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Easy Trick to Keep Users Coming Back to Your App

Shared by Caddie Library · Updated
App Masters11:17Open on YouTube
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The bottom line

Adding games inside an app makes it more habit forming and brings users back, and ad revenue from those games opens a new income stream. This matters because a small gain in retention lifts profit sharply.

Key takeaways

  • A small gain in retention lifts profit a lot. 1:28
    • A 5% increase in retention can raise profits by 25% to 95%, a stat credited to Bain and Company.
    • Only 26% of users globally return the day after install, so most first-time users are lost at once.
  • Habit forming is the hardest phase of retention to get right. 4:39
    • It follows onboarding and activation. An email on Our most popular workouts doubled one client's workout rate and cut trial cancellations.
    • The usual habit tools are community building, loyalty loops like Duolingo streaks, and network effects.
  • Games are the simplest way to make an app a habit. 5:28
    • In one client's runner game, users opened the app only to spin a reward wheel, collect credits and leave.
  • In-app games also earn extra ad revenue, even in finance and entertainment apps. 6:28
    • Fin Shell Pay, a finance app, and Watcho, an entertainment app, both embed games that run inside the app.
    • Ads shown during play generate revenue that is shared with the app owner.
  • The extra engagement counts toward the app's own numbers. 9:32
    • It lifts monthly and daily active users, which investors want to see, and it helps ASO.
    • Over 9,000 apps already use the platform, and setup takes under 30 minutes.

Games are super popular and a great tool to bring users back into your app.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Why engagement matters once an app has scale

Retention becomes the main lever once an app has moved past its first growth.

  • Engagement matters most after an app has grown 0:56
    • Early on, revenue and downloads come first.
    • Once an app is a few levels deep, engagement is the lever.
    • The goal early on is going from zero to one.
    • The retention stat comes from Bain and Company, the firm behind the Net Promoter Score.
  • A day-one return rate near 25% is worth protecting 2:13
    • The day-one return is technically the user's second open.
    • Apps that reach it must work to keep those users.
    • Retention is tracked by category at day 1, day 7 and day 14.
    • The 26% figure is global, so it varies by category.

2:37 Keeping users through onboarding and activation

Each early phase has its own job, and each one protects the retention that follows.

  • Onboarding should get users to the core value fast 2:50
    • Show the one feature the app was built for, not all of them.
    • Keep navigation simple and ask users what their goals are.
    • Capture the goal data even if nothing is done with it yet.
    • Asking makes users feel the experience is personalized, which lifts retention and monetization.
  • Activation introduces advanced features step by step 3:45
    • Start with simple features, then add advanced ones.
    • Use behavioral reinforcement and progressive rewards.
    • The goal is getting users to actually use the app.
    • The email went out once users had activated a trial.

5:39 Games that keep users inside the app

A game built into an app turns a small reward into a reason to come back, and the user never has to leave.

  • A reward mechanic alone can pull users back. 5:41
    • The game was a simple runner, built years ago.
    • The spinning wheel paid out rewards inside the game.
    • Players skipped the game itself. They opened the app, spun, took the credits and left.
  • Embedded games run inside the host app, so users stay put. 7:34
    • On Fin Shell Pay, a free games section opens a ready-made collection of titles.
    • On Watcho, a game like Blaze Rider loads inside the app through HTML5.
    • Fin Shell Pay is popular in India and offers loans, payments and deals. Games are the last thing you expect there.
    • Watcho's owner gets 50% of what the games platform earns from ads shown during play.
    • Netflix and Apple Arcade also offer games, which shows how popular they are.

8:34 More than games

The same platform adds other daily-use content, so an app can earn beyond subscriptions.

  • Big names already use it, and the content goes past games. 8:42
    • Users include Microsoft MSN, Samsung Internet, AccuWeather and Opera.
    • Apps can add quizzes, daily horoscopes, and cricket news and videos.
    • The speaker likes the daily horoscopes in particular.
  • Ad revenue adds to whatever income the app already has. 9:18
    • It sits on top of subscriptions or any other way the app makes money.
    • All this content stays inside the app, so the engagement counts toward the app.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters. Retention work can be split into onboarding, activation and habit forming, and adding games through a plug-and-play tool like Gamezop is offered as a quick way to build the habit and add ad revenue. The video is a sponsored walkthrough, so the claims about the tool come from the host and its partner, not from tested results.

