How-to Guide for Apps: LTV and Churn Predictions in AppMetrica

Step by step instructions on how to use AppMetrica’s new predictive feature to optimize campaigns and minimize user churn

About LTV and Churn Predictions in AppMetrica

LTV and Churn Predictions is AppMetrica’s new AI-powered feature for maximizing revenue from your top-performing ads, and ensuring that users stick around.

This feature allows you to fine-tune your mobile app campaigns based on your users' predicted lifetime value and proactively retain the ones who might be on the verge of saying goodbye to your app. The best part is, the feature starts working from Day 1 of your campaign! The predictions start rolling in the moment you launch your ads and start bringing users to your app.

With LTV Predictions, you can allow you to look into the future of your app and get the most out of your advertising investment by identifying, matching, and optimizing campaigns around users with the highest lifetime value.

With Churn Predictions, you can identify app users with a high possibility of quitting your app, and take immediate steps to re-engage them. For instance, you can send them a personalized push notification directly from AppMetrica.

What you’ll find in this guide:

• How to set up LTV and Churn Predictions in your AppMetrica account
• About LTV and Churn Predictions
• How to segment users based on top LTV and Churn probability events
• How to determine the profit of top LTV users
• How to send postbacks to your ad network and optimize campaigns based on top LTV
• How to segment users based on Churn probability
• How to minimize user churn and re-engage users with high churn probability
• How to set up integrations with Adjust, AppsFlyer, ad networks and other solutions

1. How to set up LTV and Churn Predictions in your AppMetrica account

To start using LTV and Churn Predictions, you will first need to take care of a few easy technical details.

1. Integrate AppMetrica's SDK into your app. Follow the instructions for Android and iOS.
2. After that, make sure your data is loading in your Revenue reports or set up revenue tracking for in-app purchases, in-app subscriptions, and ad revenue.
3. Activate AppMetrica’s PRO subscription plan or request a free trial of LTV and Churn Predictions.
4. Go to Settings → More → Set up predictions for each of your apps in AppMetrica and activate predictions for LTV and Churn predictions. The function is activated separately for each application.

5. Now you can move on to setting up postbacks to your advertising network (part 3 of this guide)

2. How to segment users based on top LTV

First, no matter which report you’ll be using, you’ll need to segment your users based on LTV values or Churn probability.

Segmentation based on top LTV

1. Choose any report — for example, the Audience report.
2. Select «Segment by users + ”
3. Choose the event tag «EVENT_LTV_…» and then include the LTV range:
   1. EVENT_LTV_0_5 — top 5% of paying users
   2. EVENT_LTV_0_20 — top 20% of paying users
   3. EVENT_LTV_0_50 — top 50% of paying users
   4. EVENT_LTV_50_100 — bottom 50% of paying users.
4. Select the date of the event: it corresponds to the date following the installation date.

Determine the profit of various LTV user groups

You can determine the profit that each user cohort with a specific lifetime value brings to your app.

1. Go to Workspaces in the left sidebar
2. Choose «pLTV Overview»
3. Check the date range in the top left
4. Explore the generated Workspace and different widgets in it. You can set up your own widgets as well.

Cohort widgets show how much users from a specific pLTV group brought in on day N after installation

Revenue widgets show how much users from a specific pLTV group who installed the app in the last 30 days brought in during the report period

Retention widgets help to compare the return rate of users from different pLTV groups

Engagement widgets help to compare users from different pLTV groups by time spent in the app

By clicking on each widget, you can go to the full version of the report and change the segmentation conditions, change the report period, and evaluate additional metrics.

2. How to send postbacks and optimize campaigns based on top LTV

To get the most out of your investment, you can optimize your ad campaigns to target similar users with high LTV scores by sending postback signals to your ad networks directly from AppMetrica.

! If you’re running an App Campaign through Yandex.Direct, you don’t need to configure postbacks in Appmetrica. Yandex.Direct automatically optimizes campaigns to attract users with the highest LTV, so everything will be tracked automatically. !

If you use AppMetrica as your primary MMP:

1. Choose which user cohort you want to optimize your ads for: top 5 LTV, top 20, or some other range.
   1. To identify the best cohort, go to pLTV Workspace where you can estimate ARPU of users in different segments or use segmentation and study user groups using cohort report or revenue.
2. Set up the postback signal for your ad networks:
3. Go to «Tracking» on the left sidebar and click «Create tracker» if you don’t have one yet.

4. Give it a name.
5. Choose a partner — an advertising network or solution where you’ll want the postback to be delivered.
6. Scroll down to the SmartLink section to select an app store and its destination URL.
7. Scroll down to «Postback settings» and click «Add postback». The postback destination should be the partner you’ve chosen earlier.
8. Select «Event, ” and, in the dropdown menu, choose users with the LTV rating you want to target.
1. EVENT_LTV_0_5 — top 5% of paying users
2. EVENT_LTV_0_20 — top 20% of paying users
3. EVENT_LTV_0_50 — top 50% of paying users
4. EVENT_LTV_50_100 — bottom 50% of paying users

9. Choose a relevant template for a postback URL — the link will be generated automatically. The postback templates will depend on your chosen ad partner.
10. Double check the next settings.
11. Click the «Save» at the bottom of the page.

