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App marketing has many moving parts, and marketers must also create multiple journeys to reach and retain consumers on their terms and on the channels they appreciate. The challenges of managing one or a few apps for a single brand can be daunting. Imagine if that challenge were multiplied exponentially, with over 200 apps and a multitude of customer segments to serve.
This is the everyday reality at Maple Media—a mobile media, advertising, and technology company that acquires and operates hundreds of category-leading consumer apps on the App Store and Google Play. As VP of Marketing, Ashley Fauset markets hundreds of apps over multiple verticals to optimize engagement, retention, subscription revenue, and ultimately, growth. How does she do it?
For one thing, she applies extensive experience across several industries, having seen the business from both sides, both determining strategy and driving execution. Fauset spent much of her career at early-stage startups and co-founded two companies on her own before taking the position of Chief Operating Officer at Stardust, a social app for TV and movie fans.
At Maple Media, she markets a massive portfolio of mobile apps and games, touching on all verticals—from productivity apps, social media, photo editing platforms, and podcasting apps, to games that run the gamut from Solitaire, MahJong, and Sudoku to skateboarding and snowboarding. This variety, says Fauset, “keeps it really exciting and fresh, and every day is a new opportunity and a new challenge to tackle.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge is tailoring offers to a wide variety of customer segments. Subscription apps are becoming the dominant monetization model at precisely the time when courts have ruled Apple cannot stop app companies from steering their users to other payment options. This means that companies can potentially keep more of the cash, but they also have to understand the signals and signs that a user is likely to commit to recurring costs. They also have to deliver value worth paying for.
Sensing a business opportunity, Fauset hints that Maple Media is adapting to take advantage of the changes. Part of her strategy, as she explains, is to “not only manage the payment process and dodge some of the markup on the Apple side but also to be able to make the experience better for the end-user.” This fall, she’s gearing up to launch a new “bundle that will package some of our productivity apps as an all-in-one, at a really great price for users.” That, she says, will “help us introduce our products to a broader audience that we’re already talking to, but because they live in different buckets, there hasn’t been a lot of crossover communication.” Until now.
In this episode of CleverTap Engage — our podcast/video series where we interview marketing leaders achieving meaningful customer engagement — co-hosts Peggy Anne Salz and John Koetsier sit down with Ashley Fauset to discuss how she harnesses pricing and personalization to keep users loyal. 
Messaging must be engaging and personalized to get mindshare, but subscription apps also have to win wallet share. This is where Fauset says pricing is part of effective marketing and segmentation.
“One thing that we’ve found to be really beneficial is price elasticity,” she explains. “So we’re open to incrementally increasing or decreasing a subscription price based on the data or the conversion rates that we’re seeing.” For some of our apps, we offer a free trial, and the length of that trial also depends on the kind of app. So we’re looking at free trial-to-conversion [rates], and then subscription renewals. And we’re playing with a lot of different durations.”
Price also has to be tightly linked with intent. Fauset notes that prices can be higher for a high-intent use proposition, like people who are traveling and using an app daily.
The pace of renewal is also a factor. The majority of the apps that have subscription models are either monthly or annual subscriptions. “From a revenue standpoint, its annual recurring revenue is definitely more desirable; you’re reminding users less frequently that they’re paying for your product. Users also have that duration of time to really make using your app a habit. With monthlies, there’s a little bit more friction; they’re being reminded, maybe they’re going to drop off.”
Finding the right fit between product and marketing is an ongoing process. But Fauset also highlights a constant that marketers can count on: the power of retention. “One thing that we’ve definitely recognized is that users who have converted or have been a subscriber are more likely to convert again,” Fauset explains. “If you think about, you know, retention versus acquisition, it’s always easier to keep a user than to get a new user.”
“You have to be smart about the messaging and the timing,” Fauset says. A fail in her book is the classic example of a department store purchase follow-up. In this scenario, messaging and emails ask the consumer (who just purchased the same item from another channel) if they would like to buy the same item again. It’s a data disconnect that smart marketers could and should avoid.
