| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DvJPZdcrZA |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kty41fzfzt65xnfv7h8r1mkf |
| Readwise ID | 01kty41fzfzt65xnfv7h8r1mkf |
| Date | 2026-05-05 |
| Author | App Masters |
| Category | video |
| Cover image | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3DvJPZdcrZA/sddefault.jpg |
Coming up, I’m going to share with youthree deep linking mistakes that arekillingyour app [music] engagement, and ofcourse,how to fix them. Stay tuned.
[music]>> What is up, App Nation? It is Steve P.Young, founder of appmasters.com,and I want to share with you, before youcan even make money in your app, you’regoing to have to make sure you’re notmaking any of these mistakes. These willbrutally kill you, and I’ve got the statsto back it up, all right? So, let’s nottease it anymore. Let’s get into thisvideo. Here it is, the three criticaland even if you’re not deep linking,these are going to be critical for youto really watch through. So, I want youto really pay attention to the end ofthe video, and if I failed you, well,
leave a comment below and complain tome, okay? Let’s get into it. Threecritical deep linking mistakes that areKilling your app engagement. Before Iget to number one, I want to share thisstat with you. The leading causes ofchurn are poor onboarding, okay? Really, reallyfocus on that. Weak customerrelationships, of course. Poor customerservice, of course. Difficult userexperience. Now, in the age of AI whenyou can build anything your heartdesires, user experience is going to beyour main differentiator, all right? Andobviously ignoring customer complaints.
So, it’s a lot about customer stuff andonboarding and user experience, allright? So, really take care of yourcustomers and even before you do that,so make sure they understand how toonboard properly and obviously use yourapp. All right, let’s get into numberone, and this is app activation. And ifyou got a finance app or you got afitness app, you got any app that youneed some user information on, and youwant to confirm that user information,That’s social media app, maybe budgeting app, app activation is so important, anddeep linking is one of the best ways toactivate them. So, I’m going to show youtwo examples and the stats of why deeplinking works a lot better. But let megive you those two examples, all right?
Here it is, deep linking. So,here’s Seeking Alpha. So, here’s theonboarding screens. Welcome, right?Create your free free account. Happy todo that. Check your inbox. I do that.And then they bring me door straightback once I click the link in the inboxinto the app to get premium access.Seamless, right?I put in my email address, they send mean email, I click on that email, I’mright back into the app.Amazing. That’s good user experience.Good onboarding, good user experience.
Now, I’ve seen this way, manual codeentry where same thing. This is fromMonarch. So, Monarch get me to sign up,sign up, give you their email.
I have to go to my email, put in thecode and do this. Now, probably it’s alot cheaper to do it this way becauseit’s just a code and I can match this upon the back end. I verify the email andthen I have the paywall. So, you’reprobably think, come on Steve, is therethat big of a difference between thetwo?Obviously, one is pretty seamless.Two, you have to remember a codeand you got to input it. You can hit upcopy and paste, dude. Come on, boomer,you just hit copy and paste, it’s thateasy. Let me give you those numbers, allright? Deep linking versus manual codeentry.110%according to our friends at AppsFlyer.110%improvement. Deep linking delivers 110%improvement in day 30 retention whenused for personalized onboarding. Boom.
That’s the seamless process. Why? Manualcode entry according to email listValidation, manual code entry on theother hand, increases the likelihood ofuser errors, which are very frustrating, likemistyping and lengthy or complex codemay discourage users from completing theprocess. Have you ever checked into anairline? You know that confirmationcode? It’s like letters and numbers andall that stuff. Super annoying, right? Idon’t like manual code entry. I like tojust click on the link and go straightback into the app. That’s cool because itmakes me feel good as an end user aswell. This is seamless, so the app mustbe good. All right, so if you have to
pick a way, I’d pick Seeking Alpha, notMonarch’s way. I would get people tosign up, let them go to their emailinbox, click on that little link, andthen take them back straight into theapp. The other thing to improve app engagement because I want to help you, right? This isall about app engagement. So,try to get people to re-engage with anapp. And the most critical time in myOpinion right now is after they’vestarted a trial. Get them to dosomething within the app, all right? Andif you can do that, they’re going tostay within your app, all right? So, letme give you an example.
