Great mention of my new venture MobileFWD and our app Trivi.al in the Arkansas Times article on “Start-up Arkansas”: http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/start-up-arkansas/Content?oid=2380333
Honored to be a part of the mentioned companies and the attention it brings to the region.
30 Days to 30,000 Downloads…
I debated on how to write this as my intent was to add value to other indy app developers that were in the same boat we were 30 days ago. We built an app and the question we were asking was how do we get customers? We had no platform, no suite of other games and no distribution network to get the word out. This was our first title and first release for our new company MobileFWD. The app is a social trivia game called Trivi.al and if you’re reading this I encourage you to check the app out, and at the very least, leave us some feedback in the comments section below.
We looked at and searched for as many app launch case studies as we could find to understand what we we’re getting ourselves into. Some help, as such the one on Techcrunch that was posted today as I was writing this, and others not so much. It just so happens that we are 30 days in and have 30,000 downloads so the timing was perfect for our own case study.
Aside from building the app with viral loops and social mechanisms to invite players which we’ll talk about in later posts; we did several things leading up to the launch and post launch to acquire customers. I’ll break up the post into prelaunch, launch week and weeks three and four. To date we’ve spent no money on paid advertisements or incentivized campaigns and our growth has been organic via the app and or our social media efforts.
Prelaunch
Everyone will tell you to make as many media contacts as possible to help tell your story, and for us it couldn’t be truer. The keywords here being “tell your story.” I can not even begin to tell you how many apps are launched each week, so launching an app isn’t always the most compelling thing to catch a reporter’s attention. Leading up to the launch of our app our media traction seemed to be that we were a tech startup from Arkansas. Maybe an unlikely spot for a social gaming company but that was story worthy and it helped us get visibility. We started seeing spikes in web visits and we wanted to capitalize on this by making visitors join our mailing list first thing. We saw almost a 50% conversion rate and we were able to alert those users once we launched via targeted email campaigns. This was highly effective in seeding our user base on day one.
Launch Week
We knew having a website to promote the app was highly important but the question arose what to do with users once they got there. How do we convert them to downloads? We saw a tactic that our friends at Leap used, and considering we used it ourselves to download their app, we wanted to provide it for our visitors. We used a service called Twilio to create a SMS link on our site that allowed to user to enter their phone number and receive a text message with a link to download the Trivi.al app from iTunes. We knew not all of our traffic would come from our website but of those that did visit via certain articles or links we saw an 18% conversion rate vs dropping off.
We used the services of TriplepointPR, a PR firm out of New York, to help with PR early on and validate our app amongst the gaming community. Days before launch we showed up in an app called Wanna Play that asks its community of users would they play the game or not. We saw almost a 75% unanimous vote yes and we stayed in their charts for several days. You can imagine we were pretty stoked when launch day finally came as we knew now there was a demand for our app.
Prior to the launch week we had a trailer for the app created by Explainify and made available via Youtube, Vimeo and many other game trailer websites. This tactic allowed users to see the app and how it works before they downloaded it. This started popping up on many other sites and helped with visibility and continues to get a lot of play.
We also were introduced to the group Indie Developers Re-Tweet Group who go by the hashtag #IDRTG on Twitter. This group was fantastic as its community will tweet and retweet about your game if you do the same for them. We’ve found it to be one of the most effective free marketing techniques available on Twitter and we saw our engagement increase 1500% via Klout.
We built several tactics/features inside the app and via our CMS that allowed for us to communicate with our user base via email or in app messaging. When users would leave reviews and or feedback we made it a priority to address their issues and in doing so we’ve managed to retain many of those users. We’ve seen retention in our app of users playing 5 times or more grow to over 65% since launch and uninstalls remain relatively low. When customers get a direct message from the founders asking about how we can help they were more susceptible to understanding sometimes things just don’t happen as planned. We were able to address and fix issues without further complaints.
In the back of my mind I knew we couldn’t just focus all our efforts online for customers, we also had to look offline as well. We discovered and approached a trivia pub group called The Big Quiz Thing that hosted live events in major cities like LA, Boston and NY and we partnered with them to do some promotions of their upcoming shows. We even got a great blog write up on their blog and some love from their founder Noah. We also reached out to Paul Bailey at the Trivia Championships of North America (TCONA) and we will be doing some cool stuff at their august competition in Las Vegas this year. Another effective offline tactic was stickers. We had such a huge demand for our stickers I wrote another blog post about it called How Custom Stickers Can Grow Downloads For Your App.