In her view, marketers should recognize when a consumer has engaged with them via another channel and adapt messaging to reflect this. But it’s not enough to personalize the offer; the tone should also address us as individuals. “If you’re going to attempt personalization, you can’t just do it halfway. You can’t just add somebody’s name into an email,” she implores marketers. “Be honest and transparent and speak to the user, as a human being, as an individual. Because that’s when people will listen. Nobody wants to feel like they’re just one in a crowd that you’re shouting through a megaphone to.”
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Ashley Fauset
One thing that we’ve definitely recognized is that users who have converted or have been a subscriber are more likely to convert again. If you think about, you know, retention versus acquisition, it’s always easier to keep a user than to get a new user.
John Koetsier
How do you manage a portfolio of over 200 apps with hundreds of millions of users, most of the Marketing Leaders that we chat with manage one or maybe two, maybe even three apps for one singular brand. Our guest today, however, markets hundreds of apps over multiple verticals, to optimize engagement, retention, subscription revenue, and ultimately, growth. My name is John Koetsier welcome to CleverTap Engage.
Peggy Anne Salz
My name is Peggy Anne Salz. Of course, CleverTap Engage is all about finding the best mobile marketers on the planet really, and sharing their secrets with you. We’re chatting with Ashley Fauset. She’s a marketer with extensive expertize and experience across several industries, right? She’s seen the business John from both sides, determining strategy, driving execution, she spent most of her career or much of her early career at early stage startups. Co-founded two companies on her own before moving to take a position of Chief Operating Officer at Stardust, a really cool social app for TV and movie fans. And now she is today VP of Marketing at Maple Media, a mobile media advertising technology company that acquires and operates category leading consumer apps on the App Store and Google Play. So welcome, Ashley, to CleverTap Engage.
Ashley Fauset
Thank you, Peggy and John, it’s really fun to be back chatting with you, Peggy.
John Koetsier
Wow, you are super accomplished. That is impressive. I love people who are in marketing who have actually started their own companies. That is really, really interesting because, you know, honestly, that teaches you something about the entire business that you don’t learn when you’re just in the marketing role. So super props for that, you know, we have a whole script and I want to get into all the questions that we got for you about subscriptions, and retention, and engagement and stuff. But Maple Media, that is a sort of House of Brands in a sense. Can you give a sense for people who are watching, you know, who is Maple Media? What do you do? What are your some of your key apps?
Ashley Fauset
Sure. Well, like you mentioned in the intro, we are a mobile media and advertising company that acquires, owns and operates, you know, a massive portfolio of mobile apps and games. And so, you know, we sort of touched on all verticals, from productivity apps that are sort of used on a daily basis to social media, photo editing platforms, casual games, from Solitaire to MahJong, to Sudoku, we have podcasting apps, and you know, skateboarding and snowboarding games. So we really span the whole gamut, which keeps it really exciting and fresh, and every day is a new opportunity and a new challenge to tackle.
John Koetsier
Clearly Maple Media is like the VC of mobile apps, you’ve got some amazing ones there. I noticed some names that I recognise because of course Peggy and I are in podcasting, you got some really big podcasting brands there. But let’s jump into our questions here. I mean, you don’t just run marketing for one app, that’s typically the challenge that we talk to people about right? You lead a team of marketers who manage 200 plus apps, that’s got to be pretty different. How on earth does that work?
Ashley Fauset
Great, great question. You know, because we have such a variety of categories, there are some apps where marketing is a little bit more plug and play, right? So the hyper casual games, we’ve sort of drilled that into a science, a lot of that kind of runs behind the scenes, we’ll make tweaks here and there, as we go along. Marque apps definitely require a lot more attention and care throughout the process. And so really, we look at where the opportunity is for growth, where the opportunity is, you know, to grow not only the user base, but grow revenue, grow subscriptions. And so we really focus on I would say, between eight and 10 of our really most popular apps.
Peggy Anne Salz
So just eight and 10 at one time John, that’s not too…
John Koetsier
No biggie.
Ashley Fauset
You know, just let’s just eight or 10.
