Are you ready for the back-to-school season? If you’re a mobile app marketer or a user acquisition manager, you know how important this time of the year is for your business. Back to school is not only a major shopping event but also a great opportunity to connect with your target audience and grow your app user base.

Back-to-school season is an exciting time of year for students as they prepare to return to the classroom and stock up on supplies. It’s also an exciting time for marketers, as this time of year provides the perfect opportunity to engage with customers with an RTM tactics and content, making app install campaigns more interesting on the planning side with great creatives. That’s why back-to-school marketing campaigns are essential for any business that wants to reach out to its target audience and improve app install rates and basically achieve better ROAS.

But how can you make the most of this season and stand out from the competition? Here are some best practices to help you plan and execute a successful back-to-school campaign for your mobile app or essentially any business.

Start Early

One of the key factors for a successful back to school campaign is timing. You don’t want to wait until the last minute to launch your campaign, because by then, your potential customers may have already made their purchasing decisions elsewhere or downloaded other apps.

Instead, you want to start your user acquisition or retargeting campaign early in the summer, when people are still in the planning and research phase. This way, you can capture their attention and interest, and bring them to your digital assets (such as your website or app store page) where they can register, download your app, or sign up for your newsletter. Also, make sure that different countries start their school season at a different time. For example, many schools in the United States start their new academic year in late August or early September, so launching a back-to-school campaign in late July or early August can help you reach your target audience.

By doing this, you can build a relationship with your prospects and nurture them with relevant and personalized messages until they are ready to buy. You can also use this opportunity to educate them about your app’s features and benefits, and how it can help them with their back-to-school needs.

According to a report by eMarketer, 62% of US internet users start their back-to-school shopping at least one month before school starts. And according to a survey by RetailMeNot, 69% of shoppers use their smartphones to research products before buying them. This means that you have a huge window of opportunity to reach and engage your prospects before they make their final decisions.

Use Creative that Showcases Your Products

Another important element of your back-to-school campaign is the creativity assets you’ll use. You want to make sure that your ads and banners are eye-catching, engaging, and relevant to your audience and the season. Different creatives are in mind for the first initiative of the user acquisition campaign, and a different one with more actual offers in the re-engagement campaign, once the users already have your app installed.

One of the best ways to do this is to showcase your back-to-school products in your creative. For example, if you have an app that sells clothing or accessories, you can feature some of the latest trends and styles that are popular among students within the creative sets of the ads. If you have an app that offers educational or productivity tools, you can highlight how your mobile app can help students with their homework, assignments, or exams.

By showing your products in action, you can demonstrate their value and appeal to your prospects. You can also create a sense of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out) by adding countdown timers, limited-time offers, or exclusive discounts to your creative.

According to a study by Facebook IQ, 56% of US shoppers say that seeing a product in use influences their purchase decision. And according to a report by Criteo, ads with dynamic creative optimization (DCO) have 40% higher click-through rates (CTR) than static ads. This means that by using creative that showcases your products, you can increase your chances of getting more clicks and conversions.

Put Together a Killer Bundle or a Special Promotion

Finally, one of the most effective ways to boost your back-to-school campaign is to offer a killer bundle or a special promotion for your app. This can be a great way to incentivize your prospects to download your app and make a purchase.

For example, you can offer a bundle of products or services that are relevant for the back-to-school season, such as a subscription plan, an upgrade, or an add-on. You can also offer a special promotion, such as a free trial, a discount code, or a gift card.

By offering a bundle or a promotion, you can increase the perceived value of your app and create a win-win situation for both you and your customers. You can also leverage social proof and word-of-mouth by encouraging your customers to share their experiences with their friends and family.

According to a report by App Annie, 65% of US smartphone users say that they are more likely to download an app if it offers a free trial or a discount. And according to a study by Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other form of advertising. This means that by offering a bundle or a promotion, you can boost your downloads and referrals.

Finally, it’s important to measure the success of your back-to-school marketing campaigns. Like any campaign you would normally run, but this special season promotion can teach you more for future campaigns you will consider doing. You should track the number of customers that engaged with your campaigns, as well as the number of sales that were generated from those campaigns. This will help you determine what strategies were successful and which ones need to be improved. What are the products you should invest in for the next shopping season, what were the media channels that proved themselves the most, and what messaging should be refreshed moving forward.

Conclusion

Back to school is a huge opportunity for mobile app marketers and user acquisition managers. By following these tips and best practices, you can create a back-to-school campaign that will help you reach and convert more customers, grow your user base, and increase your revenue.

Overall, back-to-school marketing campaigns can be a great way to take advantage of this theme and create a new campaign that can grow your user base, or use this special promotion to re-engage with your current database and offer them something more relevant for them.

So what are you waiting for? Start planning your back-to-school campaign today and get ready for the big season!

Contact our team to learn how we can scale your app.

E-commerce is constantly changing. To keep up with trends and evolving consumer demands and to stay ahead of the game, business owners need to keep a close eye on these industry trends.
During the pandemic, social distancing and other preventative measures meant that consumer requirements shifted, and many aspects of e-commerce were changed. Some changes were temporary, while others are here to stay.
With a number of significant e-commerce events around the corner this November, it’s time to look at the post-pandemic trends that continue to shape e-commerce in 2022.

