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    In Growth We Trust: Marketing | Growth | Startups

    🔮 Soundcloud User Retention, Coding Mobile Games On Nokia 3310, and Mobile Growth Stack Frameworks | Andy Carvell (Phiture, Soundcloud, Nokia)

    Tue Jan 23 2024
    mobile growthSoundCloudretention strategiespush notificationssegmentationmobile gamesNokia 3310monthly active usersprivacy regulationsproduct-market fit

    Description

    The podcast episode features an interview with the co-founder of a mobile growth agency who was also an early employee at SoundCloud. They discuss topics such as the mobile growth stack, retention strategies, push notifications, and segmentation. The guest shares interesting insights about developing mobile games on Nokia 3310s in the late 1990s and early 2000s. SoundCloud is described as having a significant number of monthly active users, challenging perceptions of it being niche or old-fashioned.

    Insights

    The Mobile Growth Stack

    The speaker developed a framework called the Mobile Growth Stack during their time at SoundCloud, which became famous and formed the foundation of their current business. The Mobile Growth Stack is a one-page cheat sheet that outlines the levers for growth on mobile apps and helps mobile marketers or founders decide what to focus on for their app's growth strategy.

    Personalized Push Notifications

    SoundCloud introduced personalized push notifications based on user listening history, which significantly improved retention rates. Notifications played a significant role in user engagement and retention at SoundCloud.

    Optimizing Notifications for User Engagement

    Balancing reach, relevance, and frequency is an art guided by data. Building relevant user journeys for individual users is the Holy Grail in marketing. Optimizing frequency based on individual engagement becomes more important as push notification channels become easier to opt out of.

    Adapting to Privacy Regulations

    Privacy regulations, such as Apple's ATT and SKAdNetwork, have caused challenges in measurement and attribution for marketers. Collecting and leveraging first-party data is becoming increasingly valuable for growth activities. A shift towards a more privacy-centric model is beneficial for the industry in the long run.

    Achieving Product-Market Fit

    When launching a mobile app, achieving product-market fit is crucial. Experimenting with audiences and iterating on both the product and marketing are key steps in this process. Monetization should not be left too late. Offering a basic subscription from day one can provide valuable feedback on product viability.

    Chapters

    1. Interview with Co-founder of Mobile Growth Agency and Early SoundCloud Employee
    2. Early Days of Mobile Games and Joining SoundCloud
    3. Mobile Growth Stack and Early Days at SoundCloud
    4. Improving Retention and Acquisition at SoundCloud
    5. Acquisition and Competition at SoundCloud
    6. Optimizing Notifications for User Engagement
    7. The Impact of Notifications on Growth
    8. Tools and Strategies for Mobile Growth
    9. Adapting to Privacy Regulations and Optimizing User Journeys
    10. Adapting Measurement Strategies and Achieving Product-Market Fit
    11. Contact Information and Conclusion
    Summary
    Transcript

    Interview with Co-founder of Mobile Growth Agency and Early SoundCloud Employee

    00:00 - 08:11

    • The podcast episode features an interview with the co-founder of a mobile growth agency who was also an early employee at SoundCloud.
    • They discuss topics such as the mobile growth stack, retention strategies, push notifications, and segmentation.
    • The guest shares interesting insights about developing mobile games on Nokia 3310s in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
    • They mention popular games like Space Impact and Snake, which were widely played during that time.
    • The conversation highlights the simplicity of those early mobile games compared to modern monetized games like Candy Crush.
    • The hosts express their appreciation for connecting with the guest and hope that listeners enjoy the episode.
    • They jokingly compare their late-night recording sessions to adult versions of TV shows or painting sessions.
    • The hosts mention their podcast's success in becoming one of the top two marketing podcasts in the UK recently.
    • They express gratitude for organic posts and comments about their podcast on social media platforms like LinkedIn.
    • The guest has experience working at Spotify and SoundCloud, specifically in growth and retention roles.
    • SoundCloud is described as having a significant number of monthly active users, challenging perceptions of it being niche or old-fashioned.

    Early Days of Mobile Games and Joining SoundCloud

    07:49 - 15:31

    • The podcast guest, Andy Carbell, is a co-founder and partner at Feature, a mobile growth consultancy.
    • Andy previously worked at SoundCloud, where he led various teams and focused on growing their mobile presence.
    • Before SoundCloud, Andy was involved in the early days of the mobile games industry, working at Nokia and developing games for their 3310 handset.
    • He joined SoundCloud in 2012 and is still based in Berlin to this day.
    • Andy came across SoundCloud while writing his thesis in Berlin and decided to stay because of the city's techno music scene.
    • He joined SoundCloud as a Product Marketing Manager for mobile, leveraging his MBA qualification.

