Business of Apps Podcast

Every person on this planet who needs to get up on a Monday morning to tune in his brain to work and, basically, it never stops till Friday evening, would agree that it is tough.

Now, if you are an app marketer, there are several questions that are floating in your mind all the time - who are my app users? Do I know all kinds of app users that may need my app? How should I approach all these people? Where? What marketing channels should I use?

All these questions push app marketer over and over to brainstorm new ideas with a mind mapping app or just drawing diagrams on a paper, peering into data points on her or his laptop. Day in. Day out.

So on this episode we will try to address all those questions and make her or his life easier.

Today’s Topics Include:

• Ankit's has 15+ years experience being in the IT industry under his belt, his background spans across companies like Microsoft and Oracle and many others.
• The changes in AdTech for the last decade
• Challenges in the industry
• Helping advertiser to navigate the convoluted maze of the Adtech
• MAAS platform capabilities
• Android or iOS? One+ running Android
• What was Ankit’s first mobile phone? Nokia 3100
• What features would Ankit miss the most leaving his smartphone at home? Audio content to listen to on the go
• What’s missing from mobile app technology? Advances on the VR and AR frontiers

Links and Resources:

• Ankit Rawal LinkedIn profile.
• MAAS powered by Affle website.
• MAAS powered by Affle profile on Business Of apps.

Quotes from Ankit Rawal:

”As the penetration of smart phone increased with both iOS & Android growing App stores were launched... It for the first time developers can build software in one part have easy distribution thanks to global appstores across the world. You could develop locally & sell globally... Hence it became a wild west advertisers were focusing largely on growth and volumes. .. with incent traffic, burst campaigns..

Unfortunately our Ad industry is notorious which I should also take blame for is the 3 letter acronyms CPM, CPI, DMP, DSP, MMP, CDP & what have you... which makes anyone outside it wonder Huh?? App is a conduit to any activity a user wants to accomplish be it shop, play, get entertained, study & more.”

According to Statista, in 2021, daily, emails alone were sent a whopping 320 billion times. Emails - the first kind of digital messaging that was adopted at mid-90s and by now they exist almost solely for business and occasionally Millennials or older generations may share something via email when really don’t need or don’t want a quick turnaround.

Now add on top of it 100 billion WhatsApp messages, countless number of FB Messenger, Apple’s iMessage, Telegram, Viber, WeChat messages and some more send via dozens less popular Instant Messaging apps. It’s an ocean of messages that circulate every day, every hour, every millisecond.

In this episode we have Josh from OneSignal to share with you an insight from 100 billion messages sent by OneSignal.

Today’s Topics Include:

• Josh’s story - born in Palo Alto, for the last 20+ years his career included working for Adobe, CBS Interactive, eBay, PubMatic and since 2018 at OneSignal
• Mobile messaging options for app marketers to use
• Email as the first mass communication tool
• Push Notifications
• In-app Messaging
• Josh suggestions to app developers, marketers and brands for how to adjust to Apple’s ATT framework
• Android or iOS? iOS
• What was Josh’s first mobile phone? Hard to say, Josh got his hands on a lot of early smartphone models, working as CNET reviewer back in the day
• What features would Josh miss most leaving his smartphone at home?
• What’s missing from mobile app technology? iOS features to balance the use of a smartphone

Links and Resources:

• Josh Wetzel LinkedIn profile
• OneSignal website.

Quotes from Josh Wetzel:

"So it’s really thing about those moments. Thinking about these critical points in that journey and building messaging around that. And then taking a step below, you gotta about what are the options best for what thing.

If you gonna do an asynchronous kind of weekly update or some random promotion. That’s a great promotion for an email.

If you send a note about “Hey, your order is taken” of “Your order is on the way” it’s about to come or “Hey, come back we’ve got a promotion - in the next 20 minutes for a pizza”, you wanna use push.”

Today, there are about 27 million app developers worldwide, it's a big, diverse and dynamic community of mobile software developers who build apps for iOS and Android. If you ever watched the Apple’s keynote presentations at WWDC, you saw some of them talking about apps they pour their heart into. It’s remarkable to see the commitment of these people to develop an app that will make a difference in somebody’s life.

Now, at the same time they develop apps to make a living. What is the state of app monetization today? To answer this question we’ve invited Linda.

