Author: Steffen Meyer, Mobile Marketing Content Specialist
Attribution tracking can be a science of its own, which is why there are Mobile Measurement Partners (MMP) to help you organize it. However, just buying the tool won’t save you from doing some work of your own. There are not only some things to consider when implementing an MMP but also when you start setting it up.
An attribution tracking tool does come along with a default setup which will do the trick in a way. But isn’t tailored explicitly to your app. To make full use of an MMP, you need to customize it.
“It’s basically like buying a car,”‘ explains our marketing consultant Giselle Silvestre. “Of course, you can just start driving it, but it’s way better to adjust the mirrors and the car seat to your individual taste first.”
Time windows
When setting up an MMP, you should first and foremost adjust the various time windows, which are:
- Attribution window: This is the time period, in which an ad network can claim that a click or an impression of an ad led to an install of your app. For example, if you set the attribution window to 7 days, a user clicks an ad and installs your app 4 days later. This install will be attributed to the ad clicked 4 days ago, since it happened during your time window of 7 days. After the user installs the app, the attribution window is closed.
- Inactivity period: When users don’t engage with your app over a longer period of time, you should define them as inactive. To define users as inactive, you customize the inactivity period accordingly. So when you set it to 30 days, then users that didn’t open your app for 30 days or more are considered inactive. This way you can re-target these specific users with tailor-made campaigns and win them back.
- Re-attribution window: When a user is defined inactive , this window opens. If an inactive user clicks an ad and decides to re-open or even re-install your app, the corresponding ad network will get a re-attribution. This way, you can differentiate which network actually prompted the first install and which one re-activated the user. So for example, when the time window is set to 90 days, every time an inactive user clicks an ad during these 90 days and then engages with your app, this will be counted as a re-attribution. When these 90 days end, a new install won’t get a re-attribution, but a normal attribution again.
“The inactivity period is probably the one you should pay more attention to,” says Giselle. “When you sell clothes on your app, it doesn’t make sense to retarget customers after three days of inactivity but rather weeks.” Every business engages differently with its customers and this should be reflected by setting up the right time windows. So give it a special thought or two.
Temporary Attribution and Re-Attribution
When you are feeling fine with the basics, you can delve into more advanced settings like temporary attribution.
This comes in handy when you start a campaign with a limited time offer. Let’s say, you send out a mailing with an offer that is only available for the next 24 hours. So you set the temporary attribution for this campaign to 24 hours.
After these 24 hours are over, this campaign won’t get any further attribution. Instead, the last eligible source gets attributed or – if there is none – the event will be counted as organic.
This way, you prevent this time-limited campaign from skewing your regular attribution model.
Challenge your campaigns and channels
With enough knowledge of these settings, you can customize them at later stages to optimize your marketing effort. “You can play around with the windows to challenge and test campaigns,” says Giselle. “It’s even possible to customize the settings per channel or tracker, this is very advanced.”
If you want to know how this works, drop us a line and have a chat with our consultants. They know a lot more advanced techniques that will make your app marketing even more successful.
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