Jenny Lewis, Head of Customer Insights at Airship, presents research on the "activation phase," the first 30 days after a mobile app download. She outlines three strategies that separate high-performing apps from average ones: identifying the customer, securing push opt-in, and gathering preferences. Each strategy is linked to measurable outcomes including purchase frequency, session lift, and conversion rates.
Key Takeaways
- Identified users return to an app at day 30 at a 17% rate versus 4% for anonymous users, and they purchase more frequently and at higher average order values.
- Running an onboarding opt-in campaign can lift push permission rates up to 40% above the category average. A soft prompt before the OS system prompt is the recommended approach.
- Audience targeting based on stated preferences produces roughly a 59% lift in purchase conversion on average, with top performers reaching up to 90%.
- Cost per app download has risen consistently since the iOS 14 privacy changes and rising social media ad costs, making activation efficiency more important than ever.
- Less than 10% of users open an app on day 30 without any activation effort. High performers close that gap by establishing interaction patterns early.
- Preference gathering is a continuous process, not a one-time onboarding step. Preference centers, interest surveys, and contextual data collection all contribute over time.
Questions & Answers
- What is driving the rise in cost per app download? Is it more competition from more apps, or users becoming more resistant to ads?
- Several factors are at play. Conversion rates from ads to downloads vary dramatically by region, with some markets converting around 30% and others, like the US, as low as 1%. The iOS 14 changes removed ad tracking capabilities that marketers previously relied on, which reduced targeting efficiency and drove up spend. Additionally, the cost of media space on social platforms including Meta, X, Snap, and TikTok, as well as influencer fees, has risen. Survey data from B2C marketers consistently reflects that acquisition costs continue to increase.
- Are there any activities that negatively affect participation rates, such as requiring a credit card for a trial?
- The bigger issue is not the specific ask but how and when it is delivered. Interruptive experiences, such as multiple modals appearing immediately on a website before the user can engage with any content, have a measurable negative impact. The recommendation is to let users experience the app or site before making any requests. Context and timing matter far more than the nature of the ask itself. For apps where login is mandatory, such as banking, clear explanation of why the login is required significantly improves conversion.
- Do certain industries outperform others on push opt-in rates?
- News and sports apps tend to show the highest opt-in engagement and the strongest correlation between notification frequency and return visits. Live score and activity updates in sports news drive return rates above 300%. Commerce apps are more sensitive to frequency, since push messages that only prompt purchases without offering information value can erode trust. Opt-in rates are highly variable by category, but a consistent pattern across all categories is a significant gap between average performers and top performers.
Session Notes
Mobile as the Center of Brand Experience
Brands interact with customers across three destinations: physical locations, websites, and mobile. Mobile is increasingly the hub of all three. About 61% of internet traffic was mobile in recent years, and most of that time is spent inside apps rather than on mobile websites.
The Mobile Lifecycle and the Activation Phase
Airship frames the customer journey as a lifecycle with four stages: acquisition, activation, engagement, and loyalty. The activation phase covers the first 30 days after an app download. Success in this window directly influences whether a user ever reaches the engagement or loyalty stages.
- Acquisition: App store optimization, paid ads, and other download-driving tactics.
- Activation: Days 1 through 30 post-download. The focus of this talk.
- Engagement: The continuous loop beyond 30 days where repeat behavior is reinforced.
- Loyalty: A smaller cohort that develops sustained, high-value habits with the app.
Why the First 30 Days Matter
Two dynamics make activation critical. First, the cost of acquiring an app user has risen steadily since iOS 14 changed ad tracking, with global research showing a baseline range of roughly $1 to over $5 per download, and more recent data pointing higher. Second, despite that investment, fewer than 10% of users open an app on day 30. Without deliberate activation work, most spend is wasted.
You've done a huge investment, you've spent likely four or five dollars to acquire a customer, but they may not come back within that 30 days.
High performers break the typical pattern of an early drop-off curve. They use the activation phase to establish an interaction pattern that drives repeat sessions and ends the 30-day window at a higher retention rate than the category average.
Three Keys to a Successful Activation Phase
- Identify the customer (sign-in or sign-up)
- Secure the push opt-in
- Gather interests and preferences
1. Identify the Customer
Getting a user to create an account or sign in to an existing one is the single biggest differentiator in 30-day retention. The data is clear: 17% of identified users return on day 30, compared to 4% of anonymous users. The category average sits at 7 to 8%.
Beyond retention, identified users purchase more frequently than anonymous users. Top performers also see higher average order values from identified users. Identification also resolves the data silo problem: an unidentified user who visits on both web and app may appear as three separate entities, making ROI measurement unreliable and cross-channel orchestration impossible.
