Posts Categorized: Social analytics

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

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Innovation mobile analytics - KontagentDavid 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

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Employee Productivity App - Kontagent Analytics

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…

How Your Mobile Apps Can Evolve

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Portfolio Analytics Kontagent MultiscreenAlyssa Simpson will be a speaker at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco on May 20-21. Register now–space is limited.

Having a multiscreen presence is important to the success of any business. While it goes without saying that your core product always has to be stellar, the fact is that consumers today are tied to a plethora of always-on digital devices beyond their desktops, from tablets to (most importantly) smartphones.

That’s not to say a brand can’t achieve a decent level of financial success without ever engaging with customers beyond their core product, just look at Sriracha hot sauce. Huy Fong Foods founder David Tran built his company into a $60 million business without any advertising or social media. But think how much bigger his company would be if he interacted with customers using digital platforms.

We live in a multiscreen world and businesses that don’t take advantage of this are leaving money on the table. This is especially true for enterprises with multiple apps across devices. These brands are already positioned to influence customer behavior and drive monetization. The problem is they just don’t have the right intel to do it effectively. Continue Reading…

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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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…

GDC 2013 Roundup: The Only Stat Developers Need to Know

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Kontagent GDC 2013With another Game Developers Conference behind us, we’d like to first thank everyone who came by the Kontagent booth! Among all the awesome GDC 2013 panels and reveals, one thing is clear: mobile is the future of games and data will be its key.

A bold statement for sure. But before we get to why, here are some highlights from this year’s GDC.

And now the moment you’ve been waiting for… Continue Reading…

Got a Struggling App? Save It with Cohort Analysis

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Cohort Explorer and Revenue Analysis - Kontagent

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

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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…

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

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Andrew Mason Former Groupon CEOBy 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…

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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