Grow your app installs with App Invites from Google

Posted by Ranjith Jayaram, Product Manager

If you’re looking to drive usage and grow a mobile app, you’re probably testing out referrals, recommendations, and the user onboarding experience. These product flows are resource-intensive to design, build, and optimize. What if you could use a set of tools that help your users share your app, and get more of the right people to download and use your app? What if you could craft a more personalized onboarding experience in your new user’s journey?

Now in beta, App Invites let mobile app developers increase their reach, deep link new users to custom experiences, and tap into your users’ device and Google-wide contacts as a source to drive referrals. This is available for both iOS and Android app developers. We’re launching with UrbanSitter, Yummly, The CW, Coinbase and Picsart apps.

Here’s what some of our early partners had to say:

• For Andrea Barrett, co-founder and VP of Product at UrbanSitter, “App Invites gives our members the ability to easily share favorite sitters with their friends and Google contacts. As a service targeting busy parents, our user growth thrives on social recommendations and word-of-mouth referrals, so Google’s app invites are a natural fit for us.”
• Sharing is an important part of TV network The CW’s app growth strategy. “Tools that help fans of our shows recommend The CW app to their contacts and friends are important. App Invites let’s specific users share their favorite shows with selected friends; its the next evolution of ‘word of mouth’. We’re integrating App Invites into our episode sharing capabilities, so that fans can speak to each other about the The CW app.” - Zach Mannon, Director of Digital Media at Warner Brothers Television
• For PicsArt, their fast growth to 250M installs has been driven by word-of-mouth. “Google’s new App Invites will accelerate our organic growth even further, giving people the opportunity to proactively invite their friends to join our mission of beautifying the world!" - Arusiak Kanetsyan, Director of Content and Communication
• Yummly integrated app invites to expand their user base and generate awareness of their app, by allowing people to suggest the app to those who love to cook or are interested in food. “We see this expanding beyond just inviting new users to join our app. In the future, we hope to use this to share different meal ideas and have the opportunity to share your shopping list with family members or even inviting friends over for dinner. With the power of Google and personalized app invites, making a dinner everyone agrees on will never been easier." -- Brian Witlin, Chief Operating Officer

App Invites is available on both Android and iOS. Here’s what’s in the beta toolkit:

1. Use app invites for expanded reach: Tap into SMS and email invites via your user’s phone and Google contacts.
2. Make it easy for your users to send invites. We’ll recommend their closest contacts to share your app with, and suggest a preferred method of delivery.
3. Send actionable invite cards: Include an install button right in an email invite.
4. Faster Android install flows: Your new Android users can click App Invite and download your app straight from the Play Store, bypassing the browser windows that usually open in between.
5. Create personalized onboarding flows: New users can get deep linked into a specific onboarding experience - for example, you can offer custom discount codes or content.
6. Measure app invites using Google Analytics custom reports.

With App Invites, our goal is to take the hard work out of building user referral and onboarding flows and build a toolkit that works across platforms, so that you can focus on your core app experience. Visit https://developers.google.com/app-invites/?utm_campaign=app-invites-529&utm_source=gdbc&utm_medium=blog to get started To learn about opportunities to re-engage app users using goo.gl deep links, check out this post.

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