Presentation given to WIP Jam in Detroit on 7/30/2012 by Bill Magnuson (@billmag). Goes in depth on the different dimensions of mobile analytics available to developers and the process by which they can leverage analytics to make smarter product decisions and increase revenue through targeted marketing.

1. Making Mobile App
Analytics Work for You
Bill Magnuson (@billmag)
Co-Founder & CTO, Appboy
bill@appboy.com

2. Why analytics?
• The revenue story is lopsided. Some
apps end up as movie stars, but most
of them are still working at
Starbucks, trying to make it big.
• We still don’t know what’s going on
in mobile. Experimentation and
attribution are critical to success.
• Customers don’t give you feedback
until it’s too late.

3. What should you collect?
Everything you can. Success in mobile requires
understanding data along many dimensions:
• How, when and where your app is used
• App store and sales metrics
• Who your users are
• Social media engagement and marketing
effectiveness
• Marketplace trends

4. How, When and Where?
Passive usage analytics provide you with high level insights
on the usage patterns of your app.
• Correlating usage changes with events, marketing and
upgrades is key to measuring the value of your efforts.

5. Sales Metrics
Like “How, When and Where?”, but closer to your bottom line.
• Measures the effectiveness of marketing and cross promotion.
• Helps you plan future products and forecast the effectiveness of
monetization.

6. Knowing Your User Base
Understanding your user
base is key to keeping
them engaged.
• Engaged users make in-
app purchases, share
your apps and develop
product loyalty.
• High quality
monetization
opportunities require
data-driven targeting.

7. Going Viral
Determining the effectiveness of social
media engagement is hard.
• How often is your app being shared,
are those shares converting into
paying users?
• Who are your most influential users
and how can you harness them?

8. Marketplace Trends
Keeping up on industry and marketplace trends
ensures you’re leveraging new learning and not
repeating mistakes.
• However, be careful – a lot of “facts” we see on
blogs and in the media have shaky foundations.
• Remember that your app is one of millions and
your experience will be unique. Learn from
others, but keep your own data and test your
assumptions.

9. How should you get it?
• Choose services focused on the unique problem
of mobile.
• Prefer those which integrate the ability to act
on your data.
• Consolidate providers to avoid SDK fatigue and
keep your activities focused in a single
dashboard.
• Obviously, check out my company, Appboy,
we’re building some awesome tools that will
surprise and delight.

10. What now?
Effective use of analytics is an
ongoing effort.
1. Collect – Get everything you Collect
can.
2. Analyze – Once you have
your data written down, you
need to analyze it to inform
future efforts.
Act Analyze
3. Act – Take action based on
your analysis, then collect
data to see if it worked.
4. Repeat.

11. Be a Scientist
• Isolate your efforts, don’t try everything at once.
• Make sure you can measure the effectiveness of
actions before you make them.
• Learn from your peers.
• Experiment!

12. Taking Focused Action
Everything you do should be growing
your user base or increasing your
lifetime customer value (LTV).
• Grow your user base through app
store optimization, cross
promotion, advertising and install
campaigns.
• Increase LTV with customer
relationship management and
inbound marketing tools.

13. Target, don’t Spam
• Maximize your signal-to-
noise ratio with effective
targeting. Your users will
reciprocate respect.
• Use drip campaigns and
event driven marketing to
capitalize on sales
opportunities.
• Deliver via all available
mediums (push, e-mail, in-
app, social medium)