Peggy Anne Salz
That’s a walk in the park. What I love about you, Ashley, and I’ve known you for a little bit longer is that you do love a challenge and you have a challenge because you’ve got to align product and marketing. And that’s what everyone has to do right now. But there’s a lot of tension, well I wouldn’t say a lot of tension, but there is some tension between product and marketing because product is like they love the product right? And they’re looking at the features, and you’re looking at the marketing. So you’re maybe saying, hey, that feature you love so much? Well, that’s the one they’re dropping out on in the onboarding, and you need to fix it. So, there’s a little bit of back and forth there. They love a new feature. And they’re like, hey, market it and put it in the campaigns. I’m curious how you balance that and broker that, because it’s a difficult exchange, but it can get amazing results.
Ashley Fauset
I think that’s one of the biggest challenges probably at any mobile app organization. Like you said, the product managers are, I mean, the apps are their babies right there? So it’s near and dear and the features are very personal. And they shepherd those from inception, to design, to development to testing. But, from a marketing perspective, when a new feature is launched, or a new product comes on the market, we really have to look at the data to understand how users are interacting with that feature, if it is, like you said, a point of drop off and the funnel, and there has to be really good communication between the two departments to really, you know, sort of weed through the noise of like, but I love this, I love this feature and we work so hard, and the design is so cool to like, yes, but there’s something about it, that seems to not quite be clicking with users. And so there has to be some trust between both sides of the teams, you have to leave your ego at the door. Right and just try to figure out and distil it down to what is working and what isn’t, and be willing and flexible to change the things or make some iterations so we can get the features to a better place.
Peggy Anne Salz
I’m also hearing in the market that it’s a little bit about, they want different data, you want different data, it’s sort of you own the data, you have to figure out how to get data to each person, little bit of democratisation of the data, as well. And also bringing people literally onto the same page. I’m just curious in that, because it is about data driven marketing, and it is about engagement,
Ashley Fauset
The product team, you know, reports on a lot of the KPIs and metrics on their side, so they’re looking at a lot of very specific usage points and active users and how many times users are engaging with a particular feature? We’re really looking at the data from like, a broader sense, right, we’re looking at are the ads that we’re running to acquire new users that are highlighting this particular new feature – are those converting? Is that helping people get into the funnel? Where are sort of the points of drop off? How can we understand from a marketing perspective, how the product is being perceived, and then sort of share that data. So the marketing team or some of the marketing team sits in on the product updates, where their data is being shared, we invite the product team to the marketing meetings where they can see the data that we’re looking at. And then we find where the data intersects and there’s opportunities to share and brainstorm and carve a new path.
John Koetsier
Let’s talk a little iOS 14.5, and 1815, which is coming up in three days or something like that, it’ll drop, how did you navigate losing the IDFA, making decisions about whether to ask for it or not, implementing some sort of attribution via SKAdNetwork, all that stuff? How did that work for you?
Ashley Fauset
Well, I cried. I did. Okay. I mean, it’s something that from a digital marketing perspective has been absolutely crucial and so it almost feels like losing a limb. And there’s all of this data and aggregation, and great, we know overall, how many users came from a particular ad, but it makes it really challenging to personalise the rest of the user experience. I’m on iOS 15 already, and I always opt in, and I share my data just because I feel the pain that we experience in this industry. But you know, there are some really great tips and tricks that I think marketers have used along the way where if you know a particular user came from a specific ad or channel, you can sort of serve the same creative or use the same messaging in their onboarding flow, or maybe it’s triggered email that you’re sending, because, you know, they came from Facebook, or you know, they came from Google. And not having that one to one info makes it, it makes it really challenging. So you know, we’re constantly brainstorming right now of how do we continue to personalise? Especially because a lot of our apps don’t require our users to create an account. So how do we get that extra data point? How do we decide, maybe our solitary users do need to give us our email because for whatever reason we dream up, and then we can make their experience more personalised.
