mike McGuire, brands that are taking a “mobile extender” approach
are those that are adapting their current tactics for mobile — buying mobile advertising,
making responsive websites, optimizing for mobile search, etc.

Mobile-centric brands, on the other hand, are reimagining the user experience through a
mobile- first lens, building native mobile apps, leveraging the mobile wallet, coordinating
mobile messaging across their customer communication strategy, etc. In the long-term, a
mobile-centric approach will be critical to stay in the game.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- How long will a mobile extender approach — and its limitations — continue to work for us?
(And is it even really working today?)
- What resources would we need to take a more mobile-centric approach?
- Which of our business objectives could mobile growth impact the most?

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 THINK BIGGER — WAY BIGGER — ON A REGULAR BASIS.

3 “I’ll talk with people about their road maps and I’ll ask them, ‘You have this
great thing that’s working, but how do you 10X it?’ Maybe they’ll have some
ideas, but then I’ll say, ‘Okay, now what would you do to 100X it?’”
- Andrew Chen, Growth at Uber, from his blog post, “The State of Growth Hacking”

Growth teams should have regularly scheduled periods of time to do “blue sky” thinking that
could result in a drastically different approach to their product, their marketing, or both.
Otherwise, it’s too easy to get bogged down in ne-tuning what’s working while missing the
bigger picture of what’s possible.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- Are we stuck in an incremental growth mindset that’s preventing exponential growth?
- Are we so busy adding features and functions we’re missing the chance to fundamentally
re-think our mobile approach?
- Could we spark exponential growth by being more willing to blur the lines between product
and marketing?
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 MOBILE BECOMES STRATEGY FIRST

4 You have to know why you’re doing mobile, and what you expect out of it. Too many
companies have an app because someone on their executive team said they needed one,
not because they had a cohesive plan.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- Is our app’s value proposition strong enough to get users to download it — and keep it?
- How can we engage more customers with mobile experiences they’ll value — whether or
not they have our app?
- Are we clear on our mobile strategy, and is it aligned to what our customers want? How do
we know?

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 IT’S TIME TO CONNECT YOUR OFFLINE AND ONLINE EXPERIENCE

5 “Our fans can use their smartphones as the remote control to our stadium” says Kyle
Eichman, senior director, technology solutions, Sacramento Kings. From the moment
Sacramento Kings fans set foot in their stadium, they can use their smartphones to
personalize their experience: watch replays from any angle, post to social media in a flash
(thanks to blazing fast Wi-Fi), even order food to their seat and pay for it — all on their
phones.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- How can I use mobile to help personalize and customize “offline” experiences with my
brand?
- What physical brand experiences can be made more exciting and engaging with mobile?
- How can I leverage location, proximity and automation to grow with mobile?

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 YOUR APP IS YOUR NEW GROWTH AND INSIGHTS CHANNEL

6 In the past, marketers have done some crazy things in the name of understanding their
customers. Focus groups, mall intercepts, survey hotlines printed on receipts — you name
it, marketers have tried it. But
a lot of the data we’ve collected has been limited or even useless. The new — and
exponentially more unbiased — way to learn what your customers really want is through
your app. In fact, mobile apps offer 5-10X the volume of behavioral data as websites,
according to Forrester Research, Inc.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- Is our app set up to collect the data that helps us understand what our users want and
leverage what’s working (and stop doing what’s not working) for growth?
- Is our mobile messaging designed to capture and leverage user-level data from app
sessions?
- Do we have the internal expertise to take real-time action on user-level data — and use
that data beyond the app in our other product and marketing initiatives?
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 PERSONALISED MESSAGING LET’S YOU ENGAGE LIKE NEVER BEFORE

7 “How do we reach people wherever they are without just throwing stuff at them? Our
approach has got to be to serve, not spam,” says Mike Herrick, SVP of product and
engineering for Urban Airship. The more individualized, responsive and real-time your
interactions with your mobile users are, the more engagement, trust and growth you’ll be
able to spark.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- Are our mobile interactions with our customers as individualized and personalized as they
could be?
- Can we consistently and reliably deliver real-time, customized messages our users want,
exactly when and where they want them?
- Should we consider building a different type of mobile experience — a separate lightweight
app,chatbot, mobile wallet or similar — to go deeper into one or more valuable segments?

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 ALL SYSTEMS GO FOR OPTIMAL MOBILE GROWTH

8 “We have systems for everything. Why not for growth?”

- Brian Balfour, Founder/CEO at Reforge, Previously VP Growth at HubSpot

Product development has agile; support has ticket management; nance has planning
cycles: Why shouldn’t growth have a system too? Brian Balfour, founder/CEO at Reforge
says a system for growth should consist of a collection of models that give you insights on
the results that matter most for your business. The system should be constructed to answer
very critical questions:

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- How will we sustain growth over the long term? - How do I decide between X and Y
initiatives?
- How will this feature impact growth?
- Will this channel make a difference?
- How do I talk to my team about growth?

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 CHANNELS, PLATFORMS AND STAGES IN THEIR CUSTOMER JOURNEY.

9 By bringing data from mobile, web, and “offline” (in-person) experiences together, you can
get a more cohesive picture of how your customer is interacting with your brand. Some call
this the holy grail. We call it overdue. Your customer doesn’t think of their experiences with
your brand in silos, and neither should you.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- Can we connect what we know about our customers from every place we have data about
them into one unified customer profile?
- Does our mobile marketing automation software provider allow its data to flow to any
business system?
- Can data from any of our business systems be used to trigger real-time mobile
messaging?

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 STAY ON TOP OF NEW MOBILE OPPORTUNITIES AND TECHNOLOGIES.

10 The technology landscape is evolving faster than it ever has. In the big picture, that means
lots of buzz about chatbots, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality
(VR) and much, much more. How these things t into your mobile growth strategy may not
be clear today, but you should consider how they may t into it tomorrow and beyond.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:
- When is the last time we tried something new or experimental?
- Who on our team is responsible for staying in the know about new mobile tools and
trends?
- Where do we need to be to learn from mobile growth futurists and trend watchers?

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CONCLUSION
MOBILE GROWTH SUCCESS MEANS
1. Taking advantage of the historic shifts toward the
mobile platform to reach more customers on their own
terms, on a device that’s with them all day every day.
2. Future-proofing your brand, as a mobile- rst
approach becomes the default setting for all of our
digital interactions.
3. Individually interacting with customers anywhere,
using data from everywhere for 1:1 communication at
mobile scale.
4. Being your customer’s real-time source of useful and
valuable information, entertainment and education at
the precise moment they need and want it, across all
devices, platforms and channels— from smartphones
to watches to cars to in-home smart devices.
5. Thinking bigger, increasing the speed of our learning
curves on what customers want and expect and
delivering it.
6. Adopting a mobile growth mindset is no longer
optional for brands that want to be relevant and thriving
one year, two years, five years from now.
Ready to start exploring mobile growth
opportunities? Our teams are here to help.
Get in touch today, and we’ll help you assess
where you are now, and help you get up to speed
on the world of mobile growth possibilities.
Contact us, and let’s get started!
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