Four common identification models exist in mobile apps:
- Fully gated: Login required to use the app at all. Common in banking and IoT apps. Key practice is explaining upfront why the login is needed.
- Partially gated: Some content is accessible without login, but full access requires an account. Common in multi-tier subscription apps such as Calm or AllTrails.
- Trial-based: Users get temporary access to premium features, typically 7 to 14 days, before being asked to convert.
- Login not required: Common in retail, airline, and news apps. Identification is still possible through opt-in and preference collection.
2. Secure the Push Opt-In
Push permissions create a direct mechanism for driving users back into the app. Opted-in users purchase more frequently, and the data shows a typical lift in purchase frequency of around 13% on average. Top performers have seen lifts as high as 30 to 50%.
The recommended approach is a soft prompt: a brand-designed screen that explains the value of notifications before the OS-level permission dialog appears. Apps that run onboarding campaigns using this method achieve opt-in rates up to 40% above their category average.
Key considerations when designing the prompt:
- Who is the target audience and what data is already available in the app?
- What designs and screens can be A/B tested?
- How is the benefit to the user communicated clearly?
- What is the right moment to ask, given the user's current context?
Re-prompting users who previously declined is also worth testing. About 14% of previously opted-out users will opt in when asked a second time.
3. Gather Interests and Preferences
Human attention spans have shortened, with the average now estimated at around 47 seconds. A typical app session runs one to two minutes. Within that window, brands need to deliver relevant content quickly. Audience targeting driven by stated preferences is the most reliable lever for improving conversion.
Campaigns that use customer preferences for segmentation see roughly a 59% lift in purchase conversion versus non-segmented campaigns. Top performers reach up to 90%.
Preference data can be collected through three main methods:
- Preference centers: In-app or mobile web screens where users select topics and channels.
- Interest-based surveys: Common in sports and news apps, where users select teams, players, or topics of interest.
- Contextual data gathering: Location data, in-session behavior, and short surveys collected incrementally over time.
Preference gathering is not a one-time onboarding event. It should continue throughout the customer relationship, adding depth to targeting over time.
Industry Patterns Worth Noting
News and sports apps tend to show the highest push engagement. Live activity features on iOS (and Airship's equivalent Android capability) that deliver real-time score updates drive return visits at rates exceeding 300% for sports news users. More notifications, in this category, drive more engagement.
Commerce apps require more restraint. Frequent push messages risk feeling like repeated purchase prompts rather than value delivery. Segmentation and timing matter more in this category to avoid opt-out.
Transcript
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thanks everybody really thrilled to be here today I'm always excited to get to talk to fellow researchers it's a it's a fun fun to be able to to be in community uh my name is Jenny Lewis I lead customer insights at Airship and I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about what the first 30 days on a on a mobile device looks like when you're interacting with a brand uh the research that I do at Airship is primarily focused around the mobile device and how do we use it how can Brands get better at using it and these are the the key strategies that we recommend for those first 30 days right let's dig in Mobile is really more than a channel it's something more than email or SMS it's it's about how we live and when you think about how we might interact with the brand there's three destinations there's physical locations the website and then um and then mobile mobile M device itself and mobile is really the center of all of the experiences that we're having with with Brands today in fact about 61% of internet traffic was Mobile in the last couple of years and most of that time is spent on apps versus websites now when we think about the first 30 days after you downloaded an app we're all customers in this case right and it's one of the fun things about the research is that we all get to live this every day there we call that the activation phase the first 30 days and there are really three key things that help Brands be successful um first off um we'll we'll talk about why they matter how do they impact your business and how do we Implement them everything in the research and in our recommendations is really based around what what we do is the mobile life cycle and that's moving from acquisition through to loyalty um acquisition or things like app store optimization um banner ads and things that you know bring in customers to the brand activation is the first 30 days from App download through um just plus plus 30 days engagement is that next phase beyond the 30 days and really folks stay in that continuously it is a loop and finally some customers move into a loyal phase but that's that's a much smaller cohort of the audience success in that first 30 days in the activation phase is really about enabling high value actions towards the engagement phase so if we set up customers to be successful in the activation phase it actually has longer term impacts and we use this framework to help with the measurement and how basically tracking progress through there are a couple of key things that we'll talk about today um use cases that are really helpful first off is registration and authentication getting someone to sign in or sign up opt-in permissions in this case talking about push opin and finally starting to share interest and preferences so why why is this phas so important why do we focus on the first 30 days let's you know talk a bit about that and and why it's important first off cost of acquisition is continuing to increase since the change over to iOS 14 which was it's a couple years back at this point but really we're we're seeing since that change and the the variations of how brands are able to track devices the cost of acquisition just continues to go up uh there was Global Research done in 2020 we're really ranging anywhere between about a dollar to over5 as a base line for cost of acquisition and in this case cost of acquisition is cost to get someone to actually download the app