I think another thing to know, beyond the attribution side of things is now with iOS 15. There is mail protection privacy. So KPIs that, you know, email marketers have been relying on, you know, open rates is gonna go away, IP address is gonna go away. So how do we, how do we segment users based on where they are? Right? We have one of our top apps is high def weather. And it’s a really popular weather app. And obviously, there have been all sorts of hurricanes and storms and fires and crazy weather. And we don’t really have the opportunity to message and say, Hey, everybody in Texas, there is a storm coming your way, like make sure you know, bring your umbrella, or, hey, it looks like it’s gonna get hot up in the Pacific Northwest, fire warning. So we’re, we’re more limited from an engagement standpoint. So, you know, as the industry changes, we have to change and get even more creative.
John Koetsier
That’s really interesting, actually, because that speaks to the product marketing mix that Peggy was talking about, because you might have to redesign that product to get somebody who has signed up and given you some information, or prompt them as to why they should go into their settings and make a change.
Ashley Fauset
Yeah. And it’s about messaging to and helping the users understand the value of sharing that information with us. So like, you know, enable location services, so we can let you know when a storm is coming. Or on the other side of that, from a product data perspective, how do we start building segments of users who seem to be zooming in on Texas or keep checking, you know, for lightning alerts, maybe we can then draw some insights or add people based on user behavior, and then make a best guess, there.
John Koetsier
One really interesting thing, Peggy, before I hand it back to you is that I heard from Ashley that I have not heard I mean, we’ve been talking I was 14.5 and IDFA and ATT for months now, and I have not heard this and it makes perfect sense. The onboarding experience, if you wanted to customize the onboarding experience, you don’t get the post back right away, the post back might come 24 hours later, it might come three days later, depending on how you set it up. So you don’t have that immediate knowledge of what campaign somebody came in from, or what channel they came in from and you can’t immediately personalize that onboarding, that first experience. That’s a good point.
Peggy Anne Salz
To her point, you know, there’s a reason to opt into tracking. It’s not just like a political decision.
Ashley Fauset
But I think that’s where messaging comes in, you really have to explain why we need the data, right? And then if you if the users are really clear on what you’re going to do with it, and why you need it, and how you’re going to use it, then they might be more likely to opt in. But I think it’s that transparency, that is key. If you’re just asking to ask, it feels a little more, what are you going to do with my data, but let me know where you are so we can we can make sure that you are aware of the weather in your area.
Peggy Anne Salz
You talk about value, the value proposition of the app, I want to get back to the apps and I want to talk about understanding the value exchange because you have a lot of productivity apps, also the weather app we’re talking about where you know, audiences get it, they understand the value exchange, and they’re gonna buy into it. But you also want to make certain that you continually and consistently attract the high value users from the get go, that seems to be the prize, right? I’m wondering, first of all, what does a highly engaged user look like to you? Because you have to fish where the fish are? What do they look like?
Ashley Fauset
I mean, it depends on the app. So Stocks Plus is one of our most popular apps, providing daily market updates and news and insights, you know, right from the palm of your hand, so are engaged users that are using stocks apps are in there, Monday through Friday, right? There’s high engagement every day, maybe they’re launching the app several times a day, or they’re getting push notifications about something in their portfolio that they’re watching. They want to know if Apple stock went up, they want to know what’s happening with Tesla. So there’s engagement metrics around that. And then another one of our great productivity apps is called Dialogue, which is a translation app. So voice to speech recognition, you can take a photo of a menu or have a sign and it’ll automatically translate. So there’s a much more high intention around that that app, right, maybe users are downloading it because they’re travelling overseas on vacation. They’re on a business trip. And so maybe a highly engaged user is opening that, you know, 10, 20, 15, 50 times a day. So it really varies and that’s part of the challenge of marketing a portfolio of such a broad range of apps is really drilling into the specifics for each one. I can’t just say from an overall perspective, engagement looks like this, but it varies wildly. And we have to pay attention to that.
