Time to say goodbye to the bunny-shaped confectionary and too-tempting chocolate eggs you promised yourself that you wouldn’t eat all in one sitting – until next year!

With another holiday season over, we’re left contemplating the huge impact that seasonality can have on mobile marketing, with the potential to positively affect every stage of the user lifecycle. Optimized metadata is key to unlocking this impact.

From creatively optimized, time-sensitive in-app events to custom product pages (CPPs), seasonality is a great opportunity for growth via paid acquisition (PA) and app store optimization (ASO). It can also encourage re-engagement for dormant users, using messaging campaigns.

In tandem, these produce a valuable uplift in user conversion rates.

Types of seasonality

Seasons are highly influential in consumer behavior. As new holidays approach, user searches change accordingly.

We spoke about Easter, a widely recognized and marketed holiday, but seasonality spans beyond the major holidays and includes large-scale events, the changing seasons, and app-specific events.

Famous international events that are relevant to a global audience, like the Olympics, are great marketing opportunities if they apply to your app. As are transitions to new seasons. This is a chance to refresh an app’s image and give it an advantage over competitors who are not doing the same.

App-specific events are another opportunity to capture new users or reach dormant ones. An education app, for instance, would do well to run an in-app event or a push campaign for the “back to school” or exam periods.

Capabilities

Utilizing seasonality across the user lifecycle can produce big wins, including increased user engagement and conversion rates. Using the right approach, some apps have experienced a 15-20% increase in user conversion rates during seasonal periods.

Benefits

Optimizing an app in accordance with a seasonal period creates more value for new users. By showing a greater offering and making it seem current, you can increase your app’s discoverability on the app stores. Alternatively, for existing users, seasonality can be optimized to encourage re-engagement.

Users can also be targeted with limited-time offers, which can create a sense of urgency and therefore increase conversions.

Getting it wrong

There are potential downfalls to sloppy seasonality, like inconsistency. A CPP or in-app event suggests a change within the app which, if not reflected in the actual product, can leave users disappointed. What might have been an initial increase in conversions is then halted when expectations are not met.

Another issue is leaving season-specific creatives up for too long after the event has passed. This can make an app look out-of-touch and irrelevant.

So, how to get seasonality right?

Changing an app’s metadata to become relevant to the period makes it more visible on the app stores. There are three major steps to capitalizing on seasonality:  

1. Research

2. Planning

3. Output

Research

Where does your app stand in the market? How does it compare to competitors and what are they doing or not doing to make the most of the season?

Knowing what seasonal periods similar apps embrace, and gauging industry trends for creative assets – both graphics and copy – is a great starting point for your own campaigns. By identifying what others are missing, you can avoid the same pitfalls.

Research provides an awareness of keyword ranking for your genre of app and the specific seasonal period, information that you can then implement.

Planning

With market research, you can craft your own ideas and hypotheses that you think will prove successful. This includes keywords, creative assets aligned with ASO, descriptive copy for the stores and copy for the messaging campaigns.

Planning far enough in advance gives you the best chance of creating fully optimized metadata. And a content calendar is a great way to make sure you’re prepared, as well as utilizing the optimal time for the season.

Once you’ve decided what is going out and when, you can create the CPPs and in-app events, start getting ranked for keywords and put together messaging.

Output

When things are in full swing, you can start tracking their success and what see variants create conversions. You can then apply this information to decisions going forward.

As they are time-limited, seasonal in-app events are a great way to see what kind of creatives an app’s audience responds well to, by tracking growth metrics.

Case study – aesthetic kit

We’ve already seen seasonality-related success with some of our clients. Aesthetic kit is an app for users to customize their phone’s home and lock screens. This creates huge seasonal potential, which was demonstrated during the recent Christmas period.

Scenario

We wanted to target the Christmas period to increase conversion rates, so we planned an in-app event that ran in the lead-up to Christmas Day. On the 8th of December, we put the in-app event up.

Prior to the festive period, we had produced organic growth for the app. Once we were indexed, we tailored the copy and this produced a massive spike in installs that peaked on the 25th.

Results

Compared to the daily average in November 2022, the 25th of December saw a 244% increase in downloads and a 153% uptake in impressions. This resulted in a 248% increase in revenue on the day.

With the seasonal in-app event, aesthetic kit was able to make the most out of the period and drive their installs, demonstrating the value seasonality can produce for mobile marketing.

By capitalizing on seasonality, apps can stay relevant and make the most out of their brand. Want to make seasonality work for your app? Get in touch, hello@consultmyapp.com.