The Mobile Marketing Funnel: Your Questions, Answered

The mobile marketing funnel requires an entirely different set of tools than the standard marketing funnel, and mastering the differences is what sets top mobile marketers apart from the rest.

In our recent webinar, “Deconstructing the Mobile Marketing Funnel,” attendees asked candid questions about strategies to employ at every stage of the funnel and drilled into actionable tactics they could use when the webinar wrapped. We didn’t get to answer all the great questions live, so here’s our make-good on answering your top mobile funnel questions.

Plus, you can still catch the whole webinar recording on-demand. Check it out.

How Much Time Should Marketers Invest in Each Stage of the Mobile Funnel?

This is very dependent on where you are as a company and an app. It’s critical to be spending time on every stage of the mobile marketing funnel — discovery, conversion and engagement. Where you’re spending the most time and how you dictate that is really dependent on where you are in the funnel. Focus on the low and bottom of the funnel first, so the people who are going to be in your app will continue to be engaged. Then as you grow your app and get great results on the conversion side, you can move up the funnel, and start filling the funnel at the top as quickly and effectively as possible. You know that those people at the bottom are going to stick around and be great users for you.
– Ian Sefferman, General Manager of TUNE Marketing Console at TUNE

The only thing I would add is that the mobile funnel is not just a start at the top and move to the bottom, but it’s a continuous process. You always want to be filling users at the top and bringing them through the onboarding and the retention and conversion process in a continuous loop.
– Vivian Chang, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at RetailMeNot

How Do You a/B Test App Titles and Keywords When You Can Only Submit One Version to the App Store?

On Google Play, there is something called Google Play experiments. Google actually gives you the tools to A/B test all those different elements we talked about earlier, from titles to descriptions. On the iOS side, you can use third-party tools — TUNE has one in their App Store Analytics — that also allows you to A/B test. You do want to look at your platforms differently (Android and iOS), and not necessarily just replicate one A/B test to the other platform since you’ll get different conversion rates. But you do have very easy helpful platforms for both platforms.
– Vivian Chang, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at RetailMeNot

If My App Has Multiple Actions That Can Be Taken, Do I Track All of Them? How Do I Value These Different Conversions?

Best practice is to tag all of the different actions that can be taken within the app through your attribution provider. Then as a marketer, you can set up what you’re actually going to send to your network that is running the campaigns. If it’s purely for an install, you can just send your network the install; if you then want to run a re-engagement campaign for a registration, you can start sending the registration data. On the value side, I recommend still doing the internal analytics to see how users flow through your different conversion points, until they get to your actual final conversion. So look at 1) install 2) the most surface-level, but still important, conversion point, and 3) final conversion. Those are the three I would say to focus on most.
– Vivian Chang, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at RetailMeNot

Should You Spend Money on Re-Engagement Ads as Well as Acquisition Ads, and What Should the Split Be?

My opinion on this is you should absolutely be spending money on both. But the folks you already have in the door are folks that you know are interested and folks that you should be able to bring back slightly easier, and you should be able to provide really relevant and personalized ads to them. In terms of what the split should be, I really believe this is dependent on which stage you are at with your app in your mobile world. Looking at the industry as a whole, the amount being spent on engagement is rising quickly and dramatically, so I think a more and more people are spending money on engagement.
– Ian Sefferman, General Manager of TUNE Marketing Console at TUNE

The split will be highly dependent on your app. One thing to remember about re-engagement is that your pool of users to reach is dependent on the people who have actually downloaded your app. So you do have to continually spend on both acquisition and re-engagement to have enough users to re-engage and to pull them through all the stages of the mobile funnel.
– Vivian Chang, Senior Manager of Digital Marketing at RetailMeNot

Catch the Webinar for Yourself

If you’d like to hear answers to other burning questions, you can view the on-demand recording. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of how the standard mobile and marketing funnels compare; learn what to do, measure, and test at each stage; and hear real-life examples from top brands who mastered various stages of the funnel. It was our most popular webinar to date, and we think you’ll find some nuggets in there that enable you to start improving your campaigns today. Enjoy!

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