Author: Steffen Meyer, Mobile Marketing Content Specialist
The more you know about your users, the better you can optimize your app marketing. One key component here is attribution to track people’s actions. To get a hold of all the data, you should employ a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) such as Adjust, AppsFlyer, Kochava or Branch.
For their tracking tools to work, you only need to implement a so-called SDK (Software Development Kit) into your app. This technical side is quite easy and will be quickly done by your development team.
What’s more important is the coordination of your teams inside your company, especially marketing and development.
They have to agree on which app events should be tracked, which events will play no role at all, and how this data will be assembled. Getting these teams on the same page will save you headaches and actual money in the future.
Save money by bringing teams together
To make this point clear, imagine these two outcomes
- The “not enough” scenario: The developers implement the SDK in the most simple way, so that the marketers have no use for the data, rely on other sources and let all the developer’s work and the money for the tool go to waste.
- The “too much” scenario: The developers implement the SDK in such a way that basically every little action is tracked. The marketers on the other hand don’t need all this data and are only using a fraction of it. So countless working hours went into features that no one needs.
Of course, these examples are extreme and it’s not as black and white as pictured here. But it should scare you enough to get these teams talking to each other when implementing the SDK of a Mobile Measurement Partner.
However as mentioned before, it’s not only about what is tracked but even more so about how the data is stored. Since this is a lot more difficult to understand, let’s have a look at an actual case study on our client Autoscout24.
Value data by setting up the right attribution tracking concept
The team behind the app had created lots of categories for leads, depending for example on the contact method or the type of vehicle . So when a person got in contact via phone and wanted to buy a motorcycle, they basically triggered the lead event “phone motorcycle”. Had they written an E-mail, they would have triggered the lead event “E-Mail motorcycle”.
Though the idea of differentiating was good, the problem was that the marketing team didn’t have one one event that represented leads but several of them.
So when running an ad on Facebook, what event would they use to optimize their campaigns? The “phone motorcycle” event or “E-Mail motorcycle” event? Since you can only choose one, what to do?
Our team at Customlytics analyzed the situation and came up with a new attribution tracking concept: Instead of having multiple lead events, we created just one. Secondary information such as contact method or vehicle gets attached to these lead events as parameters.
This way, the Autoscout24 marketing team now has one lead event for ad campaigns but can still access all information such as contact method or vehicle.
Think ahead by choosing the right tool
As you can see, small decisions may have a huge impact. So you better get your teams together and really think about your attribution strategy, since this will actually affect which tool is best for your app as well. Especially have a look at the pricing models and data accessibility when comparing the different providers.
If you don’t have the resources or the time to do all this research on your own, reach out to our consultants at Customlytics who’ve got a lot of experience in this matter. As said earlier, this will probably save you some headaches – and money.
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