Lessons that draw on this:

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript268 lines
0:00

Coming up, I'm going to share with you a simple, easy way to increase your app's retention and more importantly those revenues. And all it takes for you to implement this strategy is 30 minutes of your time. Stay tuned. What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com, the place you go when you want actionpacked content related to helping you grow your app downloads and more importantly those revenues. In this video, I want to share with you a tool that I just discovered that's going to help you instantly increase your app's engagement and provide you with additional revenue sources, untapped revenue sources into your app. But before I show you this tool, I want to share with you why it's so important to think about retention as a long-term strategy within your app's performance.

1:01

I know you guys hear me talk a lot about revenues and getting more downloads and a lot of conversion rate optimization tactics, but today I want to talk about the importance of engagement because it is important, right? Especially if you're at scale. I talk about revenue a lot because I want to help you go from zero to one. But once you're at one or once you're at two, three levels deep, you really need to think about engagement. So that's what this video is all about. So let's get to the slides, will we? Here it is. 5%. Okay, 5%.

1:33

Increasing your app's retention just by 5% can increase profits anywhere from 25 to 95%. crazy crazy stats. And these stats were actually presented by Frederick of Ban and Company. I'm not going to say the company's name, but they are the inventor of the net promoter score, the very popular NPS. So really cool stats here. I also want to share some stats here as well. 26% globally, 26% of all users return on the first day after installation. So that is technically your second open. 26% of all your first opens come back the next time. So that means very very low. So if you're able to get that 26% here is by category and by day one, day 7, day 14, if you're one of these lucky apps that gets that 25% day one retention, you really want to keep them. So let's break down how you can keep them in all the different phases of user retention. So, first and foremost, it is going to be user onboarding. You've heard me talk about

2:46

this a lot, but here are the key objectives, right? And thank you for Clevertap for giving me that cool visual. Accelerate time to value. So, show off your most important features. I know a lot of developers, they think, oh, there's so many things to my app and but think about the one important one, the main reason you built your app and really accelerate that time to value. Second one, obviously simple navigation. The third one, you heard me talk about this, personalize the experience. Just ask users during the onboarding what they're here for. What are their goals?

3:22

Then capture that data so that you have it. And secondly, asking those users what their goals are and who they are makes users, even if you're not doing anything with this information, feel like you are personalizing the experience, thereby increasing retention, thereby increasing monetization. All right. Next phase after the onboarding is activating, getting users to actually use your app, right? And so this is where you want to start introducing those advanced features.

3:56

Start with the simple ones and start introducing some of the advanced ones. Obviously conduct behavioral reinforcement, offer progressive rewards and so forth. One of the very things I like to do for activation. One thing that worked really well for a client of ours was to use email marketing. So once people activated a trial to make sure they did not cancel the trial, we would showcase the most popular workouts. And what we found was, and we sent an email that just said, "Our most popular workouts." What we found was that email helped this client 2x the workout rate, thereby reducing the trial cancellation rate. So that's how you try to activate your users, right? Get them using the app. Lastly is habit forming. Now, this is one of the trickiest things to do, but this phase is very important because I'm going to show you the tool. It's going to help you make your app more habit forming. A very simple way to make

4:53

it habit forming. So here are the obvious ones. Invest in community building. A lot of health and fitness apps are doing that. It's an important concept within that app category. Create loyalty loops. So like you know like Dualingo will do streaks day one, day three, all those things. And obviously if you can get more of my friends onto the app, invite users to co-create with you, it's going to be more valuable, right? So you think about Slack and some of the messaging platforms. The more network effect you have, the more valuable the platform becomes. But here's the simplest way to try to make your app habit forming. It is through games op, right? Adding games into your app. Yes, you're like, what does that actually work? Yes. Let me tell you a quick little story. One of our clients has a game. All right, this is years ago, but he developed a game. Now, the game, just think about a runner game,