Here’s an email campaign that we set up.And we used deep linking to take usersstraight into the app and into theworkout. It was a fitness app, and the Awas the benefits of hit workouts versusB our most popular workouts. Now, weonly sent this email to those who haveactivated a trial, and we wanted them towork out because we knew that if youworked out just once, you’re way morelikely to stay on the app than cancel yoursubscription. So, you want to guesswhich one won? I’m going to say A, thebenefits of hit workouts versus B, ourmost popular workouts. You can leave acomment, or you can just think it in yourhead.
You ready?It wasB.
So, our most popular workouts have a 2x theworkout completion rate.So, use email,use push notifications, thecommunication channel doesn’t matter asmuch as the messaging.So, it was thesame email, I just changed the subjectline and I use user psychologybecause most people want to know what’sour most popular.People have FOMO.So, I just said, hey, here’s our mostpopular workouts and then boom,instantly we increase the workoutcompletion.So, an easy way for you tore-engage your users and the mostimportant users in my opinion would bethose who actually showed some intent byactivating a trial because those whodidn’t, they’re harder, they’re a lotharder to get them back into your app.So, for those who are in the fintechspace,well, I want to give you someinspiration from subject lines I knowhave worked in the past, all right?
Our most popular money-savingstrategies? Woo.Why wouldn’t I want to know that? CopyWarren Buffett’s investment philosophy?Now, here’s what we’re doing here. We’reusing social proof. This is WarrenBuffett, who doesn’t know WarrenBuffett. So, you can see there’s certainelements in subject lines that reallyre-engage your users. And the last oneis do this one thing to eliminate 10years off your mortgage. I did that onething, by the way, and that’s why I cameup with this. But so, if you guys wantto know that, that’s just paying morethan what your mortgage should be. So,whatever your mortgage minimum paymentis, if you can afford to pay more, pay alittle bit more and I paid enough toshort pretty much shave off 10 years offour mortgage. But people love onething and numbers, right? Numbers.I think this video has numbers. Allright, the last thing that you can do toactivate or engage your users is theOffline-online connection, all right?
That is it. So, use physical products,use an offline thing, and this isespecially true for fintech companies,who probably have a physical location.Right? I have to go to my bank sometimes,and you have QR codes. So, or you have abooth, and you want QR codes. If you’reVenmo, hey, Venmo me QR codes, right?So, very, very important to have deeplinking if you’re in the fintech, but Iwant to give you some examples of theright and wrong ways that I’ve seen itdone. All right, here’s Nike. I want toshow you this really quick.So, I’m on nike.com, right?I hit open. I don’t have the app. It’slike download, it’s not really open,it’s get. But all right,it is what it is. But I have to gostraight into the app, I have to go tothe App Store. So, I’m going from Safarito the App Store. I downloaded theapp, and now it’s taking me through theonboarding process, right?
Here’s Sephora. So, that’s one way.Nike.com to the main page, right?All right, here’s Sephora. Now, I’m ona product within Sephora right now because Ican add to the basket,and I hit this little get. Sephora’s getinstead of open. I’m like, okay, I’mgoing to hit get, and I don’t have to goanywhere. I’m literally still in Safari.So, I hit get, and it’ll downloadthe app while I’m still in Safari. Andthen this get changes to open. So, Iopen the app, and boom, I’m right intothe app. Now, the thing that I would dois combine both, right? Combine both.
Hey, Nike, allow me to downloaddirectly. Now, what Nike does reallywell is, if you’re in a product, it takesyou directly to the product after youfinish the onboarding, takes youdirectly to the product. But Sephoradoesn’t. I was in the productand now,I’m on the home page. Granted, I waslazy, and I picked a product that was on.