Week Three, (Our largest download week to date)
Week three was an experiment in price for us. I was having lunch with my dear friend Josh Clemence and he showed me a new app he said all his coworkers were using called Apps Gone Free. He said each day he gets a notification that shows him 5-7 great apps that are free for that day only. I checked it out and saw some big names in there I thought sure lets try this. I emailed the guys with the day our app would go free and BAM! we were in that day’s version and saw more than 5,000 downloads come through in 24hrs. A huge spike and lesson for us considering we already had a free version available, we just didn’t have these distribution channels. You can see in the picture this spike drove the charts considerably. 
Week Four
This week we were able to see the viral loops in the app really work as we’re seeing download numbers increase day over day with no external advertising. We did receive three great write ups one on BetaKit and two on Mashable. Both Betakit and the second Mashable article involved us reengaging the prior article’s reporter so you can see how the relationships matter. The stories on Mashable were a video on the History of Trivia and an interesting take on the 15 Most Missed Questions in the App. All are great reads and you should even check out the video @jeremiahjw did based on seeing the history of infographic we did months before launch.
So, here we are now looking at the future wondering what that magic number is to hit critical mass and then the viral loops completely take over and put us in the million download range. Maybe we have a long ways to go maybe not. We’ve learned a lot in 30 days and think our next 30 are going to be even better. We’ve listened to our users and their feedback and submitted a new version of the Trivi.al app to iTunes. Any day we’ll have a new improved version out and we hope you continue to play.
We’ve built an app Trivi.al (www.trivi.al) and we’re in private beta. We’re thinking about a launch date and what goes into successfully launching an app. I’ve written a few questions down in my little notepad. They go something like this:
1. How do we get press for our startup?
2. What writers do we know (Time to hit LinkedIn)
3. How do we identify influencers in our indstray that will care enough to write about us?
4. What sites do we want coversage on?
5. What journalists can we build relationships with to cover/write about our startup?
6. How do we craft and distribute a Press Release
7. What all do we need in our press kit?
8. What can a PR company provide and how much will it cost?
9. How can we continue to be in the news and not just a one hit wonder?
10. What’s that one BADASS thing we can do?
So, while your out enjoying this beautiful weather I’m going to be cramming as much about PR and marketing in my head as I can get in there. Hopefully we’re in the right place by asking these questions and or at least on a good start. I’d love to hear from anyone that has experience launching apps and what you’ve learned. Drop a comment below or hit me up on twitter @rfijoey
I can probably answer my own questions here by stating the obvious build a great product and it will market it’s self, right?
Surround your self with smart talented people who have done it before. There are a lot of young bright entrepreneurs that think they know everything, but I have learned with age comes wisdom. Find the smartest people you know and soak it in, ask questions, meet for breakfast just learn as much as you can. These guys have done it, they have failed and succeeded and they know things. Learn.
Believe in your idea. You are the number 1 salesman of your product. People are attracted to your passion. Next thing you know they want to be your friend on Facebook/twitter/LinkedIn/path etc. and share your product with their friends. Build your army, be transparent and have integrity.
Hire smart developers. And keep the good ones. The entire future is being written by these guys right now and they are in short demand.
Design is Sexy. I know for a fact sex sells. Your UX/IA and product better be sexy. We live in a visual world and people love the sizzle. With my background in design I can tell you the good products/designs evolve over time. Don’t be scared and embrace feedback. Your design is done when the problem goes away. I tell every young guy I’ve hired there’s no “crying in web-design.” and I mean it you need tough skin and your work should be iterative. Its not graphic design anymore.
You’ll have haters. They will laugh at your po-dunk furniture and write passively about you in blog posts but all this just means you’re doing something right. In some ways they’re jealous because the spotlight is no longer on them.
Legal! You live and learn or die and burn here. These guys are expensive. Trust me the cheap ones will cost you more because it takes so many times to get it right, the expensive ones well, they get it done quicker but their rates are crazier.
You may not be a finance or numbers guy but the devils in the details and everything should be tracked. Analytics are the most powerful tool in business besides instinct. Your learn to love funnels, cohorts, average this average that…blah…blah…blah…
Your not cool just because you’re an Entrepreneur. Their wasn’t some club I became a member of because I took the leap. Actually your broke, tired, alone but you get up everyday motivated to give all you got and see what the outcome is. Then you get up to do it all over again the next day.
When to take the leap. I can only speak from my own experience here, but for me I spent 6 years at a startup that sold to a large publicly held company. I wanted to exercise that knowledge and apply it to my own endeavor. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was ego, maybe it was craziness? It probably was a mixture of all 3 and then some but hey when you know you know. No regrets. Just focus.
