Hey, Mobile App Marketers, Start Segmenting Now!

Audience segmentation is a major problem for mobile app marketers as they continue to struggle with using an existing abundance of data.

Mobile apps lag well behind websites when it comes to issues of optimization, customization, and audience segmentation, but that gap has to close. The companies that figure out how to use the mobile app channel most effectively are the ones that will lead their competitors among the next generation of consumers.

One of the major challenges for mobile app publishers is the issue of audience segmentation. There is plenty of information available on mobile app usage if you want to review raw data logs. However, gleaning insight from that data in order to segment and target audiences is a different matter.

As Philip Kotler outlined a decade ago, segments have to be measurable, substantial, accessible, differentiable, and actionable. But if you don’t have the necessary information to define a segment, then how do you even begin to meet those requirements?

Most mobile app analytics tools available today are extremely limited. Among the complaints we hear:

• They’re cumbersome to implement
• You can’t go back in time to associate current information with past data points
• It’s difficult to attribute revenue or even the time spent in an app to specific users

In other words, app publishers can’t even get past the starting line when it comes to understanding mobile audiences.

Segmenting is only the first step in audience targeting, but it’s a critical one on the path to creating customized experiences for mobile app users. With audience targets defined, you can determine who an app is best designed for, how to promote it effectively to different types of users, and ultimately how to tailor the content of the app for different groups in order to drive higher conversions.