5 top tips to boost in-app revenue during the holiday season

The holiday season is still one of the most important times of the year for mobile businesses looking to boost their sales.

A 2023 report from AppsFlyer states that e-commerce apps generated an average of 10% more revenue in November 2022 versus November 2021, while consumer spending inside shopping apps experienced a 37% increase when comparing Q4 2022 with Q3 2021.

Fending off competition around holidays such as Black Friday and Christmas require careful planning. To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of things to consider when launching your app marketing campaigns.

The best mobile marketing campaigns need multiple iterations before they’re fully optimised – from budget changes and segmentation updates, to creative tweaks and refined messaging.

Start running campaigns early to ensure your optimization is at full potential before the holiday season kicks in. When it comes to Q4 marketing, plan and test your ads in advance to find your best converting creatives by Black Friday. Then, reiterate or apply your learnings towards the end of year festivities.

Visual saturation can reach a peak at this time of year, with the same overused holiday motifs blending together so that campaigns become indistinguishable. Here are three tips on how to make your campaign stand out:

• Shout about it: The best way to push conversions is with a clear, well-timed offer or discount. So if you’re offering something special for Black Friday be sure to show it loud and clear on the creative.
• Pay attention to your microcopy: You know your audience better than anyone. Take time to think about the precise tone and wording you feel will engage them. Ask yourself how you can create an emotional connection with your users.
• Go dynamic: Going dynamic is the key to ultimate relevance during the holiday season. Take advantage of our dynamic ads setup and templates and your ads will always display the most up-to-date information on pricing and available products. These real-time updates mean ensure that the right content is delivered to the right user every time.

Deep links are crucial for reducing friction during the holiday season. Deep links enable you to direct users to a specific point within the app, such as the purchase or subscription page. They are a vital component of a seamless user experience and their relevance is not confined to transactional apps. Verticals such as gaming, travel, and entertainment will find that deep links improve engagement and enable users to move fluidly through every stage of the app.

The key to driving holiday revenue is knowing what users want and showing them ads with those precise products. This is achieved with a product recommendation engine that predicts what a user is likely to buy next based on what they’ve bought previously.

If users are looking for a product in the lead up to Black Friday, you can start sending them ads for products that are similar or related. In a Product Recommendation Engine, existing user data is analysed to identify related purchases, eg. users who buy a pen are then likely to buy a notebook. This is then used to show users related purchases.

In their report on how seasonality affects apps, Adjust noted that there wasn’t much variation in volume of sessions for e-commerce apps month-to-month. This indicates that, while the boost during the holiday season should be harnessed, it is also vital to maintain consistency in marketing and retargeting efforts once the holiday season has passed. Ensure you have new creatives ready for after the holiday season and make the most of low CPMs in January.

As we’ve said, when it comes to retargeting for the holidays, there’s no time to waste. Are you ready to get your retargeting campaigns started for the holiday season?