The home page. So it was not that hardto find. But what if I didn’t? What if Ididn’t? Remember our stats.Poor onboarding.Difficult user experience.Okay? Depending on your demographic,you might have already lost them if youdidn’t take them to the spot theyexpected to see. All right? We’re verypicky with technology now. We expect thevery, very best. All right. Now let’ssee how Nike can do this. So imagine youhave a QR code. Imagine you’re watchinga basketball game on Prime TV orwhatever streaming channel, Peacock, allright? It doesn’t matter. And you see aQR code and you scan it and you’re atnike.com now. Because why not? Probablybetter to be on nike.com. So nike.comtakes you to Nike.
It knows right away. Like imagine this.It knows whether you have the app ornot. If it does, you don’t have the app,it takes you to the desktop version. Soopens up Safari. And then Safari, youHave the get button, right? The Sephoraversion. So I hit get or open.
And then I hit open and it takes medirectly into the shoe selected. So thesame shoe. Now I’m in the app. Now appusers, especially if you’re in thee-commerce space or the fintech space,like app users are way more engaged thanweb users.Right? And app users tend to spend moremoneythan web users. So you definitely wantan app user versus a web user. But thinkabout how you can use QR codes for that,even in the e-commerce space. I pulledup this great article here for seamlesscustomer experience, banks turned to QRcodes, right? You see these Venmo, yousee these Cash App QR code codes all thetime.So here I saw this on Google, but youcan see Venmo, Cash App, PayPal, Square,a bunch of QR codes. So if you’ve got aphysical location, if you’re a bank, ifyou’re in e-commerce, have these upThere. I’ve been at a lot of farmermarkets where this is all I see as well.
Now, if you haven’t been using QR codes,here are the benefits, especially if you’re inthe fintech space. User-friendly,obviously, everybody’s got a camera ontheir phone. Encrypts transactions, veryimportant in the fintech space.Real-time analytics. So for youmarketers out there, you get to see howwell your QR code users are performingwithin your app. And are they droppingoff from scanning the QR code toactually installing or registering yourapp.Contactless mobile banking, that’sobvious. Literally, I scan a Venmo and Ican send payment right away. And then ithelps increase customer loyalty. Becauseas I told you, app users are way moreloyal than web users.Now, if you want to learn all about appentry points and app engagement and whybroken deep links actually look like lowEngagement. In other words, if you’reseeing low engagement, it might not bethe app. It might be how they got into the app.
Go check out this article fromAppsFlyer. It is the five entry momentsengagement teams in finance can’t affordto break. It is truthfully aimed for ownmedia teams. And that what that means isyou own the channel, so you own themedia. That is, you own social mediahandle, you own the email, right? You’renot doing push. These are people thatyou can pull into your content. So thatmeans what? You own it, right? It’s forthose teams in the fintech space, but alot of great general advice that you canuse. And for me, and some of the successthat I found in the app marketingagency, it’s literally because I borrowed
them from web marketing, right? When Italked about long paywalls, web. When Italked about conversions, I knew when Istarted talking about 2019, I was like,“Hey,CRO, nobody’s talking about in the appspace. Let me be one of the firstones to talk about it.” And I was. So Iwould say go read the article, whetheryou’re in the fintech space or not,because you’re going to learn a wholelot that you can use, whether you’re inhealth and fitness, education, any othercategory.
All right. If you want the link to thefull article, it is in the YouTubedescription. And for those of youwho are not watching me and listening tome instead, well, it is in your favoritepodcast app as well. It’s definitelyworth the read, so [music] go check itout. Lastly, if you want to learn moreabout deep linking and you want to use adeep linking solution from a trusted,[music] one of the biggest names in theapp space, well, AppsFlyer has a deeplinking suite that you actually don’teven need. You’re like, "Steve, I justwant the deep linking suite and I do notwant the MMP."Well. [music]And that link is in the description below as well. And you’ll be able toaccess>> [music]>> AppsFlyer’s deep linking solution. No need for the MMP. You can just getstarted with their deep linking solutionand really start engaging yourusers. Give them a seamless process. All>> [music]>> Until next time, I will see youon the next video.
[music]