John Koetsier
Let’s talk a little bit about subscriptions. That is a super hot thing. It’s been a super hot thing for over a year, obviously. But I think even getting hotter right now given on the iOS side, the ability to potentially manage payments yourself, and potentially take more and not give Apple 30%. So your goal may bolt in a lot of your apps, I’m guessing maybe not the hyper casual. But in a lot of the apps is to drive subscription revenue. How do you do that? How does personalization fit into that?
Ashley Fauset
Great, I mean, testing, testing, testing, right? We are iterating all the time, one thing that we’ve found to be really beneficial is price elasticity. So we’re open to, you know, incrementally increasing or decreasing a subscription price based on sort of the data or the conversion rates that we’re seeing. There are some of our apps where we offer a free trial. And the length of that trial also sort of depends on the kind of app. So it’s interesting. So we’re really looking at free trial to conversion, and then subscription renewals. And we’re playing with a lot of different durations. So the translation app dialogue that I mentioned, we offer on a weekly subscription base, right? We talked about the high intent user proposition, like people who are travelling, who, who needs to be able to use this on a daily basis. But the majority of the apps that have subscription models are either monthly, some of them are annual subscriptions. And it’s really interesting, because from a revenue standpoint, its annual recurring revenue is definitely more desirable. And also, you’re reminding users less frequently that they’re paying for your product, right? So, you know, so you’re not saying like, hey, you know, you’re repaying us again, today. And also, they have that duration of time to really make usage of your app a habit right, they, it’s, it becomes part of their daily life, they’re using it. Whereas monthly, you know, there’s a little bit more friction, they’re being reminded, maybe they’re going to drop off. So it’s challenging. So, the other challenging thing about a yearly subscription is that we have to wait a whole year for the data. So in terms of lifetime value, or things like that, we can’t act as quickly as we can from monthly subscription. So we can’t get out, iterate or make adjustments, or react in real time. But in terms of whether or not we’re offering a trial really depends on the product itself. Pick stitch is a popular photo editing and collage making app. And so in Pick Stitch, we do not offer a trial, because the value prop is pretty clear. Swift Scan, which is our PDF document scanner, we tested taking the free trial out, and conversions dropped. And we realised, okay, now this is an app where people really need to be able to get in there to play around, understand how it functions to see all of the features. And so it’s also about kind of figuring out the messaging or really proving the value proposition to your users.
John Koetsier
So crazy just listening to this, because usually Peggy and I are talking with a person who has one app, right. And they’re marketing that app. You got learnings across many apps, and you can apply those to the other apps. The other thing that I picked out of there, Peggy that was really interesting, that echoes a comment that we heard, literally a couple days ago, pricing elasticity. And we have heard of people, marketers who are saying you know what, sometimes the price is this much for that user and this much for that user, maybe depending on channel that they came from, maybe something about their usage patterns or other things like that. Very interesting, sometimes challenging waters to be swimming in.
Peggy Anne Salz
So price is one way to address those audiences. And you want to be really precise, you really do as you said, you know, you want high value users, it looks different per app category, but overall you do. But then you’re the kind of family portfolio of apps that you appeal to a broad audience and you want to be broad you want to branch out into those other segments, you know, out onto the fringe of people who are not exactly look alike, but enough like a look alike, that they would be interesting. So how do you actually focus the segmentation? Where, yes, you have personas that are a perfect match. And then you have others that are just trying it out. Yeah, just let’s just see what happens if we if we try to address this audience.
Ashley Fauset
Alright, that’s exactly it I mean, from your core user base, you can draw a pretty clear user persona, as you mentioned. And beyond that, it is hypothesizing and testing. Swift Scan, which I just mentioned, has very obvious business uses. So a lot of our user base are CPAs, or lawyers, or people who are scanning documents for clients and either need to be able to do it quickly on the go, or, you know, are working from home and don’t have their professional grade scanner available right now. So it’s really easy for us to market to that demographic. But how do we expand on that? How do we get more creative and try to find some of those other segments of users who might benefit? So yeah, like you said, this is the core feature and this is the core segment, but like, how else could we use this app? Who else could benefit from it? How are we how do we just stretch our thinking to really invite a broader audience?
