The winners of the 2022 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards were announced at an online Awards Ceremony last Friday. All this week, we’re taking a closer look at the winner in each category, continuing today with the winners of the eCommerce App Campaign, Entertainment App Campaign, Finance App Campaign and Health & Fitness App Campaign categories. 

Most Effective eCommerce App Campaign
Dolap and Storyly – Dolap & Storyly: Gamifying the Shopping Experience
Dolap is Turkey’s leading platform to buy and sell pre-loved (used) clothes. 80 per cent of users are  women aged 25-44 who want to turn their unused items into cash. So Dolap’s critical success factor is to increase user engagement, retention rates, the number of daily active users, and the daily session frequency.

To achieve this, Dolap collaborated with Storyly and built a strategy around gamification to help trigger emotions linked to positive experiences; give people a sense of achievement; and reinforce behaviours through rewards. It did so, knowing that the biggest challenge for mobile apps in user experience design is to offer a clean, easy-to-use, and engaging journey.

Storyly is a SaaS tool focusing on in-app engagement. It brings the familiar, immersive, and mobile-native story format to apps via a lightweight SDK that can be integrated with almost no coding, an intuitive creator studio, and an analytics dashboard. In-app and web stories open the doors to an interactive, personalized, customized mobile experience in only 15 minutes.

Using Storyly’s app or web stories, brands can deploy interactive stickers, such as polls, quizzes, emoji bars, emoji sliders, open-ended questions, and countdowns, to build a strong relationship and two-way communication with users. They can also use CTA buttons, swipe-ups, and product tags to encourage app users to take specific actions, and  import their own content to their apps or use their RSS feed, as well as their own Facebook product catalogue or Google Merchant feeds for automated content creation.

Content can be easily personalised by targeting specific user segments and showing relevant story groups to them to deliver a genuinely individualized experience to each user. Brands can also publish interactive videos that can be used for in-app video shopping.

Dolap used Storyly Stories to empower sellers and highlight their online wardrobes through video Stories; share tips and tricks about the sales process; and announce the latest campaigns. Its most inspirational campaign combined gamification elements with the shopping experience by creating scenarios where users were rewarded upon completing specific tasks. As a result, Dolap made use of tools unique to gaming, implemented them in a non-gaming app, and delivered a whole new approach and creative solution to user retention and session frequency issues.

In one example, users were invited to play the “Find the surprise coupon” game. As part of the activation, Dolap generated a five-letter promo code and shared five stories at the top of every hour - each story containing one of the letters of this code. Those who visited the app during those five hours to view the stories containing the letters received a 20 per cent discount on their purchases. The reward promised in these Storyly Stories, which were placed right at the top of the main screen of the Dolap app, increased users’ desire to visit the app in order to not miss any new content and campaign and had a direct impact on the number of daily active users and session frequency.

The game delivered a 186 per cent increase in reach to unique users, a 200 per cent increase in impressions, and a 20 per cent increase in daily active users while the game was live, compared to previous weeks. User sentiment towards the game was also overwhelmingly positive.

Judges’ View:
“A neat deployment of the Storyly platform, with impressive results.”

Most Effective Entertainment App Campaign
S'More and MoEngage - Operation Personalization & App Engagement
S’More styles itself the “anti-superficial dating app”. On first use, the user’s photo is hidden. The more users interact with each other, the more they learn and bond, and over time, a user’s photo is revealed. S’More is the first dating app to create what they call 3D profiles. They show a three-dimensional version of who the user is: hear a person’s voice, listen to the user’s favourite music, and interact with their favourite things. On S’More, users are matched based on deeper attributes, instead of simply looks.

With more than 300,000 users on the app, S’More needed a way to build better relationships with their customers through improved onboarding and re-engagement campaigns. It turned to MoEngage’s AI-based customer engagement platform to ensure that the app is sending the right message to the right user at the right time, in order to drive them back to the app, get them to chat with others, and have fun meeting new people.

