Mobile app marketing is tricky as it involves numbers and data. All these numbers mean something as they give valuable information about engagement and users. Understanding these factors can help businesses know what’s working and what isn’t so they can make changes accordingly.

Engagement can be a great way to gauge how interested users are in an app. App engagement refers to how users interact with an app. It can be measured through different metrics and KPIs that we will discuss below:

Daily Active Users (DAUs)

One of the easiest metrics to measure, it tells the brand how many people use their app in a day. This can help businesses understand their reach and how engaged their current users are. This is very important because the number of DAUs is usually always lower than the number of people who have downloaded the app as not everyone will log into the app every day.

As a business or marketer, your aim would be to get people to use the app as much as they can. While some apps are not designed for everyday use, most are made with this aim. Tactics such as push notifications can be used to push this metric.

A very important thing about this factor is that it clearly mentions the number of people that checks the app in a day and not the number of sessions they have. This means that even if a single user checks the app fifteen times a day, it will only get included once.

DAUs are calculated on a daily basis and can be used to compare growth. Also, it is possible to calculate the average DAUs over a period of time.

Average Session Length

This metric tells how much time users spend on your app. It must be mentioned that it doesn’t look at the total time but the time in each session. In simple words, it tells for how long they keep the app open. This metric, however, doesn’t look at what they do on the app.

This metric can be calculated by using this formula:

Total minutes spent on app/total number of users

The higher the number, the better it is for your app. A low number indicates that users do not like what you have to offer or are not interested in your app. It could be due to a variety of reasons such as a poor design, too many ads, bad monetization tactics, and missing features.

Retention Rate

One of the most important KPIs for mobile marketers, retention tells how successful an app is at keeping users. It is easy to get people to download an app. Well-crafted ads and promotional campaigns can prove to be beneficial but the real success lies behind ensuring users keep the app and continue to come back to it.

Let’s say you have 500,000 users in January. As a marketer, your aim should be to grow in terms of users, which includes not only getting new users but also ensuring old users stay. Retention can be calculated for months, weeks, and days. For example, you can see how many users you have retained from last year. Here’s how to calculate it:

Number of users who have the app in a specific time period / number of users who had the app in a previous time period

Monthly Active Users (MAUs)

Just like DAUs, MAUs is a metric used to measure the success of an app. Unlike DAUs, MAUs look at the number of people who use the app in a month. This is very important because not all users will open the app every day but they’re more likely to open it at least once a week.

Some marketers do not look at a specific month and only cover a 30-day period and consider it a month.

Install Numbers

This figure tells how many users installed the app. This figure can be compared with other ‘user’ created numbers to know how interested users are in a mobile app. Installing indicates interest and a lack of active users indicate issues related to functionality, design, cost, etc.

Registered Users

This tells the number of users who registered for an account. This figure can be very different (and usually lower) than install numbers because not everyone who downloads a mobile app makes an account. Some users may choose to use the app with the ‘guest login’ method or delete the app without making an account because they didn’t like what they saw.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Return on ad spend, often abbreviated as ROAS, is a metric to measure a specific campaign’s effectiveness in conversions and sales. App marketers are using ROAS to calculate their user acquisition efforts.

With this formula, you’ll get a ratio for your ROAS. For example, if you made $10 for every $1 you spent, your ROAS ratio would be 10:1. In app marketing, ROAS is often expressed in percentage. Thus, your ROAS in this specific campaign is 1000%.

Moreover, people often ask what a good ROAS is. Unfortunately, there is no template number, as a good ROAS will depend on the client’s KPI and should represent a positive percentage.

However, there might be some times when you find a negative ROAS. If this happens, it is advised to reassess your overall campaign to see where the problem lies.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)/Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

This metric tells the amount of money a business has to spend to acquire a consumer. It doesn’t matter how big a business is, some sort of marketing is needed to win buyers. In fact, the average budget for app marketing is about $5,000, which involves App Store Optimization (ASO) strategies. This goes a lot higher when you run ads and PPC campaigns.

Businesses try to keep the CPA as low as possible. Also, the CPA changes from campaign to campaign as some campaigns prove to be more successful. Ideally, the business should focus on campaigns that offer the lowest CPA. Here’s how to calculate the figure:

Costs / Number of acquisitions

Also, the cost may change over time and changing strategies can also impact it. Marketers typically keep changing strategies until they find the most efficient one.

Some other important KPIs include :

• User Lifetime Value (LTV) tells the worth of a customer by looking at how much revenue they can generate. It differs from consumer to consumer and mainly depends on demographics such as age and location. Consumers from a specific location, for example, are expected to spend more and bring in more money.
• Return on Investment (ROI) looks at how much value a campaign generates. The campaign with the highest ROI is the most profitable one, however, the ROI may often start to diminish after a point.

Final Thought

There are many metrics to measure the effort you put for your app advertising campaigns such as install numbers, return on ad spend, monthly active users, and others. Therefore, determining the right performance indicators for your user acquisition strategy are very important but the good news is that the process is very straightforward so it should not take too much time for you.

A variety of tools can be used to find these metrics. They’re typically updated in real-time and can help understand how successful a campaign is. A great way to increase the chances of finding success is to try OEM advertising. It offers better results and a high ROI.