All About Mobile App Remarketing

APPROACH TO
TAKING A
By Jim Nichols
VP-Marketing, Apsalar
STRATEGIC
REMARKETING
MOBILE APP

Remarketing is the fastest growing arena of mobile app marketing.
On our platform, for example, the volume of remarketing activity has
increased more than 800% in the past year. While that growth is off
of a small base, the figure demonstrates the growing appeal of this
marketing strategy and the tactics that underlie it.
This paper is designed to:
• Identify the underlying forces contributing
to this important trend
• Outline the remarketing opportunity for
mobile app marketers
• Present a framework for strategic
remarketing planning and execution
We hope you find it a valuable tool to help you craft the right
remarketing strategy for your brand.
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Copyright © 2016 All rights reserved worldwide. | www.apsalar.com

STRATEGIC FORCES
DRIVING REMARKETING GROWTH
3
As an industry, we are moving from a focus on an event – the install – to one in which the
user is at the center of everything we do. Now, this may sound elementary, but it’s a critical
distinction. Our world has been transformed – and rightly so – to one in which a user’s holistic
relationship with a brand is central.
As marketers, we certainly still care about installs, but we’re also increasingly focused on
subsequent app launches and the actions people take. On the purchases that they make, and on
how they continue to use and transact in an app over time. The most vivid way that we see this
trend at Apsalar is in how people use our platform to understand their businesses.
We measure interest by what metrics they study. How much time they spend studying them. And
all that has changed a lot. Now most marketers have revenue or return on ad spend KPIs first and
foremost. And we’ve learned that great install figures and don’t necessarily mean great revenue.
What matters to today’s marketer is user quality and controlling user decay. And it’s changing the face
of app marketing. There’s lots of evidence that our interest in the whole customer is increasing. We
see it in the massive number of job openings for marketing data analysts, especially app marketing
data analysts. We see it in the big increase in time that our clients are spending doing analysis. And in
how many more in-app event types they are trying to measure.
Average time spent in our platform by a user has increased by about 42 percent in the past year. This
despite a variety of improvements that have actually made it easier and faster to use. Another mea-
sure of greater user involvement is that our clients are, on average measuring 30% more different
types of in-app actions. This speaks to a deeper commitment to understanding the specifics of what
actions users are taking in apps.
In toto, we are seeing a sea change in how users are thinking about this industry – from one cen-
tered on a particular action to one where the whole customer is the focus.

THE
REMARKETING OPPORTUNITY
FOR MOBILE APP MARKETERS
Remarketing is growing because of a convergence of factors that have created a “perfect
storm.”
First, the dynamics of the industry are such that the profitability of app businesses can
be significantly enhanced if users can be persuaded to take more in-app actions. We
all know that large numbers of installers fail to become regular app users. A big part
of the reason for this is the massive number of available apps. Here are a few
use cases to underscore the overall observation here.
4
• Many one-time app users never launch again.
• Others may use an app multiple times but fail
to make a purchase.
• One time buyers may, for a variety of reasons,
never make another purchase.
Often, the reasons for lack of deeper or more enduring engagement relate
specifically to failure to stay top of mind. People forget apps, or may exit an app with
the intention of returning but forget to. Or they may need a little incentive to pull the
trigger on a purchase. Whatever the reason, advertising has been demonstrated to
be an effective reminder and motivator.
More advertising options also contribute to the perfect storm. New ad formats
and venues are a factor, as is the ability to define targeting parameters for more
segmented and customized marketing.

5
1%
Q1 ‘15 Q2 ‘15 Q3 ‘15 Q4 ‘15 Q1 ‘16
1%
2%
3%
4%
Remarketing share of total paid events climbing fast
Remarketing Share of Total Events - APSALAR CLIENTS
5%
4%
4%
3%
3%
2%
2%
1%
1%
0%
Increased app marketing spend is also a factor. Simply put, brands have more resources to invest in tactics other than remarketing.
The ability to measure is also a factor here. Apsalar was one of the first movers in true re-engagement tracking that could specifically
associate a user action to the media that drove it. Our approaches have now been adopted broadly.
Apsalar launched a remarketing audience product in 2015, because clients were looking for ways to easily segment users and deliver
more targeted retargeting messages to users. Apsalar Audiences enables you to create high-performing audiences and deliver customized
creative to them through your choice of media partners. You can analyze your audience OR actually deliver an audience of device
advertising IDs to whichever retargeter you prefer. For example, identifying all the people who had registered, or put an item in a shopping
cart.
All of these factors have contributed to rapid growth for remarketing. Across our clients we are seeing very fast growth, and remarketing’s
share of total paid events has grown 300% in 3 quarters.

6
Let’s take a minute to talk about their retargeting objectives. What are
you trying to DO with their retargeting? What is the business issue you
are trying to solve? Well, to answer that, we divided user behavior into
five buckets.
Think of users as falling into one of five states.
Payers Users Lapsed Triers Uninstaller
5 Stages of User Engagment
CONFIDENTIAL | © 2016 Apsalar All rights reserved worldwide.
A FRAMEWORK FOR
STRATEGIC REMARKETING
PLANNING AND EXECUTION
Going from left to right, we start with purchasers or payers. These are
people that have transacted in the app.
Next over is users, people who engage with the app on some sort of
ongoing basis but don’t buy.
Group three is lapsed users, who engaged with the app several times
in the past, but haven’t used it in N number of days.
Group four is triers, people in the early stages of their brand
relationship that have launched at least once.
And finally, there are uninstallers, people who have tried and then
uninstalled. The edges on these buckets are blurry, but you get the
basic idea, and using this model will help us with the following.