But before we dive into the strategies you can use to advance your e-commerce business, let’s take a look at a tool that can help your business stand out from the rest. Skipper by Zoomd is designed to help you increase your growth trajectory. Paid User Acquisition? With Skipper, you can run multiple user acquisition campaigns across various platforms concurrently through a single dashboard.

E-Commerce Challenges and Trends

Let’s take a look at some of the trends and solutions you can incorporate into your strategies for the remainder of 2022:

• Navigating a newly competitive market

During the pandemic, the e-commerce industry experienced a sudden spurt of unexpected growth. Studies projected that this trend would likely continue, predicting that by the end of 2022, e-commerce will account for 20.4% of global retail sales. This is over a 10% increase from just five years ago. The e-commerce industry’s rapid growth brings with it the challenges of new competition, but it also creates opportunities for new customers. To navigate this challenge, it’s essential to create a unique brand voice and identity that sets you apart from the competition and introduces you to new customers. The ideal way to do this is to maintain consistent customer acquisition campaigns while diversifying your target platforms. While this may be challenging, tools like Skipper can simplify the process and make it easier to manage campaigns on multiple platforms concurrently. 

• Advertising campaigns grow more sophisticated 

With so many new actors in the market, a major part of e-commerce marketing is the race to gain new customers’ attention. This means that organizations are willing to invest large sums in advertising. But, due to the overwhelming amount of marketing materials customers are exposed to daily, advertising has become less effective. As a result, advertising costs rise, and campaign effectiveness sinks as customers become inundated with generic advertising. The solution? Focus on quality over quantity. Rather than throwing generic user acquisition materials at your customers, turn your efforts toward creating unique campaigns that can set you apart. Additionally, target multiple platforms at once, so you can reach potential customers wherever they browse.  

Utilizing tools such as Skipper leaves you free to focus on creating strategies while we take care of the maintenance, diversification, and optimization. 

• Expanding to new vistas 

While the market achieved new growth during the pandemic, in many ways, the world shrank, and organizations that don’t support customers internationally are becoming an exception rather than a rule. Although expanding to new markets requires funding and conducting customer acquisition campaigns with a whole new customer base, breaking into new markets can create new opportunities for your business. As a small business, you can focus on local expansion by extending your customer acquisition campaigns to new platforms and taking advantage of new pools of potential customers.   

Moving Ahead With Skipper 

Keeping track of your campaigns can be challenging, especially when you’re running multiple campaigns across multiple platforms. Our platform makes this process a breeze by collecting all the data you need to set up, optimize, track, and maintain campaigns into a single dashboard. Skipper supports all of the most popular social media platforms and is integrated with 16 channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, TikTok, Apple Search, Twitter, Snapchat and more. 

By allowing you to keep track of all your campaigns concurrently, Skipper gives you control over your user acquisition activities, allowing you to grow your business fast. 

Now that the e-commerce industry has undergone a major evolution, new challenges and opportunities make it the perfect time to refresh your customer acquisition campaigns and ensure they’re all optimized. Skipper allows you to expand your campaigns to meet the industry’s growing demands and helps you take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. We’re always adding new features to address our customers’ changing needs, making it easy for you to keep up with the trends. Our goal is to help your business reach its potential, so before the busy e-commerce month of November kicks in, check out our platform to learn how we can help you grow with your industry. 

By: Adi Pillersdorf, Customer Success Manager

Online advertising has consistently grown in the past few years. More players are entering the game and each one of them has its own rules, tools, attribution methods, and features that advertisers can use to reach their main goals. Gathering all the data from the different channels to analyze and execute the optimization process, can really take the air out of a campaign manager’s sail.

Research has shown that the average marketer spends a third of their time on repetitive tasks.

Using extra tools to run campaign acquisition has become very useful recently. Why? Think about the data analysis process that each campaign manager goes through. Most channels let you run one objective: App Installs campaign or Purchases. From here, campaign managers should gather the data and analyze it, making sure their goals are reached.

Mobile User Acquisition

Let’s be honest, analyzing data from excel, pivot, vlookup is excruciating and leaves room for human mistakes. Skipper was created exactly for these pain points. Our self-serve platform that allows you to manage all your mobile User Acquisition from one centralized dashboard was built to make your life easier and save you time.  Skipper offers features like Automation, Budget Allocation or Actionable reports to cover any campaign manager’s needs. Concentrating on what really matters when running and managing User Acquisition campaigns can make the optimization process faster and much more accurate and allows you to make smart decisions at every step of the way. Skipper allows you to see the big picture while it takes care of all the small details that turn your campaign into a profitable one. In other words, you’re never tied up in knots when it comes to managing multiple campaigns across different channels.

One of the most efficient ways to get the optimization process done properly is using automation tools. The ability to track thousands of keywords, bids or creatives across all channels, campaigns and countries easily is just one of the many benefits included. Using Automated Rules that track and monitor the entire activity, can be used in many ways: change bids on keywords, turn off creatives that don’t hit campaigns’ KPI’s, increase campaign budget when a campaign is doing well or decrease it when it’s sinking, allocate an advertising budget across the channels according to KPIs and more.

At the end of the day, it’s all about becoming more efficient, and such tools can save one time, and resources and help meet business goals.

Skipper offers a 2-month free trial when purchasing an yearly plan. For more information on how to make your User Acquisition journey easier, click here.