5:51

right? A simple runner game that you might have experienced before, but in the game, he has a spinning wheel and that spinning wheel gives you rewards within the game. And what he found was people would come back to his game, not play the actual game, but open the app just to spin the wheel, get the credits, and leave the app. So, it helps drive engagement. Now, I'm going to show you some examples of apps that you would have never thought that would incorporate games that are using GameStop right now. Now, the app I want to show you is an app called Fin Shell Pay. It's a financial services app. has loans, payments, and deals. It's very popular in India. But I want to show you this app. So, you wouldn't think that this app would have games, but watch this. And we're just going through the entire app. Pay attention to this. Here we see games, free games. You click on this. This is Games Ops platform, by the

6:49

way. So, they have a collection of games that they've already sent for you. And then you can select your favorite game to play. Let's pick one of these. Maybe here's an ad as well. You'll get revenues off of this, too. So, let's pick a game right here. Come on, demo. Pick a game, will you? All right, I'm just messing. Let's keep it fun. Okay, we got this game. This Fruity Game, this ad, Fruity Fiesta, this ad will be shared with you. The revenues made from that ad while people are playing this game will be shared with you. simple simple way for you to add games into your app and increase your retention. A finance app is already doing it. All right, let me give you one more example. Here's the Watcho app, right? It's very popular in India as well. It's an entertainment app. So, a lot of movies, entertainment shows, so forth. Let's take a peek if they're using any games. They are. You can see Netflix has games, too. Watcho

7:52

was like, "Hey, let's put some games into our platform. We'll pick we'll pick Blaze Writer here." Again, the game loads. Users can play within the game within your app. So, they're actually not leaving your app at all. Games Op's platform with HTML 5 is showing up. This ad, you'll get 50% of all the revenues that Games Op gets. They'll share that with you and then your users can play Blaze Rider within your app. It keeps users coming back into your app. You already see Netflix has games. You already see Apple Arcade. Games are super popular and a great tool to bring users back into your app. And GameStop makes it super easy for you to integrate games and I'm going to tell you much more things if you want to integrate them into your app. In fact, they have over 9,000 apps working with them already, including some of the biggest Microsoft MSN, Samsung Internet, Acue Weather, and the popular browser app

8:58

Opera, but they got so much more. So, this is their games business where you can add the games, you can add quizzes into your app. I love that you can do daily horoscopes. If you love Cricut, you can add Cricut news, videos, and everything Cricut related into your app. So, they got all the tools to help you increase that engagement and increase your revenues outside of just the simple subscriptions or however you make money within your app. And the coolest thing, they all stay within your app. And the other thing is the engagement counts towards your app. So that helps your ASO, that helps your engagement numbers, your monthly active users, your daily active users. These are all things that investors are going to want to see. And Games Up makes it so easy for you to create that you can do it in less than 30 minutes. Very, very simple tool and a very, very simple way for you to increase your apps engagement. All

10:01

right, if you want to learn more, just use the code because we got a special offer for you. Okay, I'm going to link it up into that info card so that you can click it. I don't know where I should have point, but somewhere towards the top. And if you use that special link, Games Op is going to give you 60. They're going to share 60% of everything they make from their ads share it with you. That's much more than using going straight to Games Up. So, use that special link so you know that I sent you so that you can get a bit more than what they normally offer to the normal folks.

10:32

But you're an app masters, folks. So, you're special. All right. Thank you to Games Opt for creating such a cool tool and working with us. I'm super excited to start integrating into some of our apps. And if you want to learn more, just use the link that I put into the YouTube description, the podcast description, and the info link on this very YouTube video. All right. You got any questions about it or if you use GameStop in the past? Well, leave a comment below. And if you got this any value out of this video, hit that like button. All right, do me a favor, man.

11:06

This takes time to create. All right, until next time, I'll see you on the next video.