Challenges of managing a team for experimentation

Ekaterina shared that building an experimentation culture at Mimo was a collective effort by the whole team. One of the main issues was coming up with high-quality ideas for experiments that the company could run and implement right away. To address this, the company introduced a new format called "the pitch", borrowed from Basecamp, a simple template that everyone could fill in and submit for product manager review.

The company also encountered the challenge of providing the right feedback to colleagues. They set a hard deadline for every product manager to review ideas and give feedback, and introduced a new lighter-weight format called "the idea" for anything seen from a competitor or any insight from a user.

Another challenge was the local maximum problem, which occurs when a company keeps iterating on a certain feature until it reaches a point of diminishing returns. To overcome this, the company needs to switch and find a new idea for experimentation, often through user interviews or surveys.

Why "structured, full-funnel" is the key

Ekaterina pointed out that the key to growing an app's revenue and user base is taking a structured, full-funnel approach, focusing on all aspects of the funnel from organic acquisition and app store optimization to paywall optimization. Revenue is an output, and there are multiple inputs to it. Improving revenue can't come at the expense of other parts of the funnel, for example increasing the number of paywalls might drive more conversions but reduce retention or discourage free users.

Potential trade-offs and metrics

Ekaterina emphasized the importance of defining success metrics and trade-offs when analyzing experiments. Even if you increase conversion, it could increase refunds or decrease the quality of your customers, leading to lower renewals. Potential trade-offs, such as the impact on app ratings of features included or not in free plans, need to be considered.

Lack of segmentation: a common mistake in mobile growth

Ekaterina highlighted one of the most common mistakes in mobile growth: a lack of segmentation, which is a tactic not widely used by startups particularly in the early stages. She recommended doing this even before reaching product-market fit, since different segments might have different needs, and suggested user reviews, surveys, and interviews as ways to gather insight.

More about Ekaterina

Ekaterina Gamsriegler is a seasoned marketer with 13+ years of experience in growth and marketing roles, starting in SEO before shifting to digital marketing and mobile. She has worked at companies including dotDigital Group, IG, SEO PowerSuite, Runtastic, Storebox, and Mimo, where she currently leads the Marketing department. She also teaches digital marketing at an online bootcamp and consults startups and scaleups on growth.

Episode 22 sneak peek

• On experimentation: "It actually makes a lot of sense to invest some time and energy into figuring out some product marketing basics and brand marketing basics before investing into paid user acquisition."
• On nurturing the experimentation culture: "Making this pitching process public and available to every team member helped us a lot to come up with a lot of great experiment ideas for the backlog. However, after some time, we also realized that our colleagues and coworkers are not always getting the right feedback at the right time."
• On segmentation: "I think the most common one is that somehow segmentation is not a very popular tactic that is used by the startups, at least not at the beginning of their journey for mobile apps. I think it's somehow also connected to the lack of product analytics tools integrated into the products at the beginning."
• On full-funnel optimization: "Revenue is an output and there are multiple inputs to it. Starting from improving your organic acquisition and app store optimization and finishing with optimizing your paywalls, it has to be structured, and you have to find these different ideas of which you can estimate the bottom line impact."