App growth made easy with Rocket Lab's retargeting strategies

Imagine a marketing tactic that reactivates existing customers, increases app usage, maximizes ROI, and improves user LTV—all at once. This is where retargeting comes into play.

With thousands of apps emerging daily and consumers constantly seeking new experiences, retargeting has become essential for maximizing user retention. This strategy increases user activity and significantly increases the number of loyal users while reducing churn. Users exposed to retargeting campaigns are 20% more likely to remain loyal.

At Rocket Lab, we use advanced technology and strong partnerships to tap into this power. Our platform, Space, uses DSPs (Demand-Side Platforms) with advanced algorithms and machine learning to optimize inventory investment, targeting high-value users effectively. By working with the best mobile retargeting DSPs, we ensure your campaigns are efficient and impactful. We focus on getting your app to perform at its best, making us the go-to partner for your retargeting needs.

But why focus on retargeting? Its importance cannot be overstated, especially in today’s competitive mobile app market. With so many apps vying for user attention, retaining users is becoming increasingly complex. 

App retargeting is designed to re-engage users who have already interacted with your app. It encompasses all activation, engagement, and reactivation campaigns from the moment a new user installs your app. By targeting users based on their previous behaviors and interactions, retargeting aims to bring them back to the app, encouraging continued use and engagement.

But why should you focus on users who have already interacted with your app? Simple. Gaining a new user is much more expensive than retaining an existing customer. Therefore, as our Sr. Growth Director of Digital Ad Products at Rocket Lab, Xavier Bourlard, recommends, start retargeting from day zero—as soon as you begin your paid media plan—to maximize retention and engagement.

By implementing a year-round retargeting strategy, you can improve your app’s chances of success in a highly competitive market.

Retargeting is more than just a one-time marketing push; it's a long-term strategy that keeps you connected with your users. It's important to understand that there is a learning phase where the most valuable users are identified, along with the best times and places to reach them. Bourlard emphasizes that retargeting is not only for high seasonality times. It should be a year-round effort, partly because of the learning period, which helps pinpoint which users have the biggest impact. By identifying who to target and how, more users can be turned into loyal customers. This ongoing effort allows for continuous fine-tuning of strategies, ensuring readiness to maximize engagement and retention during peak times like Black Friday.

The learning phase for technologies is crucial. At Rocket Lab, we recognize that every app is unique. Whenever we begin a new partnership, we jump into testing and exploring to develop the most effective growth strategies.

Why? Whether we're using DSPs or ad networks, we're working with various types of inventories that connect brands with different audience profiles in various contexts. It takes time to analyze and understand user behavior, as well as to allocate the budget effectively, finding the perfect mix of sources for each app. In our experience, it takes about three months to see significant results. That being said, maintaining a year-round retargeting strategy lets you keep your users engaged and allows you to fine-tune your approach based on real-time data and insights. 

How can you know if your app is in desperate need of retargeting? At Rocket Lab, we focus on three crucial metrics: retention rate, open sessions, and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

Retention rate shows how many users stick with your app over time. If it's low, retargeting can highlight your app’s benefits, encouraging more frequent use. Open sessions track how often users open your app. If they're losing interest, retargeting can send reminders and personalized offers. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) measures the financial return on your advertising investment. Once retargeting impacts a user who is already interested, the chances of conversion are higher, which can significantly improve your financial return. 

These metrics also help us see how well our strategies are performing and where we can improve user retention and engagement. At Rocket Lab, we keep a close eye on these numbers to tweak our retargeting campaigns effectively. We focus on areas that need better results, using strategies that increase retention rates, app usage, and improve ROAS.

Based on these insights, effective audience segmentation is key to our retargeting success. We start with basic criteria like how often and recently users interact with your app, tailored to meet your specific goals. For instance, an e-commerce app might target users who haven’t purchased within three days for activation, and those inactive for seven days for retention. We enhance this segmentation by considering user behavior, lifetime value, where they fall in the conversion funnel, and demographic details, making our campaigns sharper and more effective.

This initial segmentation helps in identifying user behaviors that are crucial for targeting specific actions. Segmenting users based on their actions within the app allows for more personalized and effective retargeting campaigns.

Personalization is the key to effective retargeting. Collaborating with a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) ensures a smoother user journey by showing ads that match users' past behaviors and interests. This partnership is crucial for tailoring the user experience to meet specific needs, directly influencing user retention and engagement.