Peggy Anne Salz
It’s about stretching your thinking. Now budgets, you can always stretch those you have to have a little bit of a formula going on here and many marketers, you know, it’s the 8020, be safe for 80, splurge on the 20, try something new, take the plunge? Is there anything that you’re looking at that’s similar that says, Yeah, let’s cast that wide net, but maybe not too wide.
Ashley Fauset
I mean, we play by the 80/20 rule, it’s so tried and true. But you do have to get really creative. And sometimes you’ll run a test and see that there’s been really great success with that. And then you can sort of lean into that. One thing that we’ve definitely recognized is that users who have converted or have been a subscriber are more likely to convert, again, if you think about retention versus acquisition, it’s always easier to keep a user than to get a new user.
So part of the strategy is really expanding on the products that we have, and building out additional features that continue to add value. So beyond, you know, sort of the initial subscription tier, we’re looking at ways to build even more premium features, and maybe start to add tiered subscription. So I think a good example, out in the marketplace would be Netflix. And so Netflix, you know, once they launched their streaming service, it was like a flat, this is what it is per month. But then “Oh, do you want to be able to watch content on two screens at the same time, you can do that but then that’s at this tier.” So it’s kind of modelling after that thinking. So right now, in our Stocks app, you know, there’s a premium subscription version. And we’re looking at adding another tier that includes premium news and stock analysis from you know, traders and insiders, that might be appealing to a segment of our existing consumers but gives us an opportunity to sort of level up and increase revenue.
John Koetsier
Given the Epic Games versus Apple Web lawsuit that we saw recently, are you thinking of taking payments in house at all?
Ashley Fauset
We are, and we’re totally ahead of the game. We actually started working on that a few months ago, With the anticipation that this Apple Epic thing is probably going to shake out maybe the first of the year. So I think we started building out our own payment platform around the end of the spring, and are testing it now. And part of that strategy is A) not only to manage the payment process and dodge some of the markup on the Apple side, but also to be able to offer our products and just make the experience better for the end user. So each one of our products sort of lives on its own. It’s its own brand. And while the brands can be well known Maple Media isn’t really well known, right? And so maybe you have Stocks Plus, but you don’t know about High Def Weather or Switch Scan, but you would benefit from those. And so we’re going to come this Fall be launching app bundles.com which will package some of our productivity apps as an all in one, at a really great price for users. So it’ll help us introduce our products to a broader audience that we’re already talking to, but because they live in different buckets, there hasn’t been a lot of crossover communication. And so looking at things like a productivity bundle we’ll be doing some sort of like photo editing bundle, maybe there will be, you know, a gaming bundle down the road. But all of those purchases, like you were saying will live in our platform.
John Koetsier
That sounds like news. I hadn’t heard this before. So I’m kind of excited to hear this.
Ashley Fauset
It’s not live, it’s coming.
Peggy Anne Salz
But it’s gonna be really exciting.
Ashley Fauset
I know.
Peggy Anne Salz
Not only do we have a scoop John, but you know, think about it. This is using bundling to address audiences and segment them in different ways. So if you were thinking, yeah, I want to get that fringe right. And I don’t really want to maybe go beyond the AD 20. Now you don’t you go into a bundle, you get interesting, broader audience and you make money at the same time. And thanks to Epic, you keep it I mean how can that lose?
John Koetsier
100% Peggy 100%. Because guess what, I want that app for sure. But now I can have five apps, right? And somebody else wanted that app, and somebody else wanted that app. But very, very cool. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Peggy Anne Salz
And so early, I mean, I have to say I’d love to know who did that, because that’s a very happy camper there saying yeah Epic’s gonna nail this, you know, let’s, let’s bet the farm on this one. I mean, guts!
Ashley Fauset
We have a really brilliant, forward thinking leadership on our company, running the ship. So that’s all them.
Peggy Anne Salz
I want to come to another topic about your other job, because I think you’re bringing a lot with you from that. And that was when you were shaping communities, cool discussions about awesome movies, we got into some Star Wars debates, I recall
Ashley Fauset
We really did.