Today’s Topics Include:

• The Linda's background spans from being a part of the Yahoo team, moving to MoPub team and ultimately becoming a part of the Twitter team and finally joining Fyber - a Digital Turbine company
• Fyber if the leading monetization platform helping app businesses grow revenue
• How app publishers adopting to the Apple's SKAdNetwork
• The impact of COVID-19 to the app publishers business in 2020 and 2021
• What should be the focus of app publishers right now, in the midst of this Holiday season
• Challenges app publishers are facing right now
• Android or iOS? iOS
• What features would Linda miss most? Spotify :-)
• What’s missing from mobile app technology? Widely adapted IoT support, being able to manage multiple sensors at home via a smartphone

Links and Resources:

• Linda Ouyang LinkedIn profile.
• Fyber website.

Quotes from Linda Ouyang:

"I grew up in a very entrepreneurial mobile tech-forward household. So the apple didn't fall very far from the tree actually.

It's become more and more interconnected but specifically on the publisher side, I think the privacy changes with Apple, while the grilling stuff must be faced together, it's causing some innovation. It's a little bit like Renaissance.

I think a lot of what we've seen is coming into fruition this Holiday season."

Have you ever had this feeling when you’re working on something, you’re focused on relevant information only, you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing the next moment? This feeling may last minutes and hopefully more.

This can be the moment you’re building a marketing plan for your mobile app, or writing a creative for an ad to promote your app or dig deep in numbers for your current app user acquisition campaign. It doesn’t matter, what matter is that these moments are rare and precious. This is when a breakthrough moment may happen for your app project and you can finally nail a problem down.

You may think that to achieve any goal, you need to be able to put your thoughts together, it feels like that, right? In fact, it’s about being able shut down everything that is not relevant to what you’re doing right now. That is the key.

Today’s Topics Include:

• Clarize path in business took off at Trivago as an International Brand Marketing Associate to become a Head of Marketing in the Flow Lab team to work hard on making sure the app takes off and grow its user base of loyal users quickly
• Flow Lab is a mental coach for peak performance app for you to be productive with your work and achieve your goals, removing destruction and helping people to focus on a specific task
• The story behind the app and how it was development
• App marketing channels Flow Lab team has been putting at work to connect the app with people
• App analytics for the app during tough times of iOS15 rollout
• The app users feedback
• Clarize take on the current state of offers with how we interact with mobile devices
• Android or iOS? iOS
• What features would Clarize miss most? In fact Clarize periodically leave her smartphone at home to give her a piece of mind, leaving the tech behind
• What’s missing from mobile app technology? Software features to strictly limit use of the smartphone

Links and Resources:

• Clarize Marais LinkedIn profile.
• Flow Lab website.

Quotes from Clarize Marais:

"As you can imagine, from the beginning it was very important to distinguish Flow Lab from other big players like Calm, Headspace.

And we aimed to educate people that it's only important to train body but also to train your mind.

Before I cam across Flow Lab I also was not aware that it's possible to train your mind over time to become more focused and productive through meditation."

When you are looking for a new car to buy, chances are you may check how long it takes for your future ride to accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (for non-American listeners I mean 100 km/hour). Obviously you, as an app marketer, don’t accelerate apps in space, you accelerate their growth in time.

Today, I have Yoann to tell you a story of what it took for him and his team to acquire 300k users for their fintech app Nude during the first year on the market.

Today’s Topics Include:

• Digital marketing starting point - places to discover the app
• How word of mouth took off for the app
• Nude paid advertising strategy
• How does the newsletter marketing channel work for the app?
• What Yoann would like to change in mobile marketing the most
• Android or iOS?
• Laricea's first mobile phone
• Leaving his smartphone at home, what features would Yoann miss most?
• What features Yoann would like to see added to his smartphone?

Links and Resources:

• Yoann Pavy on LinkedIn
• Nude
• Business Of Apps - connecting the app industry

Quotes from Yoann Pavy:

“We wanted to be really transparent with our customers - no jargon, very easy-going voice, we are not hiding the fig leaves. "

“We came on the market differentiated with a single goal which made our job in marketing with my team a lot easier."

"We got focused really early on how could we accelerate its virality and word of mouth through our product."