For new apps, establishing a solid onboarding process is crucial. Owned media, such as push notifications and launch promotions, play a vital role in reminding users of the app’s value, emphasizing personalization from their first interaction. Once a sufficient base of Monthly Active Users (MAUs) is achieved, paid media strategies, especially retargeting campaigns, become essential. 

What separates the top 1% of companies from the rest? The answer lies in retention and engagement driven by the personalization retargeting can deliver.

Retention makes the difference between the most valuable companies and the others. High MAUs indicate healthy engagement, making retargeting efforts more effective. 

By focusing on various user behaviors and preferences, at Rocket Lab we can tailor strategies that maximize user engagement and retention, positioning us as the best partner to run your retargeting campaigns.

At Rocket Lab, we understand that combining product optimization, owned media, and paid media strategies creates a holistic approach to user retention and activation. Our consultative and expert Customer Success and Operations teams meticulously plan this combination, amplifying efforts with targeted media campaigns. This support makes the difference in creating comprehensive strategies that help our clients achieve sustained growth. 

Space, our proprietary platform at Rocket Lab, is the core of our success. 

Space makes it easy to manage campaigns by integrating all sources into one platform. Using artificial intelligence and automation, we effectively acquire and retain valuable app users, covering 100% of your target audience. Space excels by centralizing all campaign operations, providing a single point for contact, billing, and reporting. We thoroughly check and test all traffic providers to ensure they meet our quality standards, and we use advanced AI to fine-tune campaigns for maximum efficiency. Our system integrates with traffic providers and Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) through an API, providing real-time performance updates that allow us to quickly adjust strategies to maximize ROI. We maintain transparency in the performance of campaigns by providing access to DSP reporting dashboards. Clients can see detailed insights on locations, top publishers, and creative performance, ensuring full visibility into campaign effectiveness.

Our technology is scalable and adaptable, tailored to meet the specific needs of different app categories and business objectives. By offering real-time insights into user behavior and campaign performance, we help our clients make decisions that improve engagement and retention.

What sets us apart in the industry is not just our technology but our unique approach. Our cyclical working model, known as Fly Wheel Marketing or Growth Loops, enriches each stage of the marketing funnel with valuable data.

This approach allows us to continuously optimize our strategies based on user behavior and traffic sources, ensuring that apps work on multiple stages of the funnel simultaneously. This constant feedback loop enables faster and more sustainable growth.

At Rocket Lab, we partner with 80% of the top DSPs in the market. Our unique approach centers on activation, retention, and resurrection, making sure we target audiences thoroughly and optimize campaigns effectively.

We collaborate with 3 to 5 of the best-known and best-performing Mobile RTG DSPs, integrating through the client’s Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP). With our extensive experience, we activate the most appropriate DSP for each client, tailored to specific markets and verticals. A Demand-Side Platform (DSP) helps us buy digital ad space across different platforms through one interface. DSPs automate ad buying with real-time bidding, making sure ads are placed effectively and efficiently. They use advanced targeting based on demographics, behavior, and location to make ads more relevant and cut down on wasted spend. With real-time insights and control, DSPs make ad placements cost-effective. This lets us manage ads smoothly, track performance accurately, and optimize budgets. By working with Rocket Lab, you benefit from our expertise in retargeting and our strong DSP partnerships, maximizing your campaign's effectiveness and ROI.

We have already highlighted why Rocket Lab stands out as the best option for running your retargeting campaigns. But what about privacy and data protection?

At Rocket Lab, we prioritize data protection and privacy. Data is essential for understanding user behavior and refining advertising strategies, leading to more effective campaigns. However, we ensure that raw data is never visible, maintaining protection and confidentiality through Data Processing Agreements (DPA) signed with DSPs. All audience connections are managed through MMPs and/or DMPs, ensuring robust data privacy. To guarantee security, we developed Rocket Shield—a set of dynamic tools, best practices, and periodic evaluations designed to protect and minimize fraud risk in mobile campaigns. This anti-fraud guarantee provides peace of mind by offering a safe and reliable environment for advertising investments.

Rocket Shield has several advantages. We validate and test all new traffic providers to ensure high-quality traffic. Using advanced tech tools, we detect fraud in real-time and post-attribution, blocking fraudulent activities before they impact your campaign.

We don't just run campaigns, we optimize and tailor them to increase user engagement and retention, helping your app succeed in a competitive market. Our case studies speak for themselves, showcasing the significant growth we've achieved for other apps. 

Don't settle for average results. Let Rocket Lab’s expertise and innovation take your app to new heights. Reach out to our team today and experience the success that comes from our retargeting strategies.