By Robi Ganguly
As a marketer today, it's a foregone conclusion that decisions should be data-driven. However, it's easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of data available. I've experienced this reality at Apptentive. As we strive to be a data-driven company, we've had to discern what data is most important to our decision making. Data comes from many channels (web, mobile, apps, in-store, etc.), and each channel's data has its own implications. Without context to understand why the data is the way that it is, it's difficult to fully understand how to make decisions based on what's being measured.
So, what does data look like in the mobile ecosystem? Let's talk about the metrics that matter most in mobile, and how to increase the amount of data you're capturing.
Key Mobile Metrics To Focus On
To make informed, data-driven decisions, focus on using acquisition, retention, and monetization metrics in order to understand your customers' behavior and the reasons behind their actions when using your app.
Acquisition is one of the most important mobile metrics. If people aren't downloading your app, you've still got work to do. Acquisition is the first step in the mobile journey: do you know how many people are downloading your mobile app?
Next, retention is one of the surest ways to measure the health of an app. If people are downloading your app and continuing to use it 30, 60 and 90 days since downloading it, you can be fairly confident your app is serving its intended purpose. Once you've made a big push for acquisition, retention can become the bigger focus. It doesn't make sense to spend time and money on acquisition if the customers you're acquiring aren't going to stick around.
If you have an ad strategy, in-app purchase strategy or e-commerce strategy, understanding how to get customers to spend (more) money is a high priority. Once you're confident your retention strategy is effective, collecting data around the monetization of your app will help you understand where opportunities exist, and where you've already optimized your app to capture revenue.
When you focus on acquisition, retention and monetization, you're able to build up data that answers questions about your customer base in order to monetize each metric. The more data available to you, the more insight you'll have and the better data-driven decisions you'll be able to make.
How To Make The Most Of Mobile Data
Now that we know what mobile metrics matter most, here are two tips to increase the volume of data you're capturing:
The first step to capturing data on mobile is to install a measurement tool, such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel or Flurry. Keeping track of your customers' behavior in your app using a measurement tool will help you to understand where your app stands on acquisition, retention and monetization. Using these metrics, you'll learn how your app is being used, and where your team's efforts should be focused.
Be sure to prioritize this capability in your product roadmap if you don't already have access to this information. Lack of insight into customer behavior leaves you flying blind and making decisions based on best guesses (the opposite of making data-driven decisions). As soon as you start measuring, you'll be well on your way to making smarter, more data-driven decisions for the mobile channel.
Use your app as a tool to create more data that will answer questions quantitative metrics can't. Then, gather quantitative feedback to provide context for the metrics. At Apptentive, we've found that explicit feedback directly from customers will help you understand the "why" behind their in-app behavior, which is always the hardest question for any decision maker to answer.
For example, quantitative data can reveal a pattern of customers going through the purchase funnel then suddenly falling off, but it can't tell you why this is happening. By quickly asking customers questions like, "Was this too difficult?" or "Was the price too expensive?" after they've fallen out of the purchase funnel, you'll get insights into the explanation for the pattern that will allow you to implement a solution.
Acquisition, retention and monetization are the three metrics mobile marketers should focus on when making data-driven decisions about their app. These have the most impact on determining the success of the app, and will be the first to show signs that a certain area needs attention. To make these metrics as powerful as possible, begin tracking customers' in-app behavior and gathering explicit feedback. Those two actions will increase the amount of data you're able to gather as well as help you gain a deeper understanding of the data at hand. The conjunction of metrics and insights will make you a smarter decision maker in the ever-changing world of mobile.
Robi Ganguly is the CEO of Apptentive, the easiest way for companies with a mobile app to listen to, engage with, and retain their mobile customers. The Google Ventures backed company works with major app publishers and enables millions of customer conversations. Prior to Apptentive Robi worked at Yahoo! and built WebEx's pricing strategy. When he's not building Apptentive you can find Robi running, reading and on Twitter.