The quantum speed at which the mobile marketing ecosystem is continuing to evolve can often overwhelm even the most experienced marketers.
The plethora of terms and acronyms associated with the domain could leave you confused, with more questions than answers, given the often inconsistent and inadequate content available online. At times, not even Google can help you solve your mobile marketing doubts and queries.
But, don’t fret!
We’ve put together 50 must-know terms to help you decode the mysteries of mobile marketing (at least some of them!).
Top 50 mobile marketing terms to know:
1. A/B Testing:
A/B testing is a practice where two or more variants of web pages or mobile applications are shown to two user groups at random, in order to determine the highest conversion variant using data-backed analysis.
2. Android:
Android is a Linux-based Operating System (OS) created and marketed by Google. An end user can download mobile applications through the Android platform. It is used by a majority of smartphones, distributed in many versions by various smart phone manufacturers
3. API:
API, short for Application Programming Interface is a software interface that allows two software applications to interact with each other using a specific protocol. The API defines the right way for developers to write programs that request services from an operating system (OS) or other application
4. App:
App, short for application is a software program that is installed onto a smart device and is designed to perform a specific function directly for the user or, in some cases, for another application program.
Types of apps:
- Web app
- Native Mobile app
- Hybrid app
5. App Analytics:
An app analytics tool is software that is designed to track the performance of your mobile app. It gives marketers the information on individual users behaviour, activities, and inactivity to gain advanced insights into how your users engage with your app.
6. App Marketing:
It involves all the efforts in acquiring and retaining your app users. App marketing involves everything from promoting your app to drive installs, to improving your app’s performance, UX, and sending the right messages at the right time with the right context to keep your users engaged.
7. App Monetisation:
The collection of strategies and processes through which an app developer or publisher earns money through their app. These may include the use of in-app ads, app cross-selling products, etc. It helps marketers to achieve a healthy ROI in a world of free and competitive apps.
8. App Push Notification:
App push notifications are messages sent to users nudging them to take a specific action within your app. They are used to communicate certain information such as product updates or specific announcements.
9. Augmented Reality:
Augmented Reality (AR) is computer generated content that overlays on a real world environment. It gives users an interactive experience in the real world environment where the objects are augmented.
10. Artificial Intelligence:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the broader concept of applications being able to carry out tasks and make basic decisions in a way that humans would consider “smart”.
11. ARPU:
Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) helps marketers understand the average number of dollars each one of your active users generate over a period of time. It reflects your apps ability to generate continuous revenue.
12. ASO:
Short for App Store Optimisation, ASO is the process of optimising your mobile app’s visibility. The goal is to drive more traffic to your app store page to fuel higher app downloads. It focuses on optimising app store page content such as your app icon, title, description, keywords, ratings, and reviews. Think of ASO as the app store equivalent of SEO.
13. Attribution:
Also known as app tracking, it is a method of measuring specific user events that lead to app installs, in-app purchases, behavioral triggers as a result of marketing campaigns. Attribution tools are used to understand the entirety of the conversion funnel, i.e., how a user lands on your app store page, how many of these eventually installed your app, which ad was clicked to initiate the purchase, etc.
14. Beacon Marketing:
Beacon marketing is a proximity marketing channel that offers brands and businesses interesting ways to interact and engage with consumers at strategic locations. It involves the use of Bluetooth beacons to engage with customers. These devices transmit location-based push notifications or SMS to smartphones nearby.
15. Behavioural Analytics:
Behavioural analytics give you an overview of how users behave within your mobile app or on websites. It also goes beyond basic metrics like MAUs and page views. The behavioural data reveals how users engage with your product, how it impacts retention, conversion, revenue, and the outcomes you most care about.
16. Bounce Rate:
Often used in web traffic analysis, bounce rate is the total percentage of visitors to a particular website that navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
17. Browser Push Notification:
Browser push notifications are messages sent to users encouraging them to undertake specific actions on your website. They could also be used to communicate information such as offers, discounts, or announcements. Just like app push notifications, these require an explicit opt-in from your users.
18. Call to Action:
Calls to Action (CTA) are the prompts you give mobile users, in anticipation of spurring a conversion. Some commonly used mobile CTAs are “Upgrade Now”, “Buy Now”, “Add to Cart” etc. These CTAs can either be text in case of push notifications or button-based for in-app messages.
19. Churn Rate:
Churn Rate is a critical mobile app metric that highlights the number of users who have uninstalled your app or stopped using your app at any given period.Churn Rate = (No. of Users at the End of the Period – No. of Users at the Start of the Period)/No. of users at the Start of the period.
20. Cohort Analysis:
Cohort analysis is an analytical method that focuses on analysing the behavioural data of a similar group of users over time, thereby uncovering insights about the experiences of those users, and what apps can do to better those experiences.
21. Conversational Marketing:
Conversational marketing is defined as the easiest and the fastest way to move leads and prospects through your marketing and sales funnels using the power of real-time conversations. It builds relationships and creates authentic experiences with your customers and potential buyers An increasingly use of conversational marketing is the use of AI-powered chatbots.
22. Customer Data Platform:
Abbreviated as CDP, a Customer Data Platform is a packaged pre-built software that helps you create a unified view of individual customers by stitching together data points from both online and offline sources and makes it accessible by other cross-functional systems.
23. Deep Linking:
It is the process of using custom links to redirect users directly to an app instead of a website or an app homepage. Deep linking does this by specifying a custom URL scheme (iOSs Universal Links) or an intent URL (on Android devices) that opens your app if it’s already installed
24. Daily/Monthly Active User:
It is a mobile marketing metric that shows the total number of unique users who are interacting with your website or app on a daily/monthly basis DAU = No. of Daily App Sessions/No. of Daily Unique Users MAU = No. of Monthly App Sessions/No. of Monthly Unique Users.
