In the last few months, we’ve seen somewhat of a renaissance of the App. Existing clients have launched new apps and we’ve received more App-related briefs than ever since mid-summer. Now this may be pure coincidence across our sample set but given everything that’s going on in the world with a recession endlessly looming, cost of living increases and the expectation of squeezing margins and tightening costs for businesses, are companies revitalising their App efforts? Maybe this is in the hope of driving improved customer retention, improved personalisation and conversion to increase their profitability position. Who knows!

Now, the main thing that has emerged is the vast amount of changes to tracking and transparency over the last few years. We’ve all been well aware of the iOS14 changes that ultimately changed the way we track, optimise and set-up campaigns. Until now, the impact has been somewhat limited to the Web for our clients and we were protected from the real horrors that exist in the app world. 

Prior to the iOS changes, I managed a large amount of App campaigns through all the expected channels, Google (Universal App campaigns back in the day), Facebook, App Search etc. and used mobile measurement partners like Adjust, Appsflyer, App Annie to do reporting so had plenty of experience in setting up and reporting on performance, cohorts, retention and so-on. But things have changed, so If it’s been a while since you’ve ran app campaigns, here’s some key things to watch out for:

1. Nothing works as you’d expect anymore and don’t get me started on GA4.

When we work with our ecommerce clients on driving revenue and ROAS from web campaigns, there’s a relatively formulaic approach to measuring performance – pixel set-up, more recently Server-to-Server integrations with the channels and then using Google Analytics as the Single Source of Truth to understand channel interactions and a more realistic view on ROAS. 

For App, most campaigns won’t work without a mobile measurement partner in place – You can’t run Google campaigns without one – Google’s preference is to run with Firebase and GA4 but do also support third party integrations. We’ve tried both ways and there’s trials and tribulations around both, particularly within the partner integration settings and the flow of data between the channels and measurement platforms. Often data is unavailable in the platform for no discernible reason 😠 If you’re setting up a mobile measurement partner for Google, you may as well utilise their integrations for other channels as well but more often than not, you’ll be using a combination of Firebase + a third party tool as none of them really seem to cater for all needs.

The introduction of GA4, for me, has been a disaster. Everyone is expected to upgrade to GA4 by June next year but the reality is that the knowledge share and documentation from Google has been, at best, piss-poor. The deprecation of the cookie is driving the urgency here but Google seems to have forgotten to take everyone (from Marketers, to Developers to Analytics Departments) on the journey. Apple’s introduction of the App Tracking Transparency Framework has also put everyone on the backfoot but with the clout that Google has, you’d expect a more seamless upgrade process. Clients using Universal Analytics (often UA 360 with the associated subscription fee) are often in contracts on UA360 and have yet to receive contact about how and why they need to upgrade to GA4 – the introduction of a new GA4 account is therefore a low priority, despite it being almost essential to run App campaigns. 

2. SKAN for iOS is now a thing.

SKAdNetwork has been around since 2018 but rarely impacted the way in which we tracked campaigns but with the introduction of the App-Tracking Transparency measure put in place by Apple, activity for iOS campaigns is often now tracked by SKAdNetwork. Nowadays, to preserve privacy, performance data is aggregated (something which performance marketers hate) to provide a ‘view’ of performance. There’s now no-real time view on performance/ROI/LTV and data postback can take anywhere between 24-72 hours – which in a fast paced digital world, makes no sense. This makes optimisation of activity particularly difficult and managing client expectations on access to real-time data (which is now the norm) has been challenging.

3. User Journey Complexities & Deep-Linking

As we’ve often said in previous articles, a customer’s journey is more like a plate of spaghetti than a linear path to conversion. Throw an app into the mix and it only increases the complexity. Catering for high value and probably your best customers is crucial in driving performance but it’s against a backdrop of the most challenging picture in terms of tracking their behaviour. App, at present, is a black hole of data but would provide the most significant insights as to better optimise your marketing efforts. Deeplinking is the main solution area to drive customers who’ve installed the app into the more-optimised user journey but in my experience, developers have little experience in deeplinking set-up from web to app with even less experience on how that affects channel performance.

My main gripe with all of the challenges faced is actually the lack of support and expertise there is out there around App. Herein lies the problem, right now – can anyone actually be an app marketing expert? The changes are constant due to the nature of how transparency and privacy is evolving so everyone is scrabbling around for answers and solutions. The best approach is to stay flexible and inquisitive about the latest innovations within App and keep bringing them to the table.

Now whilst I’ve had a bit of a rant… we must remember that we’re entering a new dawn in terms of transparency and privacy and businesses will have to adapt to the ever changing view of performance. Perhaps what is most encouraging is that instead of focusing on historical ROI performance, we could move to a predictive analytics mindset which could drive marketing performance to the next level – taking people on the journey will be our biggest challenge.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks but I’ve been jumping through burning hoops the last 6 months. These app challenges have re-invigorated my intrigue into analytics and true digital marketing strategy – it’s been invaluable in providing us with even more insights into how to help drive clients forward!

