Unlocking the key metrics and tools for digital banking and fintech mobile app growth.

In the fast-paced world of finance, the rise of digital bank and fintech apps has revolutionised the way people manage their money; today, three quarters of adults globally now have a digital/mobile money account. This article takes a look at the most important metrics that drive app growth and the significance of data analytics and app attribution platforms in the journey toward user acquisition success.

Essential App Growth Metrics for Banking Apps

• Account Open: In this vertical, the number of instals-to-account-opens (also referred as activation ratio) is an important metric to track when planning and assessing UA marketing.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Understanding the cost of acquiring each user is fundamental to your UA strategy. It aids in evaluating the efficiency of marketing campaigns and helps in optimising strategies towards acquiring high value users at a reasonable cost.
• Conversion Rate: Tracking the percentage of users who complete desired actions in-app, like opening an account or applying for a financial product, offers insights to the app's effectiveness in converting occasional users into embedded customers. Acquiring transacting users is a key metric of long term value in this vertical.
• Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU): For digital bank and fintech apps, tracking active users on a daily and monthly basis helps you understand user engagement patterns, interactions and transactions. Consistent growth across these metrics indicates robust user engagement and value.
• Session Length and Frequency: This data provides valuable insights to app services, feature engagement, and function completion. If sessions are short, or users are dropping before completing their actions, this could be insight that should be used to improve product features and offerings.
• Retention Rate: This metric highlights the percentage of users who continue using the app over time. A high retention rate indicates satisfied users and a sticky app experience; a high retention rate directly influences DAU and MAU.

The Pillars of an Effective User Acquisition Strategy

An effective user acquisition strategy that attracts, acquires and retains the most valuable users is the lifeblood of any successful app. The cornerstones of a successful strategy include:

App Store Optimisation (ASO): If your multi-channel strategy is aimed at driving people to the app stores, whether directly via a call-to-action campaign or indirectly, via a brand-building campaign, it’s vital that your app is visible to your target audience when they arrive on the app stores. ASO is all about maximising that visibility and discovery; it plays a massive role in helping to prove the ROI and monetisation of your wider media investments by converting browsers into users.

How well your app is positioned on the app stores depends on how relevant it is for your target keywords, the core messages it conveys on the product page, the clarity of products and services offered and how well it lives up to the expectations set by your wider media activities. The more boxes you tick, the greater the relevance (as measured by the app store algorithms) and therefore the visibility of your app.

ASO Conversions: The conversion piece of ASO is directly tied to the content of your app’s product page. To convert browsers into users, your app’s features, services and purpose must match what the user is searching for on the app stores. The more perfect the match, the better the conversion rate.

As such, creating a custom product page strategy (in Apple Search Ads) and utilising product page optimisation to better convert users is imperative for success and in our experience, has the potential to deliver double-digit conversion rate growth for digital bank and fintech apps.

Referral Programs: In the banking sector, customer trust in your brand and product is paramount to continued success, and will be the bedrock of your referral strategy. In this sector, a personal recommendation and positive word of mouth speaks volumes about a brand and its ability to deliver on its promises. Building a referral programme into your app strategy will enable existing users to directly refer friends or family, leveraging that relationship of trust. Rewarding the referring customer, or welcoming the new one with added-value, can be a valuable motivation too.

Ratings and Reviews: Similar to personal referrals, other peoples’ positive words about your app are gold. Not only will potential users scan your reviews and note your rating, but the app store algorithms do this too. A good rating will impact your organic ranking.

Partnerships and Collaborations: Audience reach is important for growth, which is why some banking apps team up with trusted brands outside of their sector, or initiate community and charitable collaborations. These initiatives create the opportunity to promote your fintech app to a defined audience in a trusted, endorsed manner.

Targeted Advertising: Utilising data from your CRM systems and analysing customer insights according to profile and activities, can unlock opportunities for targeted customer acquisition strategies, which will drive increased visits to your custom product pages and deliver new users of a higher quality.

App Attribution Platforms (MMPs)

Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) play a pivotal role in attributing app install and in-app actions to specific marketing campaigns or channels. They offer:

• Attribution Insights: Providing data clarity about which marketing efforts are driving the most acquisitions, and over the longer term, the most valuable users. This is vital for establishing the ROAS (return on advertising spend) of your activities.
• Campaign Optimisation: By quickly delivering campaign attribution data, your MMP unlocks the potential to dynamically alter your strategy according to performance (good or bad) and to focus your energies and budgets on the tactics that deliver the best return.
• Personalisation: You can use your MMP data to build and inform your audience and customer cohorts, according to effective campaign targeting and in-app events. These insights will allow you to evolve your tailored campaign targeting in such a way that leans into those cohorts and delivers better conversion and more valuable long term users.

Importance of App Data Analytics

Collecting and analysing customer in-app behaviour and preferences empowers digital banks and fintechs to make informed product decisions and combat fraud too. This data-driven approach aids in following scenarios:

• Identifying Pain Points: Pinpointing areas within the app where users might face usability difficulties or even drop-off a transaction, will enable the product team to develop solutions focused on improving user experience, improving retention.
• Fraud Prevention: A comprehensive understanding of normal user behaviour helps to identify the unusual. As an aide to fraud prevention, quickly identifying unusual activities assists in maintaining app security.
• Predictive Analysis: Tracking user behaviour and feedback aids the product team in forecasting future trends and updates, which enables your app to keep pace with market evolutions and user expectations.