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
Key data points
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:
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.
The link provided is for a Global Mobile Customer Survey, not the research about retargeting. :-(