MoEngage achieves this by organizing S’More users into specific cohorts based on their behaviours and preferences in the app. MoEngage’s platform offers many different cohort choices, so brands can choose the right cohort analysis that fits their specific business needs. Using this feature, S’More was able to more accurately measure retention and engagement, and understand how they had changed over time.

For example, a new S’More user receives a different message than a user who has been on the app for a few months. The perfect time to build deep relationships with users is when they first open the app. Armed with the most accurate, real-time information about users, S’More can win their undivided attention through in-app messages that resonate with them.

If a user isn’t having much success with finding a match, MoEngage’s data-driven platform will identify which users are likely to churn soon. Using AI-based predictive customer engagement technology, MoEngage can send them a unique message suggesting ways for them to improve their chances, such as adding voice to their profile or purchasing a “Spotlight” that will push their profile to the top of the search results.

To drive engagement, the S’More marketing team enhanced customer onboarding and personalized communications across multiple communication channels, including push notifications, emails, and SMS, all via the MoEngage platform. Using MoEngage, S’More was able to map the customer onboarding journey, conduct targeted A/B testing to understand customers’ likes and dislikes, learn when customers need more attention and why, and send hyper-personalized content that helps customers find the relationships they’ve been looking for.

MoEngage’s technology platform has been directly responsible for a 65 per cent increase in app engagement time, as well as a 15 per cent increase in app onboarding for new users.
“MoEngage’s ability to use real-time cohort data to drive specific activity on S’More is unique,” says said S’More CEO, Adam Cohen Aslatei. “Reaching the right customer, with the right content, at the right time is paramount for a robust customer relationship strategy and when done correctly helps to scale a network effect business like S’More seamlessly. ”

Judges’ View:
“Solid, data-driven messaging reduces churn and helps app users get more from the app. Good results too, and an excellent video to describe the product, tech and USPs." 

Most Effective Finance App Campaign
Snoop and ConsultMyApp – ASO Strategy for Snoop – 6-month Uplift Post-engagement
Snoop is a finance app that helps users track spending cross all their bank accounts, budget better and tap into smart spending ideas. As a multi-functional app, it’s competing across multiple categories, so ConsultMyApp’s (CMA) objectives for an ASO strategy were threefold: to increase search rates, browse rates, and conversion rates in a highly competitive Finance app space.

For search, the strategy revolved around keyword testing and optimization tactics. CMA applied a program of continuous keyword testing in both metadata fields and in-app events. It also analysed and then mimicked competitors’ high search volume keywords to divert (and steal) search traffic. For example, Yolt, one of Snoop’s primary competitors, is now out of business, but any users looking for the app will now find Snoop as an alternative.

For browse and conversion, meanwhile, it focused on feature requests, creative testing, and in-app events. Prior to the release of iOS15, it was not possible to run creative tests on the App Store, so the team evaluated the effectiveness of new creatives by monitoring their impact on browse traffic and conversion rates and adjusting accordingly. Since the release of Apple’s Product Page Optimization feature, however, it has actively run screenshot tests to ensure that there is data to support its hypothesis.

CMA pioneered in-app events in the finance market, having released its first one for Snoop just a month after Apple released the feature in October 2021. CMA says it knew it was a winning strategy when after 103 days of running four in-app events, it gained 304 downloads – the equivalent of £3,268 paid downloads (based on June’s ASA CPA of £10.75); increased App Store visibility, with 132,600 impressions, and reactivation of existing users, with 888 app opens. CMA has since continued to run a minimum of three in-app events each month.

The activity has delivered significant uplift across all KPIs. The keyword testing and optimization for search yielded a 604 per cent monthly uplift in first-time downloads from Browse traffic, when comparing the six-month average prior to CMA’s engagement with the past six months (Jan to Jun 2022). Based on May 22’s average ASA CPA of £10, this is the equivalent of £73,430 monthly and £881,160 annualized additional paid downloads.