    Mobile Growth Stack and Early Days at SoundCloud

    15:02 - 21:52

    • The speaker got hired by SoundCloud's marketing team because they had mobile experience and an MBA, which was preferred.
    • Having an MBA was beneficial for the speaker as it provided them with a broad range of knowledge in business theory, economic theory, practical skills like presenting and interviewing, and career development skills.
    • The MBA helped the speaker get the job at SoundCloud and gave them exposure to business frameworks.
    • The speaker developed a framework called the Mobile Growth Stack during their time at SoundCloud, which became famous and formed the foundation of their current business.
    • The Mobile Growth Stack is a one-page cheat sheet that outlines the levers for growth on mobile apps and helps mobile marketers or founders decide what to focus on for their app's growth strategy.
    • It is not necessary to do all 50 things listed in the framework; instead, it provides an overview so businesses can focus on what makes sense for them at a particular point in time.
    • The interviewer used the Mobile Growth Stack when they were at DeepUp in 2018 without realizing it was created by the speaker.
    • At the time of joining SoundCloud, there were around 89 employees, but by 2016 it had grown to over 300 employees.
    • SoundCloud had around 50 million monthly active users when the speaker joined, which increased to nearly 100 million by the time they left.

    Improving Retention and Acquisition at SoundCloud

    21:32 - 28:43

    • The number of monthly active users on the platform increased from around 50 million to close to 100 million during the speaker's time at SoundCloud.
    • Most of the users were accessing SoundCloud through the web, but there was a trend towards mobile usage.
    • The speaker realized that there was a significant amount of traffic coming from mobile web, but these users had low intent and would often leave after listening to one track.
    • To capitalize on this traffic, SoundCloud implemented pop-ups on mobile web encouraging users to download the native mobile app. This resulted in a large amount of traffic to the App Store and helped improve rankings.
    • SoundCloud also built a fake App Store page for ASO testing using the flow of users from mobile web.
    • Another game-changing moment was when SoundCloud introduced personalized push notifications based on user listening history, which significantly improved retention rates.
    • Retention was a focus for growth at SoundCloud, and improvements in retention can have compounding effects over time.

    Acquisition and Competition at SoundCloud

    28:22 - 36:08

    • SoundCloud was able to improve its acquisition by 5 percentage points over a year, which had a compounding effect on long-term growth.
    • In the early days, SoundCloud focused on organic traffic and virality rather than paid acquisition.
    • SoundCloud had great social network integrations that made their content highly shareable.
    • SoundCloud didn't monetize until around 2014-2015.
    • Spotify and YouTube were big competitors for casual listeners, but SoundCloud had a unique audience interested in deep dives and hard-to-find remixes.
    • SoundCloud helped launch thousands of careers in the music industry and beyond.
    • The RRF framework (reach, relevance, frequency) was developed based on retention learnings from SoundCloud.
    • Notifications played a significant role in user engagement and retention at SoundCloud.

    Optimizing Notifications for User Engagement

    35:42 - 42:40

    • Notifications can have different purposes, such as driving engagement or preventing users from missing important information.
    • RIF (Reach, Relevance, Frequency) is a formula for prioritizing the building of notifications or other user interactions.
    • Reach refers to the size of the audience that a notification will reach. Notifications with high reach are applicable to most users and have a broad impact on engagement and retention.
    • Relevance is crucial in delivering a successful notification. Users respond positively to relevant notifications and negatively to irrelevant ones.
    • Frequency determines how often a notification can be sent without annoying the user. It should be balanced with relevance.
    • SoundCloud used new content recommendations as a highly effective retention driver by mapping content to users' interests and maintaining a constant supply of new content.
    • Balancing reach, relevance, and frequency is an art guided by data. Increasing one variable may decrease another, so finding the right balance is important.
    • Sending mass notifications to all users without considering relevance is an outdated approach that is not appreciated by savvy consumers.

