Posts Categorized: Customer economics

Do Day 7 Retention Rates Matter in Mobile Apps?

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Kontagent Mobile App RetentionJason 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.
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Breaking Down Candy Crush’s Formula for Success

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Candy Crush Saga Kontagent Money

Christopher Foley will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now for this limited event.

Candy Crush Saga has taken Facebook and mobile by storm, earning a permanent spot on smartphones, tablets and desktops around the world. But what really has the industry in a tizzy is that the game has only been out for about five months.

It’s no wonder that the lines for King’s GDC 2013 panel stretched across the convention hall. As the mobile gaming market becomes more and more crowded, developers are hungry for tips to turn their game application into the next… well, Candy Crush.

So how did a simple tile-matching puzzler suddenly take the top spot on mobile devices the world over? While some industry analysts will be quick to attribute Candy Crush’s meteoric rise to luck, the reality is far from it. King’s game has staying power because it embodies something mobile developers have yet to realize: viral techniques still matter in mobile games. Continue Reading…

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

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Predictive LTV - Fry shut up and take my moneyMartin 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…

Taking the Madness Out of March

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NCAA March MadnessMarch 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

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User Acquisition - Kontagent

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?

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Kontagent kScope - Introducing Mobile Customer IntelligenceWhen 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…

It Isn’t Always About Making Money in Mobile

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In mobile, the definition of customer value isn’t always about revenue.

Money doesn’t always mean success in the mobile world.

But it’s definitely nice and it’s certainly a goal for every developer and enterprise. However, the way mobile companies measure success is dictated by their own specific definition of customer value. And for many, revenue is not always the biggest target.

This isn’t a mindset that’s just limited to startups either. From humble application developers and dot-coms to veteran technology players, revenue doesn’t always reign supreme. And nowhere is this fact of business more true than in the mobile industry.

If you’ve ventured into app land, you know that defining customer value early on is important. You also know that KPIs like user retention, loyalty and acquisition can be just as vital to your company’s health as profits. Furthermore, establishing the right KPIs to pursue early on can save you opportunity costs associated with development, marketing and every other expense tied to your mobile product or service.

But perhaps most important of all is that these other metrics for success allow you to devise mobile strategies that will help your company stand out in a crowded market and secure its future.

So what are these other customer value definitions and how can you leverage them into viable business plans to expand your industry profile and transform your organization into dominant mobile leader? There is a solution to the madness. Continue Reading…

kScope Profile: What George Clooney Can Teach You About LTV and Machine Learning

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Ofer Shai is a data scientist on Kontagent's data science team.

Ofer Shai is a data scientist on Kontagent's data science team.

Customer data is the most precious of all business commodities. The insights gained from them are what drive product design, marketing and everything else that keep companies in the black. It can also turn a semi-profitable app into a commercial empire.

So what can businesses do to unlock the full earning potential of their products? Kontagent Data Scientist Ofer Shai has some answers. In our second Kontagent profile series, he’ll be examining machine learning and why it means big bucks for developers and businesses.

It would be an understatement to say that Ofer is something of a maestro when it comes to data science and artificial intelligence. While he’s humble about his knowledge, Ofer’s understanding of the fields is more akin to Luke Skywalker’s connection with the Force.

One look at his resume confirms he’s the real deal. His professional experience spans the technology industry gamut, from corporate giants, such as Microsoft and IBM, to startups and academia. Ofer holds both a bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. in computer engineering. He received the former from the renowned University of Alberta. He earned the latter from the University of Toronto, whose computer science program is consistently ranked among the top ten in the world. His doctoral thesis on machine learning in computational biology not only sounds incredibly complex, but has also allowed him to gain the exact sort of insights app makers need to rake in money.

Ofer recently sat down with us to share his thoughts on machine learning’s role in revolutionizing mobile customer intelligence and maximizing a user’s lifetime value. Continue Reading…

Introducing the kSuite iOS App for Executives on the Go

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Kontagent launches iOS app to bring the kSuite dashboard to your iPhone and iPad.

We live in a world of seconds. Gone are the staid empires of yesteryear. Today, corporations can fall as fast as they rise. It could be an undiscovered bug crashing your app or an untapped revenue stream discovered too late.

All it takes are a few missteps and suddenly you’re belly-up. That’s why successful managers and executives need constant access to their company’s metrics. At Kontagent, we understand this and it’s why we’re proud to announce our new iPhone and iPad apps. You can download them today for free in the Apple App Store. 

Now, whether you’re waiting for a flight in Bangladesh or in line for your morning brew, as a Kontagent customer, you can access your kSuite analytics dashboard anywhere from your iOS device. We’re among the first mobile customer intelligence solution providers to make business analytics available on-the-go. As the industry leader, our goal is simple: create the tools and services our clients need to grow their companies faster.

So what can our new apps do?

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3 Tips for Building a Killer App for the Holidays

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To some developers, the notion of designing or redesigning an app for the holiday season is a project exclusively reserved for gaming companies. After all, why would map, banking, or any utility app user care about having Santa Claus plastered across their splash screen? Well, they actually do–much more than you may think.

Holiday apps are important. Everyone knows that December means big bucks for the retail industry, and mobile app sales are no exception. On average, developers can expect to see a huge bump in app purchases. For instance, last year, iPhone app revenue rose 50 percent from November to January. Even more surprising is that growth remained high well past the holiday season into February.

All of this means that the holidays are definitely not the time for developers to be resting on their laurels. So what can you do to capitalize on this consumer spending frenzy? The answer is simpler than it seems.

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