Making the same comparison over time, the browse and conversion strategy saw a 971 per cent monthly uplift in first-time downloads from browse traffic. That’s equivalent to £24,570 monthly and £294,840 annualized additional paid downloads.

Another huge success metric is revealed in Snoop’s constant uplift in the Finance app category. In the six months prior to reaching second position, Snoop’s average ranking was 103. With CMA’s support, it has climbed to the top of the rankings.

Judges’ View:
“A very well thought-out and well executed campaign that delivered excellent results.”

Most Effective Health & Fitness App Campaign
Abide and Moburst – Abide App Subscription Influencer Campaign
Abide, a Christian app focused on meditation, sleep help, and Bible stories that strengthen people’s relationship with Christ, contracted Moburst to run a media campaign focused on driving an increase in subscriptions at a high ROI. Moburst was tasked with reducing Abide’s cost per subscription d in order to ensure a positive ROI for the client. The primary campaign goal was to reach a positive ROI on each media platform, with a primary focus on the iOS app.

Moburst initially sought success through a mixture of traditional ad creatives and influencer efforts. It recognized the value of influencer content, but quickly identified that user generated content (UGC) drove significantly higher engagement and key performance indicator (KPI) success. So it transitioned the creative strategy towards influencers, affiliates, and creators. These efforts covered both organic and paid strategies, with our team reutilizing the content created by the influencers on our paid media channels such as Google UAC.

Moburst saw  the influencer activity as a great opportunity to make a personal connection with viewers. It used both traditional influencers and affiliates, the affiliate program representing the influencers who were paid on a CPA basis. It also turned the top-performing influencers into brand ambassadors and reactivated them month over month to reinforce the message and establish credibility with their followers. The strategy behind the influencer selection process embraced statistics such as follower count, engagement rate, and cost, but also, their personability and relationships with their followers. Since this is a Christian app, Moburst also had to take their ethics and public image into account. 

Moburst’s media team initially launched campaigns on Facebook, Google, TikTok and Apple Search Ads (ASA) in combination with influencer-led activity. After analysing results, it reduced and then eliminated all spend on Facebook and TikTok, focusing its efforts on Google and ASA.

It also had to overcome the measurement challenge posed by the introduction of iOS 14 shortly before it began managing the account, but did so by finding a way to effectively target those customers most likely to convert and identifying a way to measure estimated latent conversions which came in beyond the iOS’s 7-day lookback window, keeping track of the initially reported conversions vs. the final number after an extended waiting period of five weeks. This approach enabled the team to begin making significant headway in improving performance. It honed-in on Google and ASA because they showed the greatest promise, and bulked-up its efforts on iOS vs. Android.

Finally, after a collaborative review of the app flow, Abide updated its iOS app to enable a custom ATT prompt, and switched the order in the app from 7 day trial to registration to subscription, to registration to 7 day trial to subscription. This allowed Moburst to better identify audiences who were most likely to register and optimized towards that event.

The activity delivered great results. ROI rose from 35 per cent to 170 per cent, while the cost per subscription fell by a factor of eight using Apple Search Ads and by a factor of 13 on Google. Through collaboration, innovative approaches, and a comprehensive strategy that encompassed paid media, creative, influencers, and an app audit, Moburst was able to deliver hugely results for Abide.
This entry also took the award for the Most Effective Influencer App Campaign.

Judges’ View:
“A truly performance-driven campaign. The strategy was well thought-out and well executed. Choosing the right social media influencers is a good approach. Also, letting the influencers add a personal touch to the message is a great idea, as this can help create a halo effect towards performance channels. Overall, a good example of an agile way of running a campaign”

We'll be back tomorrow with a summary of more winning campaigns and platforms. In the meantime, you can see all the winners here.

Congratulations to all our winners. If you'd like to be informed when the 2023 edition of the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards opens for entries, email: awards@mobilemarketingmagazine.com