Posts Categorized: Big data

How Caesars, GEICO and the Oakland A’s Used Data to Disrupt Their Market

David Gutierrez will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now–space is limited.

There’s a lot of talk about the need for companies to be more data-driven in their decision making process. It’s a mantra that’s often repeated throughout the mobile industry. But what does being “data-driven” actually mean?

Most of you already know the basic concept of data-driven decision making. In essence, it entails tracking and analyzing your data in order to guide your business decisions. While this is an accurate description, it doesn’t tell you much about what data can really do for your business. Incorporating data-driven decision making throughout your organization can raise your revenue, customer loyalty and any other business goal dramatically, especially for those of you in the mobile space.

You don’t have to look very far to find examples of data-driven decision making success stories. Caesars Entertainment, GEICO and the Oakland Athletics are just a few examples of organizations that have used data-driven decision making to change the course of their businesses for the better. So what did they do exactly and how can you replicate their success? Continue Reading…

How to Develop Productivity Apps Your Employees Will Actually Use

Catherine Mylinh| 0

by kScope guest contributor
Cora Cowles, User Experience Lead – Mobility at General Motors

Cora Cowles will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now–space is limited.

When new technology is introduced, adoption and permeation by users should be watched closely. That “if you build it, they will come” strategy may sound good, but depending on how disruptive the technology is, users may have little to no experience with previous versions. They could be hesitant and untrusting to adapt, slowing the rollout process and putting unnecessary stress on previous versions.

Let’s say, for instance, that a company creates a new mobile app for their salespeople that’s designed to help them sell the company’s products. This hypothetical app makes it easier to show features and other relevant information to potential buyers.

But here’s the problem. While the app can be a powerful sales tool, generally the demographic profile for salespeople skews over age 45 and most are not particularly tech savvy. Now let’s say that through ethnographic research, we also learn that this group is self-assured of their tried and true sales methods and therefore hesitant to try new things. For many of them, pencil and paper are still the best things since sliced bread. Continue Reading…

Do Day 7 Retention Rates Matter in Mobile Apps?

Jason Wu| 0

Jason Wu will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now–space is limited.

When it comes to mobile, getting customers to try your application is a challenge, but making sure they come back can be even harder. In today’s crowded mobile market, content is king. And, it’s that content that will drive (or kill) your user retention.

Anyone who has a mobile app knows retention is the first step in mobile success. The longer a person uses an app, the more likely they are to start exhibiting the behaviors developers want—whether it’s monetizing in a game, banking on a phone or just engaging with a brand.

Savvy mobile-first businesses use analytics to understand their data is vital to maintaining and increasing customer retention. And among the many metrics available to gauge an app’s success, the Day 7 retention rate is among the most revered. What’s ironic is that some companies don’t really understand why it’s important—other than that it is.

While seven days may seem somewhat arbitrary, there’s a solid basis for why it’s considered such a vital key performance indicator. And understanding this will help you determine what makes a good Day 7 retention rate—as well as why it might not matter.
Continue Reading…

The Challenges in Turning Freemium Casino Players into Online Gamblers

David Gutierrez| 0

David Gutierrez will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now–space is limited.

There’s no doubt that there will be a lot of profit to be made in online real-money casino gambling. It’s a $30 billion industry set to grow to $40 billion by 2015. While this is definitely nothing to sneeze at, the problem for most online casinos is that the cost of acquiring new players is very high, at about $200 per customer.

On the other hand, social and mobile freemium casino players are much less expensive to acquire, taking only about $1 or $2 to hook new players. Of course, the caveat is that since real money isn’t wagered in freemium casino games, these players also generate less revenue for the industry ($1.6 billion in 2012). In general, their lifetime value ranges from $10 to $78 per customer compared to about $1,600 for the average online casino gambler.

From a business perspective, the obvious solution then would be to try and convert freemium players into real-money gamblers. This would allow online casinos to reduce acquisition expenses, while boosting revenue. And that’s exactly what some pioneers have been trying to do.

The problem is that it hasn’t been working very well, and it probably won’t—with good reason. Continue Reading…

The Holy Grail of Mobile Apps: How to Predict Customer LTV

Martin Colaco| 0

Martin Colaco will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now–space is limited.

In the world of mobile applications, the ability to predict a customer’s lifetime value (LTV) is akin to finding the Holy Grail of mobile analytics. Imagine if you knew how much your customers were going to spend in your app over their entire lifetime. It’d be an incredible business advantage, one with uses beyond just being able to accurately forecast your revenue for investors.

You’d be able to hone your marketing to target only the highest monetizing customers and increase your profits by tweaking your app to keep your big spenders engaged longer. But the applications don’t stop there. Predictive analytics could also solve the litany of other problems plaguing the app market, like fraud. Heck, with the right data scientists and business analysts on hand, you could potentially even figure out a way to transform app pirates into paying customers.