Launch. Well in the great words of Steve Jobs “Real artists ship” I’ll let you know as soon as we do, stay tuned…Follow our progress at www.mobilefwd.com or our app at www.trivi.al
Spread the love. Find someone you to can coach, remember you get out what you put in! Besides, you never know who might help you shape your idea in to the next big thing while you’re chowing down a burger over lunch.
So, this monday is the big day…I leave Rockfish to start my own Mobile Development Company called MobileFWD www.mobilefwd.com.
I couldn’t be more excited about the venture ahead of me. The focus, the vision, the new relationships that will be formed. I feel like the past 6 years, as the Sr. Creative Director of Mobile and Emerging Platforms at Rockfish groomed me for what’s ahead. The people that have been my mentors in life have prepared me for this journey. To quote my good buddy Josh Clemence “This is my calling.”
I hope you join me in supporting our products and my dream and share in the excitement of the many things to come.
Recently I came across the blog of Paul Adams who currently works at Facebook but previously was the social research lead in the UX team at Google. His research is dubbed social circles which leads me to believe he was actively involved in the recently launched social network Google+. He states on his Blog that he’s currently designing better ways for businesses and people to communicate and interact. His thought process is genius and he put together this amazing slide deck titled “The Real Life Social Network” that is absolutely worth the read for anyone designing interactions in todays world from intranets to social commerce and more.
This is one guy i’ll continue to follow as his work is inspiring and innovative.
Today I attended the first meeting of the Northwest Arkansas Bloggers Alliance. Hosted by Acumen brands, it brought 50+ bloggers from around the area together to share common ideas around blogging successes. In attendance were great names like Ted Rubin @TedRubin, John James @quizprep, and Josh Clemence @JoshClemence. Acumen CEO/Founder John James delivered some great insight, as he discussed how he built an eCommerce empire by learning the ins and outs of Google search.
It is great seeing events like this happen here in Northwest Arkansas to help grow the technology community and inspire others to reach out and do more. Stay tuned as new events will be announced.
Originally posted on the Rockfish Blog here
The below is a post by Joey Nelson, Rockfish’s Creative Director of Mobile & Emerging Platforms. At Rockfish, Joey leads the creative execution of all mobile projects ranging from iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and recently iPad apps and emerging platforms.
As digital agencies grow their capability, new skill sets are surfacing to accommodate client needs, technology advancements and agency demands. In agencies like Rockfish that have moved to a more flexible team model, Creative Technologists are adding their varied expertise across the entire organization. These Creative Technologists come from backgrounds of all kinds: marketing; advertising; branding; programming (engineering); strategy; and all have a deep understanding of technology and how it can be used in the context of communication and design. Creative Directors, System Architects, Strategists and Social Media Gurus are all working as an extension of the forward thinking agency thus becoming solution oriented partners for our clients and their products. Traditional agency models worked in a very siloed process moving from ideation, to planning, to marketing and thus in the end throwing the functional hardcore code work over the fence and hoping the outcome was what the creative and strategy envisioned. In today’s model, successful projects are engaging experiences that connect people and brands and evolve through agile development and good user-centered feedback. Creative Technologists influence the research, the business, the design, and the human behavior of the products. While traditional marketing will focus more on the messaging, Creative Technologists will dissect the API’s, rethink and develop the business model, and design the UX and IA based on user interaction-thus creating a holistic experience that encompasses many different touch points.
Creative Technologists are on top of the latest in technology from devices to platforms and code and can be found sitting next to programmers engaged in discussions around HTML5 vs. Flash, web services and looking at various data models that help ensure the best user experience. Traditional marketing conversed around sensory perceptions and what brands and products tasted and felt like however, while CTs were thinking about these parts too, they were more focused on the whole. Engaging experiences are not one offs. We have seen the evolution of platforms like Facebook, Twitter and iTunes that have matured and grown based on user feedback and interaction. With enhanced feature sets and solid performance that weren’t conceived as a marketing idea from some brand group.
Those who haven’t immersed themselves in digital feel terms like UX and Agile are buzzwords when in reality they are keys to success metrics for digital agencies which have led us down a path of constant tinkering to enhanced experiences. If a non-digital agency wants to go digital, they typically throw the IA in first without ever understanding the channels the message will be deployed through. New devices like mobile, tablets, touchscreen kiosks each have a custom tailored experience where the knowledge of CT’s can play a vital role in making sure that experience is custom tailored and unique.
So where do we go from here? I would say when I grow up I want to be a Creative Technologist, but I feel I’ve already assumed that role along with my role of Creative Director here at Rockfish. We belong to a group that focuses on successful technology that people use that helps our clients business grow. As digital agencies mature new roles like that of the CT will play a vital role in the success of clients, their brands and their evolution online.
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