There’s been a couple of interesting ‘moments’ on LinkedIn for me lately, and in a way, I am delighted as LinkedIn has become a bit of an InMail nightmare for me – mostly folk selling me growth hacking, leads for my agency or worst of all… life insurance. Jeez, really? The only thing that keeps me on LinkedIn apart from running campaigns for our clients of course, is keeping up to speed with what my network are up to and the great content that they put out. But it is becoming less appealing. I absolutely reach out to people using InMails, especially when I am in the middle of a funding round, but it’s usually well researched and I make the effort to make my message as interesting as I can and relevant.

Anyway, the two moments. First and not really the topic of this post, is the crying CEO who posted an image of his tear streaked face, along with an emotional update on how, for the first time, he had to make some of his team redundant. Now, could be genuine, but seemed to me like someone making everything about themselves – poor me, had to fire some folk, but I’m such a good guy, look how it hurts me! The backlash was surprising – a stream of spoof posts, of crying individuals bemoaning their first world problems. My personal favourite, was the chap deeply emotional that he had missed the McMuffin deadline by five minutes and had to have a Big Mac for breakfast.

There was then a backlash on the backlash, as many LinkedIn members felt it was making light of what could be genuine mental health issues and as a community, we should be showing some empathy and compassion for those effected… if not the CEO with leaky tear ducts.

The second big moment, was Malcolm Gladwell’s chat with Steven Bartlett on The Diary Of A CEO podcast. Now, Steven is an incredible marketer, and it’s one of the reasons why he’s been so successful (not the only reason for sure) and he knew exactly what he was doing when he titled the episode, ‘Malcolm Gladwell: Working From Home Is Destroying Us!’ Steven knew what would happen when he threw this incendiary device of a title, into social media.

What surprised me, was the level of vitriol directed at Gladwell. There was definitely a healthy debate too, people could see the pros and cons of office working and working from home, we all have an opinion. But that’s the point, it’s subjective and we all prefer what works for us personally. It was the privileged view of some senior leaders who were aggressive in their attack that surprised me the most – it’s fine that you enjoy working from your plush home office, and only popping into Soho House to meet with clients when you need to.

But imagine you are in a small London flat, or house sharing. Imagine you are more junior in your role, it could be your first job. Imagine you aren’t from the UK and you are here working your ass off and you don’t have a social circle yet. What if you want to shadow someone with more experience and learn on the job… a task list and a screen is a pretty poor experience. And Zoom just doesn’t cut it.

I wonder if a lot of folk who reacted to the headline, even bothered to listen to the whole podcast? There was some incredible stuff on there about loss, about how neglect is the worst thing we can do to another human being (or animal for that matter) how contribution can drive happiness. And this is where Malcolm gets most animated and why he believes working from home isn’t great for company culture. We leave people out on the fringes, feeling neglected, they don’t feel part of something.

The really interesting thing for me, is that nobody called out or attacked Steven Bartlett for not only agreeing with Malcolm, but going on to say that he is thinking about making working from the offices of his own businesses compulsory and that he is asking employees and potential employees, where do you want to work? And if it’s at home, it probably won’t be for one of his enterprises. Controversial no? I don’t think so actually, it’s a brand choice and then the employees’ choice and as long as everyone knows where they stand, everyone is happy.

Personally, I believe that our job as employers, is to provide choice. If it doesn’t impact the output, mental health and culture, and you can make it work with parameters, let people work where they want. But I loaaaaaattttthhhh working from home. It’s my preference but I tell you what, since the pandemic and since we have become flexible, I am working from home 2-3 days per week and every time, it’s because I have an excuse NOT to face the commute, its too hot, I want to get a workout in mid morning, I have early morning calls and so on and so on. Usually though, it’s because I know the office will be empty. I crave social interaction, I love it, it’s the best part of working for an agency for me.

So, if a 5 x New York Times bestselling author, historian and anthropologist suggests there is a potential psychological impact of working from home, especially on younger and inexperienced colleagues, we should probably consider it and start planning how to do it better. We should probably start considering what companies, agencies and brands we want to be leading and growing, what culture do we want to finesse? It definitely isn’t as simple as letting everyone work from home three days a week and buying an enterprise Zoom license.

Do I wish I could piss off to Bali and become a digital nomad offering growth hacking services? Perhaps if I was 25 years younger and maybe that’s the point, maybe that’s what Gen Z want and our job is to help work out the kinks but interestingly, it definitely isn’t what all Gen Y and Gen Z want… some do want an office culture. Viva La Difference I say.