• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, November 28, 2017

Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is the strategy of directly advertising to users who have shown interest in a product, application, or other conversion, but who have in some way lapsed from completing the conversion or retaining interest. The question becomes: why spend money on driving new users when you could spend the same or much less on those users who have already downloaded but haven’t returned after the first or second day?

The study set out to prove a simple hypothesis: that retargeted users outperform new users when it comes to retention, events and (most importantly) revenue events. The following is a look at what the study found:

Key takeaways 

• In the data, there’s a statistically significant difference between retargeting and acquisition in their average performance aggregated at both per week, and per day.
• While new users have more sessions, engagement of retargeted users is noticeably improved in terms of the number of events they trigger, and they perform slightly better in terms of revenue events and retention rate.
• Older retargeted users have a higher engagement rate because they’ve already had an experience of using an app.

Key data points

• Retargeting campaign users have an overall 152% higher engagement rate (number of events per user) than new user acquisition campaigns over 30 days. On day 1 of install, it’s nearly 200%, before dropping off significantly by week 4.
• Retargeting campaign users also make 37% more revenue events in the first 30 days than new user acquisition campaigns.
• On the first day of a campaign, retargeted users retain by 5% more than new users, and typically remains at a 5% difference by day 7

The study used four cohort KPIs to compare between two samples (new users and reattributed users.) All data was collected between January 1st and July 1st, 2017. The cohorts are:

• Number of sessions per user
• Number of events per user
• Number of revenue events per user
• Retention rates 

Of the sample, 140 apps track with Adjust. Between them, there were over 500 retargeting campaigns, versus nearly 9000 acquisition campaigns. Reattributions and retargeting campaigns on either side tracked in the millions, though the sample of installs (as with campaigns) for initial acquisition campaigns was 10x that of reattributions

Events are the actions performed by users in-app. Users from a retargeting campaign have a noticeably higher engagement (number of events per user) than new user acquisition campaigns. This is the start of a trend, but with events in particular retargeted users consistently outperform their newbie counterparts.

On the day of install, it’s nearly double, with 86 aggregated events per user in a single week vs. 44 for new ones. This might suggest that users who are more comfortable with the experience may be more likely to continue with a deeper experience on the first day, avoiding onboarding fatigue. By week 4, there has been a significant drop off, though retargeted users still complete 10 more events in a single week than new users do.

The report says that there’s one main takeaway from the study: it’s clear that retargeting works in keeping users around, keeping them engaged, and (most importantly) driving increased revenue while lowering the cost of acquisition, especially within the first few weeks of an install. More specifically, retargeting campaign users also made 37% more revenue events in the first 30 days than new user acquisition campaigns.

Consider prioritizing your lapsed user segment alongside other remarketing campaigns. Ultimately, these are your most valuable users and they’ll likely be the most engaged with your mobile app in the long run, concludes the report.

To review the complete report, please visit here.