it's completely varant by region um actually there's there's different likelihood to convert on ads in different regions which um has a big influence on the cost and the most recent research is actually showing that cost is increasing beyond that and while it varies by region the thing that is consistent is that it's going up now when you compare that to what we actually see behaviorally from customers when they come into the app actually less than 10% of customers will open your app on day 30 so you've done a huge investment you've spent likely four or five dollar to acquire a customer but they may not come back within that 30 days so how do we actually maximize that investment the trend is typically you know just like a hockey stick in the first 30 days after install couple a couple of visits back in the first week or so and then just drops off over time but when we look at high performers um that's actually because they're doing something during that first 30 days in the activation phase that's that's starting to initiate repeat traffic and it's building an interaction pattern with the app to get them coming back more and more often when you get opt and enabled it's actually starting to drive that traffic back and the earlier we build that pattern the more likely they are to have um to have that success it it's it creates both the Peaks at the times that the messaging is going out but also we end at a higher rate than you than the average for the categories so couple of things that we'll talk about today there's really three keys to how to improve and how to start to Trend towards that high performer Mark um what we found is that the brands that are doing these three things actually see improved activation rates they see improved conversion um they also see a higher volume of folks who've signed in and identified themselves within the first 30 days and these three goals are really again set up to to impact your first interactions with customers but then also longer term success during engagement so first off is identifying the customer identifying the customer means getting somebody to sign in or sign up getting the opt in we want to get that push opt in and start to gather preferences um and as we start to dive into this content if you have questions please put them into the Q&A um we'll we'll jump in and get those at the end all right so identify the customer what happens if we do get a customer identified so imagine your interacting with a brand you maybe it's the first time you've ever worked interacted with them and they ask you to sign in and you create an account you start to you really started to kind of build that relationship with a brand or maybe it's a brand that you know already you've shopped with them prior on their website and you're just going to come in and actually use that existing login on an app any of those types of identification are really leading to higher rates in other areas here you see the day 30 activation rate which is that 30 plus days after download when you compare the identified users to Anonymous users there's really honestly there's no comparison right 4% of anonymous users are coming back and 177% of identified users are coming back again our average is that 78% so it's really much much um much much better to get somebody to actually sign in or sign up up if somebody has not signed up and they're remaining Anonymous it's more and more difficult to prove what the ROI is for that person your data exists in silos you don't know you don't know Owen between the email an app and website it might look like three different entities when you try to compare the results so the more we can get that identification the more that we see somebody you know consistently and all their behavior across the channels the more likely we are to be able to I identify them and and understand what it is that they need the real kicker here here is that in the research what we've seen is that identified users are actually purchasing more frequently than Anonymous users and beyond that what we're seeing is that high performers are actually also getting higher average order value when the user is identified compared to Anonymous so it really is it seems to be something that is changing Behavior Beyond just the action of signing in so what if brands are are actually focusing on identifying and recognizing individuals in all the channels where they interact what is what starts to happen now if we start to identify the individual we can start to build out a profile so imagine you have a single person and they start interacting with a brand between app and web if you don't have them ID ified and the remaining Anonymous they continue to be split across those two destinations and then as you start to add in channels they become even less distinct so you you don't really know who they are and how they're interacting and what they want but if you have somebody who is really identified across all of those channels not only do you know what they want in each destination you can start to orchestrate the content across all of these places so if somebody's getting a push message you could have similar content show up as a modal on web or if they're getting an email you wouldn't duplicate it with a push it really having a lot more Nuance to the messaging and I think we've all been there where we get the same message in a bunch of different channels from a brand and it um it's you know it's not it's not the best customer experience right we want something a little bit better so getting that um getting that identification is really key all right next up there are four different types of user identification that we see on mobile there um we'll walk through each of them so with each type we're going to collect a little bit different variation of information so some some types may be a full account and some may be more just preference-based the first one is fully gated um you'll all be familiar with this it really means that a login is required to be able to use the app it's super common for banking for um for iot devices um I have a kid so all the all the baby cameras and the night lights and sound machines all of those tend to have an app and you have to have an account to interact with them we want to make sure it's easy to log in that it's easy to create an account and especially for our first time users explaining why the login is required upfront uh so just to make it easy as possible and show the value partially gated is our next kind so some content is available without a log in but it's you can't get everything without logging in this is really becoming more common for multitier subscription apps