5 best practices for a successful User Acquisition strategy

The mobile marketing ecosystem is always changing—but the past few years have brought unprecedented challenges, primarily driven by the latest developments and constraints surrounding data privacy. In this context, advertisers need to have a deep understanding of the current mobile ecosystem to revisit their User Acquisition (UA) strategy, analyze potential new channels, redefine success metrics, and ultimately accelerate their app growth. 

For this article, we partnered with AppsFlyer to analyze 5 key tips to boost your User Acquisition strategy, including:

1️⃣ Choose the right type of growth partners

2️⃣ Align your KPIs with the right incentives

3️⃣ Fine tune your creative strategy

4️⃣ Diversify your performance media mix

5️⃣ Keep up to date with the latest strategies for iOS 

Feel free to skip ahead to the section you’re most interested in 😉.

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1️⃣ Choose the right type of growth partners

“Media diversification is a critical strategy for brands aiming to reach additional segments of high-quality users, and reach the target audience in a variety of modes and mindsets. Innovative marketers who are open to testing and mastering new channels will be rewarded with a healthy and sustainable growth trajectory.” —David Serfaty, AVP Global Product Partnerships at AppsFlyer

Start by identifying the advantages offered by each type of growth partner to align your media mix with your growth objectives. While there are many different partners, from Mobile DSPs and walled gardens (like Google and Meta) to ad networks, not all might suit your unique needs. Here are some factors to consider:

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Transparency 

To keep full control over your campaign investment, collaborate with partners that give you full visibility into which ads are being promoted and where. The best way to do this is by working with partners that are 100% programmatic and can provide real-time performance data. While mobile DSPs offer transparency from impression to the in-app event, other industry partners like non-SDK ad networks provide little visibility, which could lead to an uncontrollable chain of re-brokering where control is lost and shady traffic is blended.

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Scale

When marketers hit a ceiling in their campaigns with Google and Meta, mobile DSPs are the best follow-up to amplify their scale. After all, users spend most of their time online navigating the open internet (66%) and only spend around 34% of their time on walled gardens [1].

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Ongoing support

If your team is continuously seeking to explore new strategies, delve deep into data for actionable campaign insights, and collaborate closely with other teams of experts, opt for a partner that offers dedicated support. Go beyond the help center, bringing your questions and challenges to educational sessions where both teams can address existing pain points, exchange insights, and identify potential optimizations together.

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2️⃣ Make sure your KPIs are aligned with the right incentives

When defining your pricing strategy, focus on a model that prioritizes attracting quality users over driving as many installs as possible regardless of quality. This will help you drive long-term growth for your app and reduce user churn. 

‍The right pricing strategy will also help you prevent ad fraud. Each pricing method triggers a different incentive, and some incentives are correlated with specific forms of ad fraud. In CPA (Cost per action) campaigns, there’s a high incentive to game attribution and cannibalize organic events; when optimizing for a low CPC (Cost per click), publishers have the incentive to generate as many clicks as possible. For CPM (Cost per mille) campaigns, on the other hand, the incentive lies in driving impressions; by pairing this pricing model with strict CPA and ROI benchmarks, advertisers can effectively evaluate what DSP partners are generating incremental revenue for their app.

📚Recommended read: CPA vs CPM: Why you should only pay CPM for programmatic advertising

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3️⃣ Fine-tune your creative strategy

In performance mobile marketing campaigns, ads are the visible face of your brand and interface. Creatives are also powerful tools to better understand which products, use cases, and layouts resonate the most with your audience. Conversely, a robust creative strategy enables you to optimize your campaign effectively by leveraging high-converting formats and variations.

Here are some tips to take your creative strategy to the next level:

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Test a variety of ad formats and creative features

According to the latest data by AppsFlyer, 2% of creative variations consume 68% of ad budgets and nearly 90% of spend goes to just 10% of creative variations. Advertisers sometimes restrict themselves to running two or three different ad formats at a time, generating very limited campaign learnings, when in reality, finding just one successful ad requires testing multiple ad variants. 

Another common mistake is to stop testing specific formats due to a single unsuccessful campaign in the past. In reality, the success or failure of a particular ad format in past campaigns isn't necessarily indicative of its future performance. Even your current top-performing ads are subject to change over time, and the same creative strategy might generate different results when running with different growth partners.

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Leverage machine learning-powered creatives

Ad formats like Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) allow you to automatically create and test hundreds of ad variations in real-time, without the hassle of manually having to design each ad unit. The same applies to other interactive formats like Multiproduct Ads and Carousel Ads, which present users with a range of items or services to choose from.

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Run meaningful A/B tests

A/B testing is not as simple as just comparing two ads. First, you need to define a clear hypothesis to test (for example, users interact more with ads with bright colors—vs ads with neutral colors). Your hypothesis should always be aligned with your goals, and backed by performance data. The more well-informed the hypothesis, the more actionable the insights will be.

When creating ad variations to test your hypothesis, make sure to test one variable at a time. The different ad variations should be similar enough to run an experiment on an apples-to-apples basis, but also different enough to generate insightful results.

📚Recommended read: How to get started with creative testing for your mobile app

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4️⃣ Diversify your performance media mix 

It's no secret that Connected TV (CTV) has been gaining significant attention in recent years as a rapidly growing channel for mobile branding campaigns. What's exciting now is that CTV can seamlessly integrate into your mobile performance campaigns.

The latest advancements allow advertisers to promote apps on CTV and track any subsequent downloads via their preferred attribution partners. Combining the high impact of TV with the scale of programmatic advertising, this channel is driving exceptional results: CTV-to-mobile users currently generate 40% higher ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) than mobile-only installers.

Integrated with the leading MMPs, Jampp CTV, our CTV-to-mobile and CTV-to-CTV solution, is helping advertisers drive measurable growth across screens, reaching users at multiple touchpoints and maximizing the chances of conversion.

📚Recommended read: How CTV can help you grow your mobile app

5️⃣ Keep up to date with the latest strategies for iOS  

Since Apple introduced its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework in 2021, iOS campaigns have had to adapt by combining both IDFA and non-IDFA traffic. 

Even though only 25% of users currently have an IDFA [2], this segment is crucial for further optimizing data models and improving campaign performance. The key challenge lies in reaching users who opt out of ATT. Among those users who receive an ATT prompt, only 50% agree to be tracked for advertising. This emphasizes the importance of leveraging SKAdNetwork (or the newly announced App AdAttributionKit framework) to effectively engage the remaining 75% who don’t have an IDFA.

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With more advertisers adopting SKAN, iOS ad spending jumped 28% in Q1 2024 (vs Q1 2023) [2], indicating higher competition in the market. At Jampp, we’re also seeing more advertisers running this framework: today, 90% of our iOS customers are testing SKAN.

“According to AppsFlyer data, over 30% of iOS apps are already utilizing SKAN, and we’re seeing a clear, upward trend in adoption. From February 2023 to January 2024 alone, approximately 1,300 apps transitioned from SKAN 3 to SKAN 4, and after January, the numbers doubled with around 2,600 more making the switch. It’s an exciting time for marketers who are quick to adapt, as the momentum is shifting towards a robust adoption of SKAN 4, helping marketers refine their UA strategies with more advanced capabilities.” —Gil Or, Product Manager at AppsFlyer

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Wrapping up: Let’s make it happen!

Success in mobile marketing is not just about following popular trends—it's about leveraging insights and adapting your strategy to meet the evolving needs of your audience. If you're ready to take your User Acquisition strategy to the next level, contact us for a dedicated session with our team of experts.

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References

[1] OpenX and The Harris Poll, 2020.

[2] AppsFlyer, 2024.