Peggy Anne Salz
We really did! We went deep, we went deep. And you’re bringing that with you, you’re not able to necessarily create a community at Maple Media, but you’re talking about these bundles. And you know, there’s going to be some follow on conversation and engagement, messaging and deepening that. What did you bring from Stardust to Maple Media? And where are you going to put that to work?
Ashley Fauset
Honestly, probably one of the biggest learnings is being able to deliver a high quality, usable app that has features that your users are going to engage with. And that’s not nearly as exciting as our Star Wars conversation. I know I mean, but honestly, you know, because of the challenges with IDFA, because a lot of our apps don’t require account creation, we don’t have as much detailed data on our users as we did at Stardust. I mean, it was really easy to find every single user who rated Empire Strikes Back five stars. And, you know, we could get so granular and just the nature of the apps that we have in our portfolio here, it’s just a much different approach. I will say our social media app, we heart it, which is a photo sharing app is very, very community based, has a lot of similarities to the Stardust community, and that they’re just really passionate about the things that they love and care about. They’re a very inclusive and inviting community, finding ways to sort of unite them or introduce the community to other people who are sharing on the platform, or, you know, introduce them to the collections of pictures or articles that we can tell that they would be interested based on engagement of other content on the platform. That’s a really great way for us to continue to weave in the messaging and the community and just continue to grow that.
John Koetsier
Love it. Love it. And Peggy I know you’re a big Star Wars geek. So you must love that conversation. I can possibly one up you on one aspect. Luke Skywalker did like one of my tweets last week. Yeah, Mark Hamill. So that was that was like that made my week.
You have so many apps, you got so many user communities, so many segments. Quite often there’s like one Golden Rule of engagement in each of them. What’s one thing about engagement and user engagement that you wish somebody had told you earlier in your career.
Ashley Fauset
I think you just have to be really smart about the messaging. You have to be really smart about the timing. And, you know, if you’re going to attempt personalization, you can’t just do it halfway, you can’t just add somebody’s name into an email, right? Like that’s not is not personalization. I watch other companies and I see other companies sort of, you know, attempt and trip and fail at some of these things. I will use a department store as an example of you know, you’ll like Did you love your recent purchase? Great, you’ll also love these items. And you know, scan through the little carousel at the bottom of the email and like, oh, you should already you should know that I already bought this item. You should have data on that, because I signed in with My Eat, I bought it on your app, you should know, don’t show me that. That’s a bad experience. And if you’re gonna make an attempt to personalise, be really smart about it. Think about all the edge cases, all the corner cases. And then, you know, just be honest and transparent and speak to the user, as a human being, as an individual. Because that’s when people will listen. Nobody wants to feel like they’re just one in a crowd that you’re shouting through a megaphone to.
John Koetsier
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Ashley this has been so much fun, so insightful. I really do appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us on CleverTap Engage. We really do appreciate your time.
Ashley Fauset
Oh, my pleasure. It’s always so fun to talk to you both. Thank you for having me.
Peggy Anne Salz
I will weigh in again, as well I just appreciate your time but the insights, very straightforward, some really good interesting stuff that you said around engagement and some news about bundling that we will not forget guaranteed! So I just want to thank you again for sharing.
Ashley Fauset
Absolutely. I will keep you posted on the bundling.
John Koetsier
Wonderful can’t wait for our audience if you’re watching the video hey, great check out the audio podcast might be easier to consume on the go probably better when you’re driving if you’re on the audio podcast you want to chill on an evening maybe a Friday evening like Peggy likes you know Netflix and wine and whatever a search for us on YouTube chill watch us wherever you want.
Peggy Anne Salz
And of course as we said this is about finding the world’s best marketers on the planet. We do not disappoint look who we had today. We get their top tips, we get their insights, we focus on major brands with big stories to tell so if you fit the bill, dm John or myself on Twitter or LinkedIn email me at Peggy@mobilegroove.com let’s get you set up on a show for yourself. Until then this is Peggy Anne Salz
John Koetsier
And this is John Koetsier for CleverTap Engage.