think about like Comm or all Trails you can see part of the content and they allow you to use what might be possible if you have a full subscription or they'll potentially show you a locked version of the content I know Comm does that really well that if you don't have the premium account they have teaser content about what would be available if you uh if you had the premium account so definitely that's becoming more common um on the subscription space next up are trials um these are like a tast of Premium features so you might get seven or 14 days with access to everything but it's not always clear what would or would not be included if you um if you don't renew and finally login not required um this happens a lot with Airlines it definitely is a um it definitely is something that happens a lot for retailers it it also can be um on on news apps as well um it really is very Comm but we're still able to start to get um we're still able to get optin and also preferences about these users all right so getting the opt-in um first we want to focus on getting the push opin because we need to um we need to really understand how we're going to get somebody to come back in and continue to come back and interact with the app right when when customers are opted in they actually purchase more frequently so opt-in permissions are directly tying to incremental sessions and then the incremental Revenue because they're coming back to purchase more frequently uh the devices typically you're seeing about a 13% lift in purchase frequency but top performers I've seen it up as as high as as 30 and and 50% lift all right um soft prompt is definitely the way to go for improving optin um across all the apps that are running the onboarding campaigns we're actually seeing that when apps run these onboarding campaigns their opt-in rates can be 40% above their category average so imagine that I mean it's you know it's a pretty huge jump um just by doing something really simple like a soft promp um what does a soft prompt mean just in case folks aren't familiar with the the terminology the first screenshot is um is what the the soft prompt would look like and then after that somebody would see the operating system prompts all right so you can also do you can do a single screen but you can also do a multiscreen series um those are are becoming more more trendy on on the app side as well so here's an example from um from an airline that was doing a multiscreen so you would swipe through before you got to the end and actually signed up for push couple more considerations for the prompts uh you want to think about who is the audience um do we have the the target information for the audience and access to that data in the app um what designs and screens can be optimized and tested and what's the benefit to the customer how are we explaining the benefit to the customer of opting in and finally what's the right time to ask uh what's the context of the request um very interestingly if you if you do this type of prompt to opted out users so folks who've been around for a while but don't um don't necessarily want to um you know haven't signed up for push in the past the conversion rate on that is pretty good you typically about 14% of folks will opt in if you ask them a second time Gathering preferences um we've got the optin now we've got to start to get Gathering the preferences we want to learn about frequency what topics somebody wants to hear about what other channels they might be connected to so why are preferences so important you know first we have to think about attention span the average human attention span is only 47 seconds so that's down you know from about two and a half minutes the last time the the APA did this study so it continues to decrease um when you think about what does that look like in context of 24 hours within a day we spend spend roughly about 5 and a half hours a day on mobile and an individual app session so you opening up an app news app or a banking app typically it's about one to two minutes so we have really a minute or less to get the attention of customers understand what it is that they need to do what job are they trying to complete within that session and then actually help them complete that action that we want them to complete within a very very short window and the biggest way that that I've seen in the research to influence that is looking at audience targeting because it's going to improve your conversion rates in the research we found that when campaigns are using customer preferences to segment the conversion rate increases significantly the campaigns that are using that type of audience targeting typically about 59% lift in purchase conversion so nothing uh nothing to to sniff at I mean it's really it does make a significant difference and top performers that's going up as high as 90% asking for preferences is something that really is a continuous process um it's not a one and done at the beginning um I think it's something that we want to really um we want to really do over time uh but there are still three commonalities and how we typically make those requests um first off is a is a preference Center so we've all seen these really traditional preference Center you pick topics or um or channels where you might want to get information and select and toggle on those becoming more and more common on the mobile side to have that um both inside of the app and just on on mobile web as well interest based surveys um sports teams probably do this and sports news apps really probably do this the best I mean we've we've probably all been through this process of downloading a sports app you select what type of play you want to hear about what teams you're interested in and maybe even you want to follow an individual player um there are really cool things happening on on the device now where you can actually get um live lock screen updates with with scores on games or information about a a specific athlete and finally then it it's another thing where we're looking more about contextual data Gathering so these are little surveys um using location anything that we can do to start to really slowly and incrementally gather the preferences that that folks may come in and and want to share with us during all of the um during all of their interactions on the device all right so a couple key takeaways here um again just just a reminder identifying the customer that's going to get folks purchasing more frequently than Anonymous users we want to get the opt in uh when customers are opted in they purchase more frequently and finally Gathering those preferences we want to enable the audience targeting and