    The Impact of Notifications on Growth

    42:14 - 49:34

    • The speaker believes that as long as the net result is positive, it is worth engaging more users through notifications.
    • Negative signals such as users leaving the platform or opting out of a channel should be monitored to avoid overflooding.
    • Many developers are anti-notification and anti-spam, but the speaker argues that if the net effect is positive, it is beneficial for growth.
    • Frequency of notifications should be optimized based on the type of content, industry, and testing.
    • TikTok was aggressive with push notifications in its early days, but their growth trajectory was not affected negatively.
    • It is challenging to find an ideal number of interactions with a homogenous user base since every user is unique.
    • The future of web marketing involves segmentation, dynamic messaging, and self-optimizing systems for personalized user engagement.
    • Building relevant user journeys for individual users is the Holy Grail in marketing.
    • Optimizing frequency based on individual engagement becomes more important as push notification channels become easier to opt out of.
    • Android and iOS platforms have implemented features to make it easier for users to opt out of specific app notifications.

    Tools and Strategies for Mobile Growth

    49:08 - 56:20

    • The speaker has implemented user-friendly features to allow users to opt out of specific app notifications.
    • Testing new campaigns or notifications with a subset of new users can help growth marketers de-risk their strategies before scaling them to the general public.
    • Platforms like Braz, clever tap, and Mo engage are doing well in terms of providing value and cool user interaction features.
    • Airship is still in the market but some companies prefer other players even if they charge higher fees.
    • The speaker's team focuses on leveraging tools that are commonly used by clients in the marketplace.
    • Widgets for Apple and Android devices have not been a focus for the speaker's team, as they haven't seen significant growth potential or success stories related to widgets.
    • Apple may intentionally limit the use of widgets as a way to avoid annoying users, but real-time home screen widgets can be valuable for time-sensitive notifications.
    • A client had a widget for tracking water consumption and calories, but it was difficult to measure its impact on re-engagement or growth.

    Adapting to Privacy Regulations and Optimizing User Journeys

    55:54 - 1:02:38

    • Many iPhone users are not familiar with features like widgets and app shortcuts on the home screen.
    • Building features for power users only limits reach to a small percentage of users.
    • Prioritizing sexy features like Apple Pay may neglect the majority of users who don't even add products to their basket.
    • Supporting the latest operating system features can increase the chances of getting featured in app stores.
    • The agency has expanded beyond mobile and helps brands optimize user journeys across various touchpoints.
    • Privacy regulations, such as Apple's ATT and SKAdNetwork, have caused challenges in measurement and attribution for marketers.
    • Collecting and leveraging first-party data is becoming increasingly valuable for growth activities.
    • Qualitative and quantitative first-party data can be gathered through surveys within apps to personalize user experiences.
    • A shift towards a more privacy-centric model is beneficial for the industry in the long run.

    Adapting Measurement Strategies and Achieving Product-Market Fit

    1:02:17 - 1:09:08

    • In the past, marketers had direct access to data brokers like Experian and could easily obtain specific email lists for targeted campaigns.
    • However, with changing privacy regulations, it is becoming more challenging to achieve the same level of precision in targeting.
    • Marketers need to adapt their measurement strategies and accept that they may not have the same level of accuracy as before.
    • It is important to use a mix of different approaches and consider integrated views of marketing activities across the funnel, rather than solely focusing on acquisition.
    • Looking at ROI through media mix modeling and considering the impact of retention activities can provide valuable insights.
    • Finding hacks or workarounds may offer short-term advantages but should not be relied upon as a long-term business strategy.
    • When launching a mobile app, achieving product-market fit is crucial. Experimenting with audiences and iterating on both the product and marketing are key steps in this process.
    • Benchmarking against competitors can be helpful, but it's essential to focus on your own numbers and develop a deep understanding of your target audience.
    • Talking to users regularly, both existing and potential ones, helps build a rich understanding of user personas and enables relevant conversations and experiences.
    • Monetization should not be left too late. Offering a basic subscription from day one can provide valuable feedback on product viability.
    • Making people pay for a product after using it for free can be challenging. Including a subscription option early on can help gauge user willingness to pay.

    Contact Information and Conclusion

    1:08:40 - 1:10:03

    • Feature offers support with mobile growth, including organic and paid acquisition, engagement, retention, strategy, and execution in all markets.
    • Contact Feature through their website or via email at info@feature.com.
    • Check out the mobile growth stack on Feature's website for resources and knowledge sharing.
    • Feature has mobile growth Slack communities: mobile growth stack Slack and ASO stack Slack for absorb optimization.
    • The conversation was enjoyable and they plan to bring the guest back in a few months.
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