How to Effectively Use Your App’s Data to Maximize Returns

Data is known to bring a lot of benefits in the domain of user acquisition, but it’s even more important for retargeting. Since app retargeting is about what happens after the install and about maximizing app monetization, data points can be as granular as knowing your user defeated that game level’s boss, or that they ordered a Hawaiian pizza last night in Rome.

These key events are essential for understanding user behavior to drive personalized messages to each individual, and later for measuring performance. As they say, the devil is in the details.

First off, let’s get on the same page with what “data” means.

When we say “data”, we mean user behavior events coming to our platform through your attribution provider or direct API integration. Real time events contain much more useful information about users’ behaviour compared to static user lists or DMP-driven dynamic segments.

While it is possible to run retargeting campaigns using static lists or Data Management Platform (DMP) segments, doing so means missing out on the added returns from the advanced data-driven products. This usually limits both the performance and scale for your app, and we don’t want that.

The lack of real-time retargeting, for example, hurts the cost-per-conversion as you’ll keep spending money on the users who have been re-engaged or converted organically until your next segment update.

Without rich user profiles, you’ll be limited to using static banners, which ultimately hurts performance. Personalized creatives drive higher CTRs which means we can bid higher on the programmatic supply yielding higher scale, as well as achieve higher conversion rates through relevant messaging, all of which leads to better performance.

1. Static user list exports are the simplest way to transport user data.

This approach is usually preferred by advertisers as it gives them exclusive control over the data, however it’s cumbersome to do periodically. The campaign performance will suffer from both low data quality and lack of real-time targeting and optimization.

2. Segmentation solutions from a Data Management Platform (DMP) are similar in this regard.

With this set-up, you can be in control of which users get targeted and the data will automatically get exported to Remerge on a periodic basis. This approach is closer to real-time personalization, but campaign performance still suffers from lower data quality like lack of event attributes. Furthermore most DMPs only offer daily segment updates. Some examples of missing information include: the product the user put in their cart, the level they played, the item they bought.

3. Providing a real-time event stream to our platform through your attribution provider or a direct API integration is the most powerful data integration with Remerge.

This is very easy to do, as we have integrations with all attributions providers already. With this setup in place, you can get all the advantages of real-time and rich data quality and we’ll be able to dynamically compose personalized content for each of your users in real time. It’s a few clicks away.

• Personalized Creatives: show a relevant message, product, or piece of content to every user
• Real-time Segmentation: start targeting the user the moment they fall into the target segment. Stop wasting money on the user who already did what you wanted them to do (re-engagement, first purchase, etc.)
• Algorithmic Performance Optimization: predict the uplift in users’ conversion rates based on their previous behavior
• Uplift Tracking: see how much incremental conversions and incremental revenue the retargeting campaign is generating per segment.
  Note: Forwarding all your behavior events through your attribution provider (not only those attributed to us for using this product) is necessary to measure the control group’s organic behavior for reporting and optimizing on incrementality.

There’s a lot of hesitation around sharing data - a very valid concern - especially with higher privacy regulations in action. To feel more secure with sharing your app’s data, know the differences in GDPR terminologies to be sure that your retargeting provider complies.

Additionally, understanding how your data is processed or stored will help you make the right decisions. At Remerge, your data is stored in per-customer silos (data won’t be mixed for retargeting other apps from other advertisers - not even in aggregated form), unless you tell us to delete it.

We only use first party data in understanding your user behaviour and campaign performance and never rely on global user scoring, aggregated models nor algorithms. We don’t do user acquisition, which means we don’t have any incentives to create overarching, aggregated user profiles for lookalike audiences or similar products.

With these things in mind, you know that your data is in the right hands and will only ever be used for the purposes you intend.

Happy Retargeting!