Smule, the developer of Sing! Karaoke, the world’s most popular karaoke app wanted to increase their player conversion rates from free play to paid VIP subscribers. With 50 million monthly active users, Smule is the global leader in social music apps. The app is free to download but access to the full song library requires paid VIP membership.
The challenge:
Smule wanted to focus their ad-spend on winning customers most likely to pay. They were aware that paying customers generate 5 times more revenue than those monetized by in-app advertising (AppsFlyer).
The approach:
Audiens used unique mobile app store payment insights to algorithmically identify customers most likely to become Smule VIPs. Two target audiences were delivered to power two Smule marketing campaigns:
- Music lovers
We identified mobile subscribers with a history of paying for apps and services related to music and removed existing Smule VIP customers. - App purchasing lookalikes
Audiens first identified the top non-Smule apps and services that Smule VIP customers had purchased. We then identified prospects that had purchased those same apps but had not yet become a Smule VIP.
Smule sent separate SMS based marketing campaigns to each of these two new audiences.
The results:
Key Stats:
7% conversion rate
more VIPs from first campaign
21% conversion rate
more VIPs from second campaign
Smule were looking to increase their VIP conversion rates from 0.5% to 1.0%, but the Audiens results weresignificantly better.
Over 7% of prospects that received the first music lovers campaign went on to pay for VIP membership.
A huge 21% of prospects targeted on the app purchasing lookalike campaign went on to become VIP subscribers.
Next steps:
Smule is currently investigating the use of similar lookalike techniques with programmatic advertising and social networks to target audiences in other markets.
“Using payment insights to identify high lifetime value (LTV) audiences gave Smule a significant increase in paying users.”
Audiens identifies your most important customer audiences, enabling you to promote with greater relevance across the leading digital marketing, social and programmatic channels. Audiens works for businesses of all sizes, whether you are a leading global app publisher or a local independent developer, we make it easy to drive business growth, enhance your customer experience, and optimize your marketing spend.