From 1–10k users on a 1k spend
Week 3: 8½
I enjoyed linking last week’s blog to a film, and with little else in the way of ideas for how to make this visually appealing, this week’s theme is Fellini’s 1963 classic 8½.
1Constant social media and the introduction of cloud messaging has had a strong impact on retention. That’s this week’s overarching positive: 42% of the total user-base were active this month. We’re also seeing notably higher week one retention (i.e. a user that has signed up continues using the app in the week after) in our latest data — in the 30–40% range for the last few weeks. Remember this blog is supposed to be brutally honest; there was one point during our backend migration that we hit 0%.
2 Engagement is also up, with average daily use now 3mins 46 seconds — up 45% since last month. Part of this of course is Max’s work on the app itself, + cloud messaging (essentially sending a notification to all our users) and the aforementioned social media.
3 Instagram growth continues slowly but surely — we remain tantalisingly close to 1k followers. Shout for shouts (shouting out similar instagram pages in return for their doing the same) are obviously hard for a instagram page that posts such variety - this coming week I’m going to make a big effort to find similar pages to our own, rather than targeting pages that link to specific polls.
4 We haven’t on-boarded enough new users — only 60. Why? I think there’s two sides to that story: firstly, a lot of this week was geared to preparing for next week — in terms of the direct marketing tactics, we expect to see this paying off as we move through this week and into the start of the next. Secondly, we just don’t have enough reach online. Luckily, we’re now starting to see which creatives work best through the A/B testing, and crucially have video reformatted for instagram stories ready to go. Sheer continuity of sharing / cross-sharing online is already having some impact on our social following. We’re expecting posts from influencers this week using our video content, and are excited to see the results.
5 It’s too early for flyers and stickers to show in tracked data from App Store — my instinct is that they are creating some downloads, but we’ll need clearer creatives in the future to take advantage of them. Some of our bolder flyering and sticker-ing strategies, whilst standard in UK events promotion, seem to have caused consternation here in Berlin.
After a recent run through an un-named student hall here we were informed that ‘Last night our house got wasted by your Flyers and Stickers on more than 200 apartments.’ If I’m honest I was quite happy we managed to get all 200+ apartments, and a quick check of our database shows that at least some of those that lurked within hit the crucial download button. I’ve apologised profusely to them, and that, along with asking a confused representative of a scooter company out for coffee to discuss marketing strategies, seems to have kept any further trouble at bay. We may have to toe the line slightly more as we move forward.
6 Our latest ideas revolve around increasing exposure through videos and social media as we go about day-to-day marketing activities. Guerrilla marketing in pink gorilla outfits has already enticed Max, whilst I’m keen to film myself ironically flyering in hard to reach, abandoned blocks of flats to see if we can get some more insta video views — and kickstart our just launched YouTube channel.
7 We’ve started content creators on the platform to ensure that new users find high quality polls, ready to go. I firmly believe that setting the tone in this way will aid retention, and help guide users into creating more HQ content. We’ve also started reaching out more on instagram to new users that do post that level of content, to gauge how they perceive the app and what we need to do to ensure they remain engaged.
8 Next week we’ll be bringing in some new ‘layers’ to our plan. The concept is that every week we continue doing what works, and add in new strategies on top, jettisoning any that don’t get results as we iterate. Next week sees flyers in deliveroo deliveries, hyperlocal ads, and our first large focus group. As mentioned we’ve started targeting students — we need to find ways of reaching large groups at once as directly as possible.
½. n.b. Follow us on Instagram. I’ll personally DM everyone that does to say thanks (the value of my DMs is up for debate but I’d see them as a rare and sought-after currency).
Tris.
