The wait is finally over! After reviewing all of the amazing submissions to our $10,000 Mobile Growth Challenge, it’s time to announce the winners! With over 250 registrations, the pool of submissions was very competitive and made choosing a winner difficult. Submissions came from all over the globe and included apps from almost every category such as eCommerce, social network, games, and music.
Our judging panel (below) worked hard to narrow it down to one winner for each of the following categories: Most Creative, Highest Impact, and Best User Experience. A Grand Prize Winner who stood out in all three categories was also selected.
This competition was hosted in order to celebrate apps that stood out for creativity in their pursuit of app growth. The Grand Prize includes $10,000, design and app strategy consulting from Carrot, mentorship from the Branch founders, FbStart Accelerate Track benefits, Twitter Ad Credits, and more. Each of the category winners will receive $1,000, along with design and app strategy consulting from Prolific Interactive, as well as FbStart credit.
And the winners are…
Grand Prize: Drum Pads 24
Drum Pads 24 captured the Grand Prize by experimenting with many different growth strategies and seeing some amazing results. In one experiment, the loop creation and recording app created an Android Branch-linked app banner to promote a new sound pack and then placed this banner in their other Android music apps. When a user clicked on this smart banner, they would be routed to a custom Deepview with information about this sound pack and an option to install the app. Previously, this banner would link users directly to the Google Play store. This change resulted in a 120% increase in the number of installs from their app banners.
Best User Experience: Flashgap
The winner of the Best User Experience category is Flashgap. The judging panel was impressed by the design of their social networking app and how they used a deep linked referral program to seamlessly add new users into their users’ networks. According to CFO Mathias Richemond, “We launched a large-scale multi-channel campaign around New Year’s Eve. Branch was an essential part of our tracking system to verify referrals and installs. We were able to grow our user base very significantly!”
Highest Impact: Jet
The team that saw that most impact from their growth campaign was Jet. The low-price eCommerce app noticed that they had many mobile web users who never even touched the app. They implemented a smart banner to convert this web traffic into app users. As explained by Lauren Picasso, Associate Marketing Director, “After launching Branch links, we saw downloads go up 3x overnight. We continue to see a large percentage of our downloads coming from Branch links and we’re constantly experimenting to improve the experience.”
Most Creative: TimesFree
TimesFree is a platform for the real sharing economy. It’s made for sharing tasks like babysitting, dog walking, or errands between a group of friends. It works just like a traditional babysitting co-op: members trade time using a simple points system instead of hiring sitters.
When you use TimesFree, a smart matching algorithm helps ensure everyone has enough points. According to TimesFree’s Founder Francis Jervis, “Branch makes it simple and secure to invite your friends and integrate your TimesFree co-op with an existing Facebook group or email list.” They also use Branch links also power TimesFree’s transactional email system, which deep links to the content embedded in emails delivered by Knowtify. Jervis continued, “With Branch’s new Universal Object and Content Analytics, I can see everything I need to know about how people are interacting with content in the app and outside it – and in far more detail than with Google Analytics.”
Final Thoughts
A big thank you to all of the participants, judges, and sponsors who made this challenge possible. We were truly inspired by the growth experiments conducted by many of the teams. And who knows, maybe we’ll host another Mobile Growth Challenge soon…
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