Quiz Popularity on Social Media   

In order to encourage new users to actively engage with the quiz app, BuzzFeed realized a need for making sharing quizzes and quiz results easy and effective for users. After all, the biggest source of traffic to quizzes, on both mobile and the web, was sharing from friends. It became clear that quizzes that had been sent to either pre-existing users or potential users by friends were far more likely to engage the user with the site’s content, because the quizzes themselves tended to be much more geared to an individual’s interests. BuzzFeed decided to leverage this phenomenon and use it to drive new users to QuizChat.

Using Social Sharing to Drive App Downloads

BuzzFeed chose Branch to optimize the benefits of social media sharing for their app. They built a personalized welcoming program. Now, when a user invites a friend to take a quiz via the BuzzFeed mobile app, the friend is immediately taken to download the app via the appropriate app store. Directly after the download is completed, the first thing the new user sees is the referring friend’s name, image, and the quiz he or she invited the new user to take. The Buzzfeed quiz app now instantly presents even more value to the new user because it offers both entertainment and another social connection to his or her friends.

Benefits of the Personalized Welcome Experience

The addition of Branch-backed personalized welcome screens allowed Buzzfeed the ability to identify their power sharers by how many people the user referred to the app, as well as the return on those from-app shares. Furthermore, Buzzfeed can now measure the increase in app engagement and user retention that occurs when users are personally introduced to the app by a friend via the welcome screen.

Personalized onboarding is one of the most popular way our partners have integrated Branch. Check out how Dubsmash and Gogobot have also boosted user engagement with this feature!

The post How Buzzfeed’s QuizChat Uses Branch for Personalized Welcomes appeared first on Branch.

Redfin provides its users with an online database of real estate listings. The Redfin app boasts an excellent and optimized user experience, which is made evident by the 4+ rating on both Android and iOS, making it all the more easy to search for real estate listings while on-the-go. However, despite Redfin’s beautiful app interface and enhanced database search capabilities, Redfin soon realized a need to drive users from the mobile web into their app, without sacrificing user experience by forcing the user back to the app homepage. That’s where Branch’s deep linked Smart Banner came in.

How Redfin Uses Branch’s Smart Banner

With the aid of Branch’s Smart Banner, Redfin converts mobile web traffic to app users by giving users the following experience:

• • While browsing homes on Redfin’s mobile site, the Smart Banner appears and gives the user the opportunity to view the content in the mobile app.

• The user clicks on the prompt to download and open the app.

• Once the Redfin app opens, the user is immediately routed back to the content he or she had been viewing on the mobile web.

Because the experience of these users improved, they have a 10% higher 7-day retention that users who came from all other acquisition channels.

Benefits of Using the Deep Linked Smart Banner

Not only does Branch give Redfin users a better and more optimized experience via a seamless transition from the mobile web to the app, but Redfin also enjoys many more benefits from integrating Branch. Redfin’s team is now able to:

• • Analyze how many users download the app from mobile browsers.

• See at what point in the search process the Smart Banner is most effective at bringing users into the app.

• Retain app users. Once a user has experienced the enhanced experience of the app, he or she is more likely to return to the app than to the mobile site.

The Smart Banner is one of the most popular Branch features, and is super easy to integrate with our developers portal!

The post How Redfin Uses Smart Banners to Convert Web Traffic appeared first on Branch.

Creating Social Sharing Groups

With Dubsmash’s recent addition of a “Groups” feature, which allows users to share their videos with a group of people rather than just individuals, Dubsmash found the need to harness the power of social networks as options for this new feature. After all, friends’ recommendations and invitations are immensely valued and are a particularly important part of social networks. They turned to Branch to build a personalized welcome (or custom onboarding) screen for new users.

Engaging a Community With Content Sharing

By building a customized onboarding experience, Dubsmash was able to encourage engagement with the Groups feature by using Branch links as their form of invitation. When a user clicks on the link, that had been either shared with them or posted somewhere on social media, he or she is taken to the respective app store to download the app. After the user installs the app, he or she is then routed to an in-app page that shows the name of the group, the members in it, and the posts that have been made so far. This onboarding experience utilizes the social currency of the friend’s recommendation, making the new user much more likely to engage with the app and the group.

