[Wrap-up] Looking beyond Installs at the #MillionInstallMeetup Bangalore

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The past Saturday we organized the second edition of the #MillionInstallMeetup in association with Appvirality and Inc42. Having attended and organized a few meetups, to say that the meetup was a success would be an understatement. So, why do I say the event was a success?

The People

The first thing that adds credibility to a meetup is the lineup of speakers and panelists. And we had some of the best marketing and product management minds as our panelists this time around.

We had Sujayath Ali – CEO and Co-founder at Voonik, India’s first personal shopping app. Sujayath believes in sticking to the basics without any shortcuts when it comes to growth hacking but highlighted the importance of experimentation and thinking out of the box.

Next up, we had Suman De who leads Mobile Products at Cleartrip. Given the segment they operate in wherein the frequency of transactions is low, Suman highlighted the importance of right engagement and retention strategy against the more popular focus laid solely on user acquisition.

Asutosh Upadhyay, leading Products at UDIO Wallet, added an interesting perspective to the discussion with his insights into the fintech space along with highlighting the importance of measuring the right metrics and focusing resources towards the right goals

Finally, Hari Palapetty, Mobile Product Manager at BigBasket, reinforced the power of a good product over any short term gimmicks to grow and engage your users.

The Content

A lot of meetups, by their very nature, end up being superficial in content and actual learning. But having a panel rich in experience and an audience that was interactive, the discussion flowed seamlessly between broad-level growth and engagement strategies to actionable tactics to solve very specific challenges. A few highlights below:

• On App Growth at Different Stages

Initially, after an app launch, PR coupled with awareness through word-of-mouth and initial experimentation on what a user wants can help you get the crucial initial installs. The focus then moves to identifying the right clusters of growth and doubling down on execution on each of these clusters. Post a 100k user base, the actual value you deliver to your loyal users will become a crucial factor for growth given the high propensity to churn otherwise.

• Product Market Fit is crucial

Figuring out your ‘Product Market Fit’ is very crucial and challenging especially when starting up than just growth hacking

• Conventional marketing works (if done right)

Do not discount conventional channels of engagement, e.g. Voonik has had a good amount of success with TVCs when trying to reach tier-2 and tier-3 cities

• Cashbacks are a double edged sword

Rewards and Loyalty programs are a tough nut to crack and figuring out user intent can go a long way in doing that. The Indian consumer loves cashbacks as the preferred type of output for any offers. But cashbacks also burn money very fast. So, they have to awarded judiciously

• Fraud can be controlled

The Indian consumer is very enterprising. So, although, it might not be possible to completely eliminate fraud, it can be controlled. For example, Cleartrip does not consider rooted devices when calculating installs coming from affiliates and referrals. BigBasket employs a fraud consulting firm to highlight or warn of certain suspicious trends in purchases. Startups are still learning and have a long way to go in fighting fraud well.

• Revisit the ‘What’ of measurement

Multiple panelists stressed the importance of measuring the right metric. For example, for UDIO and Cleartrip, a cost of a transaction means much more than a cost of an install.

The Community

Over the past one year, we, at MoEngage, have been trying to build a community around user engagement and retention which is a traditionally neglected function compared to its flashy cousin user acquisition. The audience at the meetup was an energetic and curious bunch of app marketers from startups, large and small, with some of most interesting questions. The activity on social media was also very engaging with questions, suggestions and a very well-written, informative blog post written by one of the attendees.

Here’s a Storify where we’ve covered the event as it progressed:

A big shout-out to Nikhil from Amazon Web Services for providing us a great venue for the meetup.

The next meetup in the #MillionInstallMeetup series will be taking place in Mumbai. Stay tuned to our blog to know of other future events and meetups.

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• [Wrap-up]: Looking beyond Installs at the #MillionInstallMeetup Bangalore