Now, your tracking link and postbacks from AppMetrica are ready for your ad campaigns.

If you use other tracking systems as MMPs, you can also:

• export events with logs api / data stream api for your own BI system
• Integrate AppMetrica with ad networks
• Integrate AppMetrica with Adjust
• Integrate AppMetrica with AppsFlyer
• Integrate AppMetrica with other solutions

4. Compare your ad channel performance after optimization based on top LTV

As you identify your top performing users and optimize your ad campaigns to target similar users, you can compare campaign performance.

1. Go to User Acquisition reports.
2. Click on «Groupings and metrics» under the graph and choose the metrics you want to track in the report via «Even metrics — Event count»
3. Customize the report by adding or removing columns.

The various options here will help you compare channels against each other in terms of the proportion of the most and least valuable users by their predicted LTV, their activity, and other metrics.

5. How to segment users based on Churn probability

Segmentation based on Churn probability

1. Choose any report — for example, the Audience report.
2. Select «Segment by users + ”
3. Choose the event tag «Event_CHURN…» and the churn probability you want to see
   1. EVENT_CHURN_0.95_1.0 shows users with churn probability >95%
   2. EVENT_CHURN_0.75_0.95 shows users with churn probability 75-95%
   3. EVENT_CHURN_0.5_0.75 shows users with churn probability 50-75%
   4. EVENT_CHURN_0_0.5 shows users with churn probability 0-50%

Churn Overview in Workspaces

To get a better picture of users who are about to churn and dive deeper into the reasons why, you can see an overview of users with different churn probabilities.

1. Go to Workspaces in the left sidebar.
2. Choose pChurnOverview from the list.

The default widgets will show you things like the channels where users with different churn rates come from, plus their revenue, engagement and retention rates, as well as other metrics.

You can set up your own widgets to get even more insights.

6. How to minimize user churn with Churn Predictions

Churn Predictions allow you to answer a crucial question: How many users are hanging on the edge and, more importantly, what can you do to keep them engaged?

While having users who are about to churn is not necessarily good news, AppMetrica lets you do everything you can to keep them from quitting. For example, you can send a personalized push notification with a discount code or a personalized offer.

1. Go to Push campaigns in the left sidebar
2. Click «Create Push» in the right hand corner
3. Fill out the setup information

4. Check the dates
5. Click «Apply»
6. Check the overview of your settings.

7. Once that’s ready to go, click «Composer» at the bottom of the screen.
8. Get creative: enter your push notification content, including the title and the text that the users will see in their notifications.

9. Create a deeplink for tracking purposes.

10. Click «Submit page»
11. Double check the settings and the previews
12. Click «Send push» at the bottom right.

Your re-engagement campaign is launched!

7. How to set up integrations with ad networks, Adjust, AppsFlyer, and other solutions

Learn how to connect AppMetrica to your ad network for a seamless optimization experience and direct postbacks.

If you use an external solution in addition to AppMetrica, you can integrate them to get an even fuller picture of your data.

3. Save the tracker.

Now the events will now be sent to the ad network of your choice and can be used for optimization. If you want to send events to several different systems, just edit other trackers.

! If you’re running an App Campaign through Yandex.Direct, you don’t need to configure postbacks in Appmetrica. Yandex.Direct automatically optimizes campaigns to attract users with the highest LTV, so everything will be tracked automatically. !

5. Provide links to your application on Google Play or AppStore (one of them is enough).
6. Add postbacks to the tracker. Select the desired event on the Events tab: EVENT_LTV_0_5, EVENT_LTV_0_20, EVENT_LTV_0_50, EVENT_LTV_50_100. Use the eventWithParamsOmniProduction template and in the link that appears, specify the appropriate Event token and App token from Adjust.

7. Enable the options «Send the first event» and «Send postbacks based on the actions of all users.» Do not change other settings.
8. Repeat steps 3-4 for each of the events you want to send to Adjust.
9. Save the tracker.

4. Provide links to your app in Google Play or AppStore (one of them is enough).
5. Add postbacks to the tracker. Select the required event on the Events tab: EVENT_LTV_0_5, EVENT_LTV_0_20, EVENT_LTV_0_50, EVENT_LTV_50_100. Use the eventWithParamsOmniProduction template.
6. Enable the options «Send first event» and «Send postbacks on all users' actions». Do not change any other settings.

6. Repeat steps 3-4 for each of the events you want to send to AppsFlyer.
7. Save the tracker.