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, being able to accurately predict LTV at this level is incredibly challenging. But building the perfect predictive model might not be so faraway and the process starts with feature extraction. Continue Reading…

Got a Struggling App? Save It with Cohort Analysis

Kylee Hall| 0

One of the most important events in measuring a customer’s lifecycle of engagement with an application is the moment when they install or first monetize. Understanding those critical days, weeks or even months afterward are what can determine either the success or failure of an application.

How does one continue to monitor these essential metrics when customers are in a constant state of flux you ask? The simple answer is cohort analysis. While statistical in nature (and a tongue-twister to say), cohort analysis is an extremely powerful tool that can benefit nearly every role: product managers, marketers, executives and analysts alike. Continue Reading…

Taking the Madness Out of March

Alyssa Simpson| 0

March 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the NCAA March Madness. It also signals the start of countless office guessing games, online pools, and a nationwide fan-fueled frenzy for all the latest tips and tools to build the best brackets.

Generally, people tend to base their picks on a wide array of (unreliable) variables, such as fan favorites, ill-informed “tips,” and other junk science (i.e. “always pick at least one team with a blue uniform to make it to the Final Four” or “Diaper dandies are beatable”). Building a bracket is easy, but creating a good one takes data science.

Let’s look at the stats. There are 147,573,952,589,676,412,928 different ways to fill out a bracket. That’s 68 possible teams, 64 that end up playing with 63 teams each with a possibility of losing once—or 2 to the 67th power.

That’s quite a small chance for building the perfect bracket. According to Jeff Bergen, a professor of mathematics at DePaul University, if you know a little bit about basketball you can improve your odds to roughly one out of 128 billion. While this may still seem pretty bad, there are a number of data scientists looking at ways to help you craft a winning bracket. Continue Reading…

The Secret(s) to Increasing Mobile User Acquisition

Edward Tan| 0

Mobile is the future of business. I know, you’ve heard this before, but it’s worth mentioning again. Why? Because the app market is a $25 billion industry that has more than doubled in value every year. With growth like this, if your business isn’t in mobile now, it better be soon.

But having a mobile presence alone isn’t enough. To succeed, you need a long-term mobile strategy, something seriously lacking by three-quarters of mobile businesses today. A big part of this strategy lies in user acquisition. Because having the best mobile experience in the world doesn’t mean much if no one is using it.

As a loyal kScope reader, we know you’re smart (obviously). We know you’ve done your homework, tenaciously scouring the Web for tips on boosting mobile user acquisition. So we won’t bore you with what you already know. What we will do is tell you something fresh. Something that might just help you grab a bigger piece of that multibillion dollar mobile pie. Such as… Continue Reading…

Mobile Businesses: Are Your Eyes Bigger Than Your Stomach?

Author icon Dan Kimball| 0

When it comes to mobile, a lot of companies are biting off more than they can chew.

That’s according to the findings of the “2013 Mobile Strategy and Sophistication Study,” a report we’ve just recently published with Econsultancy. In it, we learned about the market’s readiness to succeed in mobile, as well as the main drivers of success. Through all the incredibly insightful data, here are a few data points in particular that hit home:

75% of you don’t have a solid mobile strategy that extends beyond 2013
72% of you don’t have a concrete plan to measure your mobile app and marketing efforts
Still, 67% of you plan to spend more on your mobile efforts this year

Do these figures make you nervous? How prepared are you for mobile success? Well, since 75% of you self-reported that you’re likely not prepared (and another 20% are just really optimistic), we decided it was time for a change. Continue Reading…

What Former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason Could’ve Done to Save His Job

Edward Tan| 0

By now you’ve probably already read ousted Groupon CEO Andrew Mason’s delightfully candid goodbye letter to Groupon employees.

In it, Mason says bluntly, “I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding—I was fired today.” You don’t get more honest than that, especially when the speaker is the founder of a multimillion dollar corporation.

And like most big news stories these days, the Interwebs was quick to pounce on Mason’s farewell letter—and dissect the heck out of it. Now generally, I can trust my social media and blogging brethren to cover every angle possible of every piece of breaking news. But for some reason, this time around no one seemed to notice the proverbial elephant sitting smack-dab in the middle of Mason’s letter.

Those who read closely enough might’ve been able to spot a secret—one that could’ve saved Mason’s job and perhaps even prevented Groupon’s sagging revenue. Continue Reading…

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Posts Categorized: Big data

The Secret(s) to Increasing Mobile User Acquisition

Mobile Businesses: Are Your Eyes Bigger Than Your Stomach?

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