Introducing remarketing in AppMetrica

A user attracted once does not remain in an app forever. Sometimes you need to provide motivation for conversion, increase returns with personalized promotions — continue to engage them, even if they’re technically still with you. Remarketing campaigns are aimed at achieving these goals. AppMetrica has a new report to track these campaigns’ performance — Remarketing. It looks and works like the User Acquisition report, but there are differences.

How remarketing differs from user acquisition

The goal of a user acquisition campaign is to attract new installations — users who will launch the app for the first time in their life.

A remarketing campaign aims to motivate users to open an app that is already installed. If a user once installed an app but then deleted it, getting them to re-install is another task that remarketing can help with.

All the same, the Remarketing report looks like the User Acquisition report, so it won’t be difficult to understand:

The more effective a remarketing campaign, the more re-engagements it produces. This is a new metric that is also available:

1. In the profile card. It now shows which remarketing source attracted the user to your app and when:

2. In segmentation. For example, you can select a segment of re-attracted users and make sure that they have been returning more often:

Why a normal tracker doesn’t do the job

With a tracker designed to track user acquisition campaigns, conversion is defined as installation (first launch). After installing an application via advertising, the user is linked with an app install ad source — the partner that drove the install.

You can use the User Acquisition report to analyze campaigns: clicks, installs, and lifetime metrics are displayed in a single table for analyzing traffic quality.

How a remarketing tracker works

In a remarketing tracker, conversion is defined as launching an app via a deep link. The presence of a configured deep link is essential. A user who was referred to an app by deep link remarketing is linked with a remarketing ad source. The association with the advertising source of the installation is preserved.

The Remarketing report can be used to analyze user return campaigns: clicks, re-engagements and lifetime metrics for a user are also summarized in a single table.

In some cases, a deep link itself is used for the placement, rather than a tracking link. Which to choose depends on the partner and the type of campaign:

Where to use remarketing

In advertising

Run traditional advertising campaigns and track the effectiveness of user engagement by targeting users who have already installed the app.

– Return users to an app

When releasing a new feature, inform users about it both in the app store and in targeted advertising. Attract the attention of those who have not opened the app for a long time and increase retention.

– Remind users about abandoned carts

Customers of online stores often put items in their cart but forget to place an order. To avoid losing a potential conversion, remind users about incomplete orders and bring them straight back to the screen with the items they placed in their cart.

– Offer personal promo codes

Make a remarketing campaign smarter by giving the user what they are interested in. If someone recently spent a long time admiring down jackets in the app, offer them a discount on winter outerwear — and make both of you happy :)

There may be several targeting options within the same campaign using promo codes, so you don’t have to create your own deep link for each one. You just need to have a tracking link and macros that lead to a deep link automatically:

1. Create a remarketing tracker:

https://redirect.appmetrica.yandex.com/1234567890

2. Come up with a promo code. For example, winter-sale — for winter clothing sales.

3. Add the promo code to the end of the tracking link as a custom parameter:

https://redirect.appmetrica.yandex.com/1234567890?promo=winter-sale

4. Add a similar macro to the end of the deep link in the tracker settings:

myapp://sale_screen?code={promo}

After the tracking link is clicked, the value of the promo parameter will replace the value in curly brackets in the deep link: {promo} will turn into winter-sale:

myapp://sale_screen?code=winter-sale

That’s it! The promo code for winter clothing will be applied automatically for clicks via the tracker.

In your own channels

A unified report makes it easier to analyze the performance of internal channels in parallel with advertising placements. Now you can collect conversions from push campaigns and email and SMS mailouts in one place, and check what works best for user engagement.

– Send out push campaigns

Use remarketing deep links in push campaigns. Conversions from push campaigns aimed at boosting engagement will appear in the Remarketing report along with other channels.

Subsequent conversions from push campaigns will appear in a more convenient form for the marketer — like in User Acquisition.

– Evaluate the effectiveness of email and SMS mailouts

Previously, clicks to an app from email campaigns were considered organic. Now, thanks to remarketing trackers, they can be tracked separately and analyzed along with other advertising efforts.

Use separate links for iOS and Android in email marketing.

How to prepare your app to launch remarketing

1. Make sure that you are using the AppMetrica SDK version 3.1.0 or higher.
2. Support in-app deep linking.
3. Enable deep links in the AppMetrica SDK settings.

Detailed steps are described in our documentation.

Which ad networks support AppMetrica remarketing?

All our partners, except MyTarget. MyTarget support will appear in AppMetrica in the near future.

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Hold onto users and give them a reason to hold onto you!

The AppMetrica team