then that's going to also result in higher conversion rates awesome so wanted to save time for Q&A um oh and I um just going to stop share here in case there's uh there's a panel we need to look at yeah um I don't see any in the Q&A but I have some questions um yeah I was just kind of curious to kind of um ask you kind of back at the beginning uh you mentioned the cost of acquisition um per kind of download um and you said that it's increased over time probably since like 2020 um kind of around the time of the pandemic to now what what is causing the rise in cost per download is it just so many more apps in field um and there's just far more competition or is it the average user becoming more and more in tune with the online landscape and kind of brushing things off yeah there's it's a great question there's a couple of different key pieces of it um first off is the the likelihood to convert from an ad by region is extremely variable interestingly like different regions you know some regions they folks will convert like 30% from an ad to download the app and then others like in in the US I think it's like 1% I me it's very very small um so that's one piece um iOS 14 which is a couple years back that changed the um it changed like the the ad tracking functionality on the on the devices and so because of that places that you were able to kind of follow somebody through it you can't you can't do anymore I'm I'm not I'm not an ad rev expert but that's the like the high level and because of that the amount of spend on ads is is far more beyond that even additionally on that the cost of advertising on social media so your your meta X snap Tik Tok and so on paying influencers all of those costs just actually like media space the cost of those has increased so yeah it's I think it's a lot of factors but the what we're seeing and and when you look at the survey data from actual like from marketers from from B Toc folks they they're just saying it keeps going up awesome thank you well we have a question from the chat um are there any activities that apps offer that are actually affect the participation rate negatively like requiring a credit card for a trial Etc oh so I um Julie I'll have to grab the link to to send you a friend of mine is actually a researcher in this space about specifically about subscriptions um that you might find really interesting because they get into a lot of that fun stuff but at a high level it really is more about how are you communicating the value of whatever it is you're asking somebody to do so that we talked a lot about in the in the slides about identifying so doing a signin right if you're explaining why that important the likelihood of somebody to convert is very high if you're not explaining and you're just popping up one of the operating system prompts or if you do something that's um very interruptive I think you we've have you ever been to like just on a mobile website you go there and the second you get onto it you start getting like modal modal modal before you can even look at anything and those type of interruptive experiences actually have they have negative impact it's not so much about the ask or what you're you're requesting that somebody do it's about how it how it hits from a from an interaction perspective effective um so it's it's timing uh context um when I'm talking to customers I always I really want to recommend that folks um they give people the opportunity to interact with the website or the app before making an Ask unless unless you're like a bank right like like if you're a bank you probably have to have somebody log in before you can do much else but if you're a Commerce if you're news Sports all of those give it let people have a taste let people understand what they're walking into before you start bombarding with requests okay um and I actually have another question kind of to piggyback off of that um in terms of industry do you see is there any industries that outperform others when it comes to the kind of like uh optins um like the push notification or the opin services um that are provided so like for example like you see more in Tech than the outdoor industry or than in automotive sales or stuff like that um news is one that's really interesting um typically what we see there are sort of super fans where uh more is more um so as an example those those live um the live updates for especially for sports news people who are getting those live activities and if you haven't seen that on it's called live activities on on iOS and then there's um Airship built some Android technology to do a similar functionality so you can get it on an Android lock screen now as well but the um these are like the score updates from from sports news venues that actually increases the amount of times folks come back in to the app by like 300 plus% so the the more we're getting information to them the more updates they're seeing it just it drives this massive continuous Behavior which is is huge for ad Revenue um on the flip side you know you've got like your Commerce apps they it's it's a lot more delicate how frequent you're sending requests right because you know Commerce apps like are you giving something informational or are you just saying buy something buy something again right so it's like what value what value is in sending a push like that and that's that's really where the segmentation comes down um but I'd say the the really high frequency stuff that I see is in is in news um news uh sports are are really big ones the actual op rates themselves um that again is it's really variable by the category but um I'd say common across all categories is that you have um you have a real a pretty big distinction between average and and Hy performers okay um I'm just going to give it a little bit more time see if anybody's typing away um awesome yeah and while you're doing that I'll just um I'll just pop up my um my LinkedIn yeah absolutely here in case folks want to connect um I'm always posting research about mobile stuff so really you know happy to to talk and and share more if you're interested in the space um we're uh we're moving away at all the stuff here at the Airship side and definitely love to share the research awesome oh oh and I think I lost your audio sorry uh muting and unmuting is a a problem for me um well I think that should wrap it up here um just wanted to say thank you for your presentation and your time I found it very interesting especially somebody who uses his phone every day um and kind of seeing some of the under the hood stuff about it so just want to say thank you again awesome well thanks for having me great to great to see you all
