How to Hack Your Growth Strategy: to Get Users to Find, Install and Engage with your app?

Key takeaways

• The app industry is highly competitive, and most apps fail: you must stand out and succeed with a solid growth marketing strategy.
• A growth strategy differs from growth hacking in that it is more long-term and provides a more comprehensive picture of all the various activities that a company should undertake to grow its app.
• A variety of activities designed to raise awareness and engagement can be included in your app growth strategy. Communication (push notifications, email), social proof (influencers), and improved user experience are examples of these (personalization, gamification). You should continue to collect and act on customer feedback throughout.
• Onboarding, communication, and retention are the 3 distinct phases of a successful, scalable app growth strategy, each with its own detailed plan.

According to studies, the average person uses nine mobile apps per day and 30 monthly.There are millions of apps in the app store, but few of them manage to grab and keep our attention.

The market for mobile apps is extremely competitive. The Apple App Store has over 1.7 million apps available, while the Android store has a whopping 2.7 million apps. If you want your app to succeed and outperform all of your competitors, you must develop and implement an excellent growth strategy.

How to develop a powerful growth strategy? How to keep fast-growthing for an app? What can we do to make users to find, install, engage with, and revisit an app?

Let's talk about it.

How to hack your app growth strategy to maximize your promotion performance?

Some tactics into our eyes:

• Get to know the app marketing loops；
• What's the key metrics for app growth；
• Invest in App Store Optimization(ASO);
• Leverage paid traffic.

Big topics for app marketers, right?

Let's take attention on some questions about app growth and explore these works step by step. Let's look at some of the numbers behind the apps to see why app growth is so important. Some of them may astound you!

What is the average growth rate of an app?

The average app has a day 30 retention rate of only 3-4%, whereas uninstall rates are higher than 40% within 30 days of installation, with half occurring on the first day. Clearly, securing engagement and ongoing usage is critical in this industry.

How frequently do apps get uninstalled?

Uninstall rates exceed 40% within 30 days of installation, with half occurring on the first day. In other words, first impressions are critical in this industry.

What percentage of apps succeed?

The bad news is that only 0.5% of apps are successful — that is, they receive enough downloads and active users to make a profit.

According to studies, nearly 68% of apps receive fewer than 1,000 downloads, nearly 18% receive 1,000 or fewer active users, and another 7% close shop due to a lack of revenue. That's harsh.

So, how do you ensure the success of your app? Let's look at some concrete growth strategies that can help you.



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App growth in practice: how to increase your user base

Growing your app is all about increasing your user base, and there are numerous strategies and tactics to assist you in doing so. Which one(s) you select will be determined by your specific goals, business stage, and budget. Here are some of the most effective strategies to consider.

1.  Make use of push notifications

First, you must decide how you will communicate with app users, and push notifications are an excellent choice. They can notify users of new features, remind them to use the app on that particular day, or send a promotion. To achieve the best results, experiment with the frequency, timing, and personalization of each push campaign.

👉 How to Gain a Great Increase in User Retention and Engagement Using Push Notifications

ShakeShack, for example, used push notifications and in-app messages to promote limited-time products. The campaign received 55,000 impressions and a whopping 52% click-through rate. As a result, they increased their subscriber base by 184% and increased retention rates to 52.7%.

2.  Establish email marketing campaigns

Then there's email marketing. This channel has one of the highest returns on investment in digital marketing, with a $36 return on investment for every $1 spent, and it is the primary way people receive information from businesses.

Grubhub, which used a creative email campaign, saw a 100% increase in social media engagement and an 18% increase in brand mentions.

Set up regular email campaigns to communicate with your target audience, and automate your email flows to re-engage inactive users.

3.  Collect user feedback

Now that you've established your two primary modes of communication, it's time to solicit feedback from your users.

Your app will only be successful if it meets the needs of your users, so it's critical to understand what those needs are and what features you need to develop or improve to continue meeting them.

Use push notifications and email campaigns to send out regular surveys and offer rewards to make your customers' experience more enjoyable. You can even develop new features based on feedback from your customers.

👉 The Understanding and Practice Collect User Feedback and Reviews for Mobile Apps

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4.  Recruit influencers

Social proof is another important component of any growth strategy. Individuals find user-generated content and recommendations from people they follow on social media to be far more compelling than branded ad campaigns, and you can take advantage of this.

👉 How to Use Influencer Marketing to Fuel Your App's User Acquisition Campaign？

Hire influencers from various networks such as Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, and experiment with different types of content. Make certain that each influencer's audience matches the demographics and interests of your ideal users.

Consider the game Clash. This short-form video app collaborated with 50 influencers and received 250,000 downloads, propelling it to the #2 spot in its category on the app store.

5.  Make use of gamification

Gamification is another excellent strategy for improving user experience.

Have you ever seen an onboarding process in which you earn points for completing specific tasks? Gamification is a technique that creates an interactive and engaging experience for mobile app users.

Gamification is effective because it stimulates curiosity, fosters competition, and instills a sense of control.

You can incorporate it into your app by including points, badges, levels, and leaderboards. Gamification is used in some of the most popular apps with millions of active users, such as Duolingo (9.1 million users), Todoist (5 million users), Fitbit (31 million), and Mint (20 million).

👉 Game Marketing Strategies: Everything You Should Know about Games as a Service (GaaS)

6.  Make it personal

When it comes to apps, personalization is essential.

According to a PwC study, customers who feel appreciated are willing to pay 16% more for goods and services and are more loyal. Every user wants to feel special and have content tailored specifically to them.

So, how do you personalize your app's experience for your users?

Starting your onboarding process with a few questions is a good idea. Then you can tailor the type of content and marketing messages that you display to that customer throughout their journey.

Some apps allow users to change the look and feel of the interface by selecting different backgrounds, colors, and avatars.

7.  Make subscriptions and paid memberships available

Last but not least, different pricing plans should be available for different types of customers. Some users prefer to pay for a subscription service on a monthly or annual basis.

Apps can also provide paid memberships that grant access to exclusive content or events. Experiment with different pricing levels to see which ones result in the highest retention.

👉 Subscription App Trends: What Key Developments Should App Developers Watch for in 2025?

Create a scaling app growth strategy

To be successful, an app growth strategy must include 3 key phases.

1. New user onboarding: This is where all of the top-of-the-funnel campaigns come in. Experiment with various marketing channels to raise awareness and gain new customers. Make sure to create a personalized experience for each user so they can progress through the onboarding process as quickly as possible.
2. Communicating with users: After onboarding, you must establish communication channels such as email marketing, push notifications, text messages, and social media platforms. You should share critical information to entice users to return to the app and assist them in navigating its various features.
3. Retaining existing users: The final component of a solid growth strategy is retaining existing users. Contests, giveaways, user-generated content campaigns, exclusive content, and rewards or referral programs can all be used to keep people interested.

Each of these components necessitates a thorough, written strategy that includes the goals, KPIs, tactics, and due dates for each channel. Continue to analyze your results, A/B test your messaging, experiment with new channels, and gather user feedback as you grow.

Now that you understand the significance of a growth strategy and have learned some practical tips for launching your own, it's time to get out there and make your app stand out from the crowd.