Lenette Yap

Lenette is UA Lead at Inkitt, a mobile application that publishes novels and books from indie authors. Lenette is a curious person, who loves exploring data and digging into the nuts & bolts of how UA works and how to tackle tomorrow’s UA challenges today. She has worked across a wide range of markets, including entertainment & kids apps, casual, puzzle, mid-core and hardcore games. With nearly ten years of experience in marketing, Lenette helps Inkitt grow globally using cutting-edge techniques in a post IDFA world.

In your own words, tell us about the app(s) that you manage?

Inkitt provides entertaining reads for fiction readers in multiple genres, written by indie and popular authors.

How did you get started in mobile marketing?

My educational background in banking and finance gave me great fundamentals when it came to numbers and data, but led to dull jobs. After a couple of years in the banking sector, I applied for a job at Garena on a whim. To my surprise, I landed a job marketing their published titles like Path of Exile and Heroes of Newerth. I discovered I was passionate about advertising and loved the challenges. Mobile marketing was just becoming a thing when an ad hooked me on Jelly Splash. I fell so in love with the game, that I began spending money on it—and decided to apply to Wooga. That brought me out to Berlin and I have remained deep in the mobile marketing ecosystem since then.

What do you like most about mobile marketing?

Mobile marketing has so much rich data available, but the most critical information is always missing. This presents an endless series of mysteries to unravel. Why do users respond to one ad but not another? Why does one ad-set lead to users with amazing conversion rates but a superficially similar set doesn’t? The tools and technology of the industry are always evolving. Digging into the data, making and testing hypotheses, and learning new things every day keep me excited.

What does it take to succeed in mobile marketing?

The market is cutthroat and always changing with users constantly bombarded by ads. Success requires a cross-disciplinary team with Marketing, Product, BI, Creative, Consumer Insights all working in tandem. Other important things to keep in mind: 

• There are no quick wins.
• The industry is always evolving. Keep abreast of changes and adapt your methods.
• Every UA strategy needs time to succeed. Optimize your processes for speed of iteration.
• Diversify ad spend on networks and adjust strategy and budgets for seasonality.
• Pick clear optimization goals and give the models time to learn.
• Be open-minded and don’t be afraid to fail, not all experiments are winners.
• Keep your SDKs up to date.

UA is not an exact science. It requires educated guesswork and occasionally going with your hunches. However, it is important to remain scientific, design good experiments, and know what success looks like.

What strategies work best to convert installs into engaged app users?

There’s no one size fits all approach. Leveraging the data you collect is key:

• Know your audience demographics, interests and motivations.
• Work with BI or Data Science to identify early app events you can optimize on.
• Leverage machine learning or automation wherever possible. A machine will always beat manual efforts.
• Work with Product to ensure users are not dropping off during onboarding.

In the past year, what is one tip you can share which made the biggest performance difference for your UA strategy?

Be the brains of the operation and outsource repetitive menial tasks to machines. Good tooling allows you to automate pieces of work that are tedious and enables you to spend time on what machines can’t do. Focus your attention on the big picture, and think strategically. By leaning more on tooling and automation, I had the time to explore opportunities in the post-IDFA landscape. This led to building new ways to measure ad performance, diversifying our channel mix, lots of experimenting, and constantly iterating on the whole process. It translated to several big wins that would have been missed if I had focused all of my attention on campaign optimization.

What advice can you offer marketers to successfully re-engage mobile app users?

Pair your marketing efforts with in-app promotions and events. Things like seasonal events, new content updates, big new releases are the best time to engage with users.

What’s your top tip when it comes to mobile ad creative?

Focus on optimizing for click-through rate (CTR) and Installs Per Mille (IPM). High IPM ads usually translate into lower CPI/CPAs, which means more traffic and the ability to acquire users cost-effectively at scale. Have a media mix of fresh & appealing concepts, varied ad experiences, and test different ad copies. Focus on testing creatives with broad concepts, and iterate on winners. Remember to watch out for ad fatigue, audience fatigue, and refresh your creatives often.

What advice can you offer to help marketers combat mobile ad fraud?

Focus first on ad networks that have first-party traffic as they are the safest bets. For other partners or exchanges, ask about their internal solutions to combat ad fraud at the network level. Are they certified with industry regulations? Do they have strong internal ad fraud solutions/content verification tools? Do they have brand safety policies? Do they have reliable reputations? Ask the community for feedback. Fellow marketers are often quite helpful in sharing their experiences.

What are your top 3 go-to resources for keeping up with the mobile ad tech industry?

External partners, industry connections, and Mobile Dev Memo.