7
If we translate those 5 sets of user behaviors to a buying
funnel, we get the illustration below.
Further, at different stages of the buying funnel, there are
different use cases – different ones are appropriate for different
stages of user engagement. To determine the stages that are
most appropriate for your business, you need to look at the
business and engagement metrics for your brand.

The following grid outlines six of the most common strategic use cases for app marketers. Use this as a foundation to create the custom
strategy suited to the specific needs of your business.
8
Opportunity Symptom Remarketing Strategy
Need for greater
trial, more new
users
Need more users App cross marketing. (if you have another app).
Target existing users of your other app
Convert one-time or
occasional users to
regular users
Lots of one-time users
Low user retention rate
Create a segment of one-time or non-retained users
that have not uninstalled. Target these users with ads
designed to get them to relaunch
Holding onto more
of your triers and
users
High uninstall rates Create an audience of uninstallers and message
product improvements or other reasons to return to
the app Create an audience of uninstallers for market
research
Drive more
engagements from
regular users
Want to get more regular users to use the
app more often. For example, to increase ad
views
Create a segment of retained users. Target these users
with ads designed to get them to Incrementally relaunch
the app
Convert more users
into buyers
Not enough users are transacting
High cart abandon rates
Create a segment of retained users. Target these users
with ads designed to get them to incrementally relaunch
the app
Drive more
purchases from
one-time or
infrequent buyers
Low LTV
Low purchase frequency
Need to drive incremental revenue
Create a segment of one-time or infrequent buyers and
advertise to them with customized messaging
Create a segment of cart abandoners and remind them
to finish transacting
1
2
3
4
5
6

The most popular tactic we are seeing so far is app cross-marketing, when a brand
creates an audience of users (or frequent users, or payers) and targets them with
advertising for another app. Payers and engagers are the focus here, because these
are people that have been shown to be of value to a business. Getting more of their
time and attention has good odds of paying out, and the targeting can be done cost-
effectively, especially when the app has a large user base.
Second most popular is targeting heavy buyers people who have made more than
one transaction. The idea here is to retarget to drive an incremental transaction. And
since these people have already demonstrated a willingness to buy using the app,
they are great prospects for driving revenue.
Next up is lapsed user and new user reactivation. Here the goal is to get an app top-
of-mind with people that had used it in the past, but may have forgotten about it.
Those are the biggest. But we are also hearing and seeing interest in two other use
cases. Early lifecycle management, which is about connecting with people in the
first hours and days of a consumer engagement, and getting them to use the app
on multiple occasions. This often has strong positive effects on lifetime value and in
reducing uninstalls and abandons.
Finally, we are fielding inquiries from those who want to target their uninstallers to
see if it is possible to lure them back.
All of these tactics involve segmenting users and delivering customized messages.
We are also seeing interest in companies trying to improve their lookalike modeling
by profiling high value users – like registered users and payers, for those models.
It’s early days for this, but intuitively it seems like a great way to use data to improve
UA in addition to retention.
Companies with big install bases are the most likely users of retargeting. They have
the most potential revenue to gain, and when you have a big install base, your
media partner can actually find lots of your users so you can get program scale.
From a category perspective, gaming, retail and travel are the verticals showing the
most interest. And when a company has big ticket items for sale, or items with really
big profit margins, like IAPs, then retargeting is much easier to make pay out.
9

Remarketing can be a boon for most
app businesses. The key is to measure
the potential business impact of
the various remarketing objectives
available, so that you can choose
the tactics that best reflect the best
business opportunities for your brand.
Like any marketing plan, your
retargeting plan is best served by
providing a robust strategic foundation.
We hope that this document provides a
core framework on which you can build
your strategic program.
CONCLUSIONS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Nichols is VP of Marketing for Apsalar. Jim
has 20+ years experience in over 80 different
categories, including developing successful
positioning and go-to-market plans for more
than 40 adtech and martech companies.
He joined Apsalar after several years as VP
of Marketing for Conversant, where he led
various efforts in the successful rebrand
of the company from ValueClick, Inc. The
rebrand and associated industry attention for
the company contributed to the $2.3B sale
of Conversant to Alliance Data in December,
2014. He is a prolific writer for digital trades
on brand marketing, mobile, video, data,
and custom-er profiling. Publications include
iMedia Connection, Inside Radio, VentureBeat,
ad:tech, ShellyPalmer.com, Jack Myers, and
many consumer publications. He holds a
B.A. in U.S. History from the Uni-versity of
Pennsylvania and an MBA in Marketing from
the University of Chicago.
App Media
Attribution and
Optimization
Apsalar is the leading mobile app marketing measurement and
optimization company that helps app marketers drive maximum
return from all their marketing investments. With Apsalar
attribution and audiences, app marketers can optimize their
media allocation and empower their partners and platforms to
deliver customized communications, for better results at every
step in the customer journey.
With Apsalar, mobile-first companies get the data, information
and insights they need to drive maximum ROI. Apsalar offers
powerful and proven solutions that help companies capitalize on
many of their biggest app growth opportunities.
App Audiences
for
Remarketing
App CRM and
Prospecting
Audiences
ABOUT APSALAR
Get more great ideas and insights
about app marketing by visiting
www.apsalar.com/resources
For more information about the Apsalar Mobile ROI Platform,
c o n t a c t u s a t
info@apsalar.com or visit our website at https://Apsalar.com.

All About Mobile App Remarketing

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