It’s Friday and we’re in love… with the possibilities for mobile apps & Black Friday. From the app stores featuring paid apps to apps specifically designed to find the best Black Friday deals – mobile developers need to have a strategy for these holidays to take advantage of the Black Friday frenzy and Cyber Monday madness.

Mobile Apps & Black Friday = Timed Sales

Giving a timed mega Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale, regardless of your app’s category, is a great way to drive revenue from paying users and try to convert non-payers into spenders. Food delivery apps can provide a discount code for the evening after all the Black Friday shopping is over to drive sales, subscription-based companies can run a promotion for new users along with a targeted user acquisition campaign throughout the entire weekend, or mobile games can give tiered discounts to spenders vs. non-spenders to drive overall revenue. There are endless possibilities for how developers can implement strategic sales so be sure to take advantage of the opportunity of people in a deal-hunting mood!

For companies who have both mobile websites and mobile apps, like eCommerce sites, we recommend running exclusive deals available on the mobile app only. Mobile apps users spend up to 18x more, have a 120% higher conversion rate, and have a 35% higher repeat customer rate than their mobile web counterparts. Running a campaign to really push your users to your app during Black Friday has potential payoffs much larger than Black Friday itself.

Mobile Apps & Black Friday = Paid to Free

This seems counterintuitive but Black Friday is a great time for mobile app developers to change either their paid app to free or a non-consumable (think character skins, level unlocks, etc) in-app purchase to free. There are a few keys to unlocking this treasure trove of installs and revenue but the potential bounty is huge. First, always have a goal in mind with your campaign. This can be email collection, testing a new retention mechanism, or anything that has potential to grow your app. (You should always be collecting email addresses – but that’s another blog post).

You’ll also need to drive traffic to the app – especially through PR. App Masters has a few key insights on how they were able to drive over 38,000 installs with PR versus only a few hundred without any press. Reach out to sites like TechCrunch, iMore, or AppAdvice to be featured in a publication – and be sure to make a compelling case on why they should feature your app!

During Black Friday, Apple and Google Play feature a ton of apps with special deals – you can reach out to Apple at appstorepromotion@apple.com or try connecting with some key players on LinkedIn. Take advantage of this known opportunity and reach out to them! If you’re too late to the game, shoot for next year!  

What way will you plan on combining mobile apps & Black Friday this year to compete with the frenzy and Cyber Monday madness? (Hint: we just gave you two awesome names for sales within your apps).