25. Engagement:
Engagement is any form of action that a user performs with/within your app. It is also one of the most important metrics to track based on your users’ interaction with your app over a period of time.
26. Funnel Analysis:
A chronological series of user actions, either on your website or app, leading to a conversion event (your end goal) is defined as a funnel. The study of these funnels is known as funnel analysis. This helps you identify how your users navigate your app before performing the eventual conversion event For instance, the conversion event for an e-commerce app would be a product purchase, for a media OTT app would be a video watched…etc.
27. Geofencing:
Geofencing is the process of creating virtual, location-specific boundaries using GPS, RFID, or Bluetooth technology
28. Geolocation:
The ability to determine the position of a person or their device by using their geographical co-ordinates through data-enabled mobile devices or internet connected computers
29. Hyper-personalization:
Hyper-personalization is the process of engaging with individual users with the help of advanced insights from behavioural and real-time data. In simple terms, it takes personalization techniques and strategies a step further.
30. In-App Messages:
In-app messages, also known as in-app notifications, are messages sent to your users when they are active within your app. It appears as a pop-up on the mobile device when the user is still on the app, encouraging them to take a specific action.
31. KPI:
Short for Key Performance Indicators, KPIs are metrics that are used to assess the performance of a mobile application.
The various mobile marketing campaigns you run Key mobile marketing metrics you need to track:
- User Acquisition Metrics
- User Activation Metrics
- User Engagement Metrics
- User Retention Metrics
32. Lifetime Value:
Also known as Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV), Lifetime Value refers to a metric that represents the financial value of the company generated from an individual customer over the course of a customer relationship Lifetime Value = Average Value of Sale × Number of Transactions × Retention Time Period
33. Location-based Marketing:
Location-based marketing is a direct marketing strategy and a form of mobile personalization that uses a smartphone’s location in order to send users notifications about latest offers and discounts about a near-by business
34. Machine Learning:
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that empowers computer systems to continuously adapt and learn. It uses algorithms and statistical models Machine Learning algorithms can learn some properties of multiple mobile marketing campaign results, and then apply these properties to predict the journeys of the end users.
35. Marketing Automation:
Marketing automation is the process of using a single or multiple tools to execute repetitive marketing tasks such as emails, social media posting, and other website actions.
36. Mobile Marketing:
Mobile marketing is the process of marketing and promoting your products and services to users on their mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, smart watches etc.
37. Multi-channel Marketing:
Multi-channel marketing is a form of marketing that involves sending messages to customers using a combination of channels. It typically combines everything from online content to direct mailers to mobile marketing and social media to using signage in your physical store.
38. Opt-in/Opt-out:
Opt-in/Opt-out refers to a users’ decision to receive marketing communication from your app in the form of purchase offers, product updates, general alerts, etc. This information is sent via push notifications, emails, SMS, or in-app messages.
39. Personalised Marketing:
Personalised marketing is the implementation of a marketing strategy through which brands can deliver personalised content to each user through data collection, analysis, and the use of automation technology.
40. Predictive Marketing:
Predictive marketing is the practice of extracting data from your existing database in real-time and using it to identify behavioural patterns in order to predict the outcome of your marketing actions
41. Predictive App Marketing:
Predictive app marketing is the modern practice of using all the available app user data to predict user behaviour. By establishing a predictive model, you can tailor-make your marketing campaigns to achieve a higher degree of personalization so as to drive higher conversions.
42. Proximity Marketing:
Proximity marketing a.k.a. Hyperlocal marketing is all about reaching the right potential customers at the right place and at just the right time. It involves using location-based technology to target potential customers with hyper-personalised ads or communication based on their proximity with and within the retail store, enabling them to make a purchase decision immediately.
43. Relationship Marketing:
Relationship marketing helps you leverage customer trust to improve customer retention and drive hyper-growth based on one-time acquisition. Having emerged at the forefront of modern-day marketing, relationship marketing is more focused on customers as opposed to traditional marketing which focuses heavily on prospects and new leads
44. Retention Rate:
Retention rate is the percentage of total users who come back to your app in order to perform an action after installing your app. Tracking and measuring retention rate over a period of 1, 7, or 30 days helps determine your apps’ longevity in the market Retention Rate = 1 – Churn Rate
45. SDK:
Short for Software Development Kit, SDK is a collection of software programmes for the purpose of creating applications across web and/or mobile platforms for a particular operating system. It acts as central programming interface which consists of sample codes and libraries.
46. User Engagement:
Often referred to as engagement is a specific action a user performs with or within your app. Engagement can be measured by a variety or combination of activities such as clicks, opens, and more
47. User Retention:
User retention for mobile-first businesses refers to the ability of your app to retain users over a specific time period.
48. User Persona:
A semi-fictional representation of your ideal mobile app user based on the behavioural data points and real data of your users. This helps marketers like you in defining varied user segments that leads to conversions
49. User Segmentation:
User segmentation is the practice of dividing your app users into segments based on common characteristics they share. For example, sorting users by region, language, or behaviour. The better teams are at segmenting their users, the more personalised you can make your marketing campaigns
50. VR:
Short for Virtual Reality, VR is a computer generated experience that takes place within a simulated environment. Unlike AR it incorporates both visual and audio sensory feedbacks.
Conclusion
This concludes our list of 50 must-know terms for mobile marketers! Mind you, this is not an exhaustive list and merely a ready reckoner to get you started!
In fact, we have a comprehensive mobile app growth glossary in the works that will serve as a definitive guide for all things mobile and digital marketing. Watch this space for more information!
And, to learn just how you can further elevate your mobile marketing game, get in touch with us, today!
