Leveraging raw data to skyrocket your app’s success

Last month, Adjust hosted Growth Lab events in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, where we spoke to marketers about the importance of raw data. Plus, Adjust clients discussed how they maximize their use of raw data with the help of Datascape. Here’s what you missed.

The rapid growth of mobile gaming is now challenging traditional forms of entertainment. In 2021, the global revenue of box office movies reached $21 billion and recorded music reached $26 billion, while online games reached a staggering $180 billion. In fact, 233 apps surpassed $100 million in revenue in 2021, compared to only 38 movies.

Despite this profitable success, competition remains strong. 95% of mobile gaming revenue, and 85% of downloads, were attributed to the top 1% of game publishers. This is why you must approach your mobile game’s marketing strategy with thought, consideration, and proven methodology.

With the invaluable insight provided by raw data, you can:

Diversify your revenue across new audiences

If your app is in the earlier stages of growth, look to expand in markets with the top download share. The top 5 countries for downloads include India (17%), the United States (9%), Brazil (8%), Indonesia (6%), and Russia (6%). If your app is scaled and focusing instead on monetization, look to the markets with top revenue share. The top 5 countries for revenue include the United States (31%), Japan (18%), China (14%), South Korea (7%), and Germany (3%).

Diversify your revenue streams

Hypercausal games typically rely heavily on ad monetization. However, this sub-vertical also accounts for 40% of user ad removal. This is why not only should you diversify your audience, but you should also expand your monetization strategy.

Leverage your existing users to power your growth

Of course, there is an undeniable importance in harnessing the full value of your current user base. A 5% increase alone in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 25–95%. When focusing on retention, start with tracking churn. About 40% of users who uninstall an app within the first month do so on D1 itself.

Make sure that your app store listings are completely accurate to the in-app experience and present a flawless onboarding experience. Of those users that do churn, leverage analytics to identify high-value users to re-activate with remarketing campaigns.

Maximizing opt-ins in a post-IDFA world

To feed iOS performance into your raw data strategy, you’ll need opt-ins. Although changes brought on by iOS 14.5+ have caused challenges for marketers, the good news is that opt-in rates are increasing in 2022 compared to 2021. Our data shows an average opt-in rate of 34% in Q3 2022. Continue to grow opt-ins with perfectly timed prompts following onboarding and a full-screen pre-prompt with strong copy emphasizing the benefits of opting in.

Only 46% of mobile game marketers around the world are currently using raw data for their daily analysis. For the remaining 54%, it’s time to tap into the priceless insights that can be gained from raw data. Members across your full team can benefit from raw data analysis. User acquisition (UA) managers can measure campaign performance, data analysts can spot trends and patterns, and product managers can analyze in-app behaviors to improve UX.

Adjust’s raw data provides many benefits, including:

• A deep understanding of each touchpoint of the user journey
• Visualization of KPIs by custom cohorts
• Discovery of business areas or ideas that have not been leveraged
• Detection of data anomalies
• Advanced targeting and cross-promotion

INDIEZ and EZ Games, two of Adjust’s clients in Vietnam, spoke at the Adjust Growth Lab event about how their teams are maximizing insights with raw data.

INDIEZ has understood from the start that raw data is valuable in analyzing factors related to its product, advertising channels, and campaign testing phase in order to create a highly valuable product for the market. However, with raw data comes the need for personnel who are versed in data queries and processing. Plus, there is a time investment necessary to learn how to map the vast amount of data and sync information from multiple resources.

However, the resource demand is worthwhile. With raw data, INDIEZ has been able to pull more accurate insights from A/B tests and discover the unique value of different channels. Similarly, EZ Games has used raw data to calculate the cost of user acquisition, A/B test feature modification, and compare the performance of new feature performance with experienced users versus new users.

For those looking to dive into raw data, Lan Nguyen of INDIEZ recommends designing a pattern to anticipate situations in which data will be beneficial in the future, and pull all possible data in the meantime. Lan also reminds marketers that, “Processing raw data is for making more accurate decisions, not to generate revenue immediately.” Sylvie Hoang of EZ Games recommends building a system to handle raw data, including equipping your team with tools and dashboards that will meet the needs of raw data processing.

Learn how Datascape can help you drill into your raw data from development through optimization.