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…

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…

From Analytics to Intelligence: 7 Tips for Mobile Success

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Click here to view full webinar.

We all know mobile is the new frontier for business, but do you know what that even means for your business? Because remember when the Internet was the new frontier for business? And remember what happened to brands that didn’t have a solid Web plan? Recall Pets.com, anyone?

Data is the answer, or rather it’s being able to leverage it to measure and drive the most mobile customer lifetime value.

We recently hosted a webinar on the future of the mobile industry and the transition from user analytics to mobile customer intelligence. Our guest was Rand Schulman, co-founder of the Digital Analytics Association (formerly Web Analytics Association), provided insights on what he learned when consumers moved to the Web, and the similarities between that and what we’re seeing now: the shift from Web to mobile. Here are seven tips. Continue Reading…

What Sephora Can Teach You About Mobile Retail

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Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, the unofficial start of a long weekend of love and romance. Ladies worldwide will want to look their best—whether they’re in a relationship or not.

Fortunately, we live in an age where it’s easier than ever to access your favorite shade of NARS lipstick or signature Chanel perfume. Here’s an example: Sephora, one of the world’s largest beauty and cosmetics retailer, is leading the way with a mobile strategy that took off with the introduction of Apple’s Passbook in the fall of 2012. And Sephora isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

In fact, Sephora is fast becoming a big-brand pioneer when it comes to using a strong mobile strategy to lift user engagement and drive sales from its increasingly loyal customer base. Here’s what you can learn from it: 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…

Multiscreen Challenge: Learn Your Cross-Platform Story

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kSuite Muiltscreen brings your app's story to life in the kSuite Dashboard.

Metrics are your app’s story. They are a constant stream of information detailing your product’s triumphs and stumbles throughout time. Your users feed information into this stream with every smartphone tap, tablet swipe and mouse-click. It’s their input that tells you how and when you need to evolve your app in order to stay successful and relevant.

Unfortunately, the data analytics industry doesn’t always recognize this truism. Because if metrics tell your app’s story, your analytics platform is supposed to let you understand it across every digital user touchpoint.

At Kontagent, we’re serious about helping you make sense of the data clutter. That’s why we’re proud to announce our latest innovation: kSuite Multiscreen. It’s a new feature available for free in the kSuite Dashboard. Kontagent customers can try it now by clicking on the “Executive Report” link at the top of their Dashboard. kSuite Multiscreen makes understanding your data more intuitive. It immediately highlights the most important user trends and metrics so that you can make faster and better design, marketing and business decisions.

Our new creation transforms your metrics into a story, one that you can use to dominate your space and revolutionize your products. So how does it work? 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…

Happy Holidays! Here’s to a Successful 2013!

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Happy holidays from Kontagent CEO Jeff Tseng!

2012 has been a banner year
As we gear up for what promises to be an even more exciting 2013, I wanted to reflect on some of our major milestones and reaffirm our commitment to providing you the key analytics and insights needed to drive your success.

From social to mobile to multiscreen
We got our start in the social gaming space five years ago. We’ve worked with thousands of game studios who developed apps for social platforms such as Facebook and Tencent. These developers are light years ahead when it comes to using data to test and improve their app experiences to increase acquisitions, engagement, retention, monetization and brand loyalty among their users.

In working with them, we’ve been able to write the playbook on app development–and the best practices that work for mobile.

Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned: Continue Reading…