When I was preparing to launch the update of Version 2.0 of my apps, my hope was to make a splash as big, or even bigger, as I did when I first launched.
As promised, here is a recap on how it went.
My plan:
-Gather as many people and sites to contact about the app, including all my followers and anyone who had already mentioned the app
-Contact everyone on the same day for maximum potential for online mentions so the apps would hopefully rocket up the list
So how did it go?
I’ll leave it to John Lennon….
“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans…”
The app updates were all approved by the first of April.
I kept making lists of people to contact, and kept saying to myself I’ll get started this week…then it was the next week…then it was the next week.
The first week of May, my dad suffered a stroke, which completely put the breaks on everything else.
When I got the email from iTunes reminding me my apps had been approved and awaiting release for a month and a half that I decided it was time to maybe get moving on it.
GETTING READY
So I chose June 2nd for launch date.
I started crafted the emails and blogposts, making contacts, getting everything ready.
I sent out some emails to people who hadn’t yet reviewed my app with offers for a pre-release version with the mention of June 2nd being launch. I contacted a variety of people who had offered to help me promote the update to let them know it was finally happening. I prepared a list of emails to go out to those who had reviewed the app previously, hoping they might update the review or at least give it another mention.
I was really banking on the support from my followers this update. All the success I had at launch was become of them.
I was worried however, that they might be sick of hearing about my apps. I came up with the idea of explaining to them why their support was so vital.
So I crafted a blogpost/email laying out all the challenges to promoting an app and why I needed their help.
I even threw in some prizes to hopefully make it worth their while, and I made it easy for them to help promote the app by creating a promotion page so all they had to do was click a few buttons.
So I had my lists, had my various emails, blogposts, etc ready to launch…
Then I realized that June 2nd was the keynote for the 2013 Apple World Wide Developer Conference…
Only the biggest day relating to Apple…meaning no one was going to care about my update even if they ended up reading my emails.
Unfortunately since I had a few potential online mentions lined up, all I could do was push my official launch to the next day.
Just to be sure the update would be live, I released it on Sunday.
SO HOW DID IT GO?
June 2nd comes, and that night I sit down at my Macbook and get ready.
I start sending out the emails, set up the tweets and posts on Facebook…
and to be honest…I just got tired of it.
Memories of launch time came flooding back…hours sending out the emails. Getting banned. Getting no replies. I started asking myself…do I really want to do all this again?
June 3rd arrives. That morning I send out the tweets, blog, and Facebook posts. I send out the email to everyone announcing the launch.
And wait to see what happens.
If I needed an answer to whether or not I had used up all the sharing goodwill with my followers, I got it.
Even with the explanation and the prizes, the sharing didn’t even come close to launch. I got bumped up to 50 downloads that day…here’s the graph with the actual numbers…
And it went down from there are you can see.
On this I only have myself to blame of course. I posted too much about the app early on, probably causing people to block my feed, un-friend me, or just plain ignore my posts.
On a positive note, I didn’t receive too many “unsubscribe me” replies from those on my various email lists…but of course they could already have me on the spam folder list.
This leads me to conclude yet again that making a big splash at launch is extremely critical and barring a mention by a famous celebrity or a high profile blogger, your “one shot” at app store success.
Noel Chenier
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