Benefits of the Personalized Invitation to Groups

By integrating Branch, Dubsmash has been able to gain greater insight into their Groups feature. Now, they are able to identify the group leaders most likely to engage other users in the feature, when previously they had no instrument available to collect the necessary data. Not only do they now have the added value of the additional data provided by Branch, the personalized invitation feature also boosts engagement and retention for new users. By utilizing this Branch feature, Dubsmash saw:

• 50% increase in shared links clicked
• 16% increase in one-day retention
• 24% increase in one-week retention
• 50% increase in one-month retention

Personalized onboarding is one of the most popular ways our partners have integrated Branch. Want to see more use cases? Check out how Gogobot boosted engagement and increased the conversion to signup rate by up to 78% with this feature. Interested in implementing this feature? Visit our dev portal or just click the button below to get started!

The post How Dubsmash Uses Content Sharing to Boost User Engagement and Retention appeared first on Branch.

Wattpad provides a space for both writers and readers to join a dynamic community that is dedicated to quality storytelling. With Wattpad, writers upload their original works and readers are then able to comment on, share, or “like” the works. Despite the recent slight decrease in the percentage of Americans reading books, Wattpad users spend an impressive 13 billion minutes per month reading on the site. The ever-popular app has been named one of the Top 5 Book Apps on Apple’s app store for 3 years in a row.

Provide the Best Mobile Reading Experience

Wattpad’s app boasts a beautiful interface designed specifically with the best reading experience in mind. After optimizing the app experience, Wattpad recognized the need to convert mobile web readers into app users. However, they understood that there are few experiences that are more frustrating than losing your place in a book. If users were willing to make the transition to the app, the company didn’t want to disrupt their users’ experience by routing them to the app home page.

By using a Branch Smart Banner as the solution, Wattpad sent app users to the same page as they had previously been reading on mobile web.

Use Deep Links as a Bookmark Replacement

When a viewer begins to read a story on Wattpad, the Smart Banner appears and offers the opportunity to view that story in the mobile app. Wattpad designed this custom smart banner to have the same look and feel of their mobile website.

As the diagram below shows, Branch deep links make sure that all users, whether or not they have the app installed, have an optimal user experience.

“By using Branch deep links, we feel confident taking our readers away from our mobile website to our app, as we know there will be a seamless experience on the other side, giving them the best experience possible.” -Breanna Hughes. Wattpad Product Manager

Branch links provide a way for Wattpad to create a seamless mobile web to app experience that allows users to quickly continue consuming the content that engaged them in the first place, but this time in the improved atmosphere of the app.

Measuring the Benefits of the Smart Banner

Since these users see immediate value in the app during their first use, they are much more likely to continue engaging with the app. One study, which analyzed millions of links across our platform found that users who arrive from a deep link (and thus have a valuable first experience) are twice as likely to remain app users after one month. Similarly, by creating a way to convert users from their popular mobile website, Jet saw app installs triple after implementing a Branch smart banner.

Interested in integrating Branch smart banners? Visit our docs portal or use the button below to sign up and get started!

The post How Wattpad Uses Smart Banners to Convert Mobile Web Users appeared first on Branch.

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High-Quality Photo Editing on Mobile

PicsArt is a mobile photo editor and drawing app that allows you to creatively transform your photos and share them with friends. PicsArt was named one of the top 5 “Hottest Startups of 2015” by Forbes and Google Play ranked PicsArt as one of the  “Best Apps of 2015.”

Making Photos Social

PicsArt allowed users to directly share photos from the app on social channels such as SMS, Email, Twitter, and Facebook by sending or uploading them as attachments. However, they weren’t using this feature to acquire new users.

Turning Sharing into Growth

While users could successfully share the image with friends, PicsArt did not include a way for the people it was shared with to find the app. If they were interested in finding the app, users would have to search for the app name in their native app store. From there, if they found the app and downloaded it, they would be brought to the generic welcome screen and not the photo their friend shared.

The user experience was broken.

Making Content Sharing Better by Improving the User Experience

PicsArt chose Branch to improve its content sharing with deep linking.

Here’s the improved sharing user flow for PicsArt and its users.

1. A user decides to share an image with their friends.
2. Now the user receives a full-sized image (via SMS, email, Twitter, or Facebook) and a Branch-provided deep link.
3. That link automatically detects whether the user has the app.
   1. If the user does have PicsArt, the link will immediately open directly to the shared image when clicked.
   2. If not, they’re taken to the respective app store.
4. And that link takes them to the same shared image in the PicsArt app, even if they have to take a quick detour and install the app.

