With mobile app revenue slated to hit $189 billion by the year 2020, it’s a great time to launch or run a mobile app business.
That said, too many app developers launch with a “cool idea” for a product - and no idea how to monetize it. Getting more users doesn’t necessarily result in more revenue, which is why I reached out to 11 app marketers and app company CEOs to get their best tips on generating financial growth.
Here’s what they had to say:
“For GradTrain, most of the revenues come from the B2B side. We forge affiliations and partnerships with universities and other service providers that are interested in international students (test prep companies, housing, travel, health insurance and so on). Therefore, our key to growing revenues was business development activities where we ‘went out of the building’ and met with strategic partners. We were 2015 MassChallenge finalists, and we took advantage of that time in Boston to meet with dozens of universities and understand their needs. This helped us refine our B2B offerings for them. We have since closed several deals with universities in the U.S. and the Middle East.”
“Increase in user numbers naturally results in revenue growth for us. However, by increasing the usage of each user we can see a growing ARPU. As our services through the Dubber app include a mix of subscription and usage-based models, we look to provide compelling pricing structures to our service provider partners and assist them with clever go-to-market messaging for all of their customer bases. Through enabling end-users and showcasing the innovative ways Dubber’s services can be used, we then see an increase in growth of revenue.”
“Refining our push-notification strategy was really the key for us in converting our install base into paying customers. Each month we send upwards of 20 million push notifications to our users and almost all of our flights are sold in response to a push notification. The notifications themselves are a mix of buy and wait recommendations, all designed to help the user get the best possible deal on airfare. As one might imagine, at that kind of scale even small changes can have outsized impacts. Some of our seemingly-small A/B experiments on copy, timing and frequency have led to conversion-rate improvements on our push notifications that have increased sales by millions of dollars.”
Benjamin Guez’s app Washos (@benjiox) has grown its revenue through service delivery and email marketing:
“Our success in increasing sales is tied to our capacity to deliver the service. Our service (mobile car care on-demand) suffers from a demand being higher than the supply; what makes us significantly grow our revenues is our capacity to deliver the service on same-day. That being said, to help with activation, one thing worked great for us: drip campaigns. Email is still the best medium for us in terms of communication leading to conversion.”
Bill Harris of Personal Capital (@PersonalCapital) is another app owner who’s driven revenue growth through service delivery and user engagement:
“Growth in revenue comes down to high customer engagement. We have leveraged the best-in-class technology used in our app to engage with users in ways that are highly personal and targeted to their specific personal needs. High user engagement has led to high conversion rate from free to paying customers. Additionally, our sales team is able to use our digital financial planning and analysis tools directly in conversation with our customers as they build their long-term financial plans.”
Tim Hong of MoneyLion (@moneylion) has seen financial success through better partner product matching:
“Our focus on inflection point marketing has seen non-loan revenue grow steadily in line with the increase in app usage. This is in part due to our ability to better match products - proprietary or third-party - to users and thus earn lead-generation fees from our partners.”
Ross Andrew Paquette of Maropost (@maropost) has used word-of-mouth referrals to increase both users and revenue:
“When looking at our growth in revenue, word-of-mouth is the greatest marketing tool we’ve managed to harness at Maropost. It’s what drove me since Day One and will continue to be the driver of this company well into the future. With our number one priority being customer service, the good word spreads fast. People flock to Maropost from our competitors like sheep to greener pastures.”
“A few years back we created a team of Business Development Representatives (BDR) within our sales organization. Before BDR our sales were organic, coming in from word-of-mouth or marketing driven. BDR was like jet fuel to our outbound sales efforts. They work in direct partnership with our Account Executives to engage prospective clients, learn more about their challenges and educate them on our product offerings. This has made a tremendous impact on our sales growth and brand recognition.”
Newsflare’s Jon Cornwell (@newsflare) upped his app’s revenue by creating higher value product offerings at higher price points:
“As Newsflare has progressed, our video archive has also grown substantially. Selling to TV production companies was established as revenue stream within a year of launch, but at a certain point we realised that by selling just a handful of clips at each transaction, we were missing a much bigger opportunity. We approached one production company and said how about we provide you with all of the footage for an entire TV series (8 x 40-minute episodes in this case). With this new product offering established, average deal-size to this market segment has increased by over 10x, delivering not only increased revenue and but also reduced cost of sale as a percent of revenue.”
“When we launched our content bundles, we also saw a large increase in sales (businesses who need to train their staff on compliance and professional development can now do that in an all-inclusive bundle). It can sound a little counterintuitive, but increasing prices and delivering a premium version can be a real boost for sales.”
Hitesh Malhotra of Nykaa (@MyNykaa) attributes part of his app’s success to its use of coupon codes:
“[We] initiated a first-time user coupon for people who were downloading the app but not making a purchase. So in order to get them rolling into our buyer's base, we offered time-bound offers valid for their first 3 purchases within 90 days of installation of Nykaa app. This decreased our non-users/dormant base by 35%.”
Ultimately, these techniques may not work for your app’s unique circumstances - or they may go a long way towards driving the revenue growth you’re seeking. Use the experience of the mobile app entrepreneurs above to inspire your own marketing campaigns and to challenge you to think outside the box when it comes to your chosen revenue-generating techniques.
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