In the past I’ve done some experimentation with banner ads, podcast commercials and the like but I’ve found they never really bring in a reliable amount of traffic. They may work well for you, but I’ve never found the magic nut. After the lackluster results I got from advertising Today 2, I decided to instead invest that money and energy into making my applications better going forward. The logic is that if my application is even 10% better, I’m going to get more word of mouth recommendations, which will thus increase sales.
The Press Release
As part of the Elements rollout, I’ve done a few subtle changes to the ways I market and promote the applications. The best way to get exposure about a new application is getting it written about by major outlets like Macworld, 148apps and the like. When it comes to iOS apps, you have to imagine they are bombarded with press releases about the latest and greatest geolocation powered todo lists on the market. How do you stand out from that?
My attempt at standing out was to just send a casual email rather than a formal press release. I’ve never really been a fan of press releases as they are much more pressed and starched than my t-shirt & jeans style, but everyone does them. I wrote up a press release to put on the Second Gear site, but rather than distributing it to the media, I instead popped open Mail.app and wrote up an email explaining what the app was as if I were talking to them over an adult beverage or two.
Did it net me more coverage? I don’t have any firm statistics on that, but it felt like it did. If anything, I think it gave Elements a much more personal and human feel.
Getting Feedback
I refuse to read the App Store reviews for Elements. Rarely have I found reviews on the store to be anything but a place for angry, entitled people to vent their frustrations with emoji poop scattered in between. Since Apple doesn’t presently allow developers to respond directly to AppStore reviews, what’s the point of reading all that vitriol? I realize that feedback is an important part of an application’s development, so I’ve done my best to try and be accessible and curb people from using my App Store page as their soapbox.
As part of Elements’s App Store description I included this blurb:
SUPPORT
Please refrain from sending your bug reports or feature requests using the App Store. Instead, to ensure a direct response from us send them to elements@secondgearsoftware.com. We’re always happy to help our users and receive their comments!
Anyone who is serious about their feedback or really wants to get help with their problem will contact a developer directly. In the past week I’ve received hundreds of emails. So many, in fact, that I’ve had to bring in the big guns to tame the FogBugz queue while I work on the code.((When people bitch about Elements or any app costing more than 99 cents, they don’t take into account the support load a popular app nets. While some may be fine ignoring their customers email and feedback, that’s not something I am comfortable doing. When I email a developer, I like getting a timely response back, so that’s how I run Second Gear))
In the Elements application itself, I also took an hour to add an in-app feedback screen. Under the Settings view there are two rows: “Send Feedback” and “About Elements.” The “About Elements” screen contains links to the Second Gear home page, Twitter account, Facebook page an support site. The “Send Feedback” link pops up a new email message that goes straight to our support inbox with the subject line “Elements {CFBundleVersion} Feedback.” Most people don’t change the subject of the email, so it’s pretty easy to see that people are using that functionality a lot.
Promo Codes
As part of a new App Store release, Apple gives you 50 promo codes that you can distribute however you see fit. For a popular application, 50 codes is not nearly enough.((That’s for another blog post.)) I’m not really big on just giving away the promo codes on Twitter and instead try to reserve them for press, journalists, friends, family and fellow developers. The last three are pretty easy to get codes to, but the press can be a challenge. Because of the press release problem, they are bombarded with a ton of email, so it’s likely you’re promo code is going to get lost in the shuffle.
To count that, I started putting promo code right in the subject of my emails to make it blatantly obvious what the email contains. Who can turn down free software? Once the promo code (hopefully) catches their eye, I write a short paragraph about the app, add a screenshot and then include a 1-click redemption link to launch iTunes and claim the code for the user. I setup a TextExpander snippet to handle this.
The snippet uses TextExpander 3’s really useful fill-in snippets feature. I expand my snippet, it prompts me to enter the code and then pastes it into the email.
Of the 45 codes I sent out, 42 were claimed. That’s certainly not a bad conversion rate.