By using Branch deep links for content sharing, PicsArt users automatically received a better user experience – one where the content was front and center and easy to access.

Measuring the Benefits of Content Sharing with Deep Linking

Before integrating Branch, PicsArt could not attribute installs to their sharing feature. Since users were forced to search in the app store, they were attributed just the same as any other app store download.

With Branch deep links now powering their sharing process, PicsArt can properly attribute installs to the correct source. They now know if an install came from a sharing feature and compare its effectiveness at driving installs across other channels. As a result, PicsArt is better able to determine where to focus their growth efforts.

Content sharing is one of the major reasons our partners have integrated Branch. Looking for more examples? Check out how Vango doubled their one-month retention with content sharing or see other featured integrations.

Ready to implement content sharing? Read our docs or use the button below to signup and get started.

The post How PicsArt Uses Content Sharing to Drive Growth appeared first on Branch.

What is App Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing leverages current users and potential influencers to spread the word about your app with their network, rewarding them for the new downloads or users they bring in. Since people are more likely to download an app when it’s been recommended by a friend or someone they respect, app affiliate marketing can be a good strategy for app growth. For example, at Kindred, a photo book printing app, the majority of customers were moms. The best strategy for Kindred was to work with mom bloggers: getting them to try the product, and then tell their followers about the experience.

While affiliate marketing is widespread on the web, few app developers use it, because of two main challenges:

1. Tracking and cross-device users – mobile attribution has been a challenge for app developers. App stores are walled gardens that don’t let data pass through, so tracking installs, purchases and app events by the link they came from can be challenging. Apple is moving to change that by allowing you to create links that track installs. However, their links are platform specific and many times you don’t know what kind of platform a user clicking an affiliate link will be on.
2. Linking to content within the app – when you think about app affiliate marketing, the main driver for new downloads is the content in your app. Historically, it has been impossible to take someone who didn’t have your app already installed to specific content right after install.

Because we faced these problems as app developers, we set to create a solution that helps affiliate marketers with these issues. Our links solve these problems:

1. They provide full attribution and work across platform – if you give a user a link to your app, it will work on web, iOS, Android and tell you how many users came from that links, installed or opened your app and performed certain actions in your app.
2. They allow you to promote specific content or discounts – for example, if you were an e-commerce app, you could give a link to shoes in your app to a shoe blogger and a link to pet costumes sold in your app to a pet blogger. As soon as a user downloaded your app from one of those links, they would be taken to the specific content the blogger wrote about.

Let’s look at a few examples of how contextual deep links can encourage and enhance the referral and new user onboarding process:

Gigtown’s App Affiliate Marketing Campaign

Gigtown is an app that connects music bands with venues and fans. At the end of August, Gigtown launched a “Dollars for Downloads” campaign in which they provided musicians with links to share the app. When someone clicks a band’s link, they’re taken to the app store to download Gigtown, and are redirected to that musician’s profile on the app, which they automatically become a fan of. It’s a win-win: Gigtown has a new user and the band has a new follower. Actually, it’s a win-win-win: the new user will love using your app (and continue using it after download!) because you deliver them content that’s relevant to them. Gigtown provided additional incentive with $1 per download, but payment isn’t necessary to success. As long as you provide a good incentive for sharing the link, your current users will do the work for you.

Using Branch links, Gigtown was able to make a direct path from referral-to-download, and retain and engage users beyond the initial download.

Gigtown saw more than a 41% increase in 1-day retention, and 33% increase in 1-week retention. Not only did these users stay on the app, they naturally promoted it to others. The app had more than 6.5x as many shares from users who were referred by these deep links.

How Magra Uses Branch Links For App Affiliate Marketing

Magra is a calorie-counter and social fitness app. Magra’s fitness community depends on referrals between friends, since these offline social connections generate far more engagement online than purely online connections.

Magra gave Branch links to Instagrammers who use Magra and whose accounts promote fitness. These Instagrams contain the link on their profile. When someone clicks on the link, they’re taken to download Magra and then to that user’s profile, which they become a follower of. Users referred by a deep link then shared the app 10% more than others.

These are only some of the ways Branch can be used as a free marketing tool. App affiliate marketing can work for you too, as long as you provide some kind of incentive to share the link and make the content you ask a user to promote relevant to their followers or friends. Use the button below to sign up for Branch!

The post App Affiliate Marketing: How to Get Users to Refer Your App appeared first on Branch.