3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE - Episode 50: UA Costs Optimization with Ekaterina Gamsriegler

3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE #50: UA Costs Optimization with Ekaterina Gamsriegler

Episode #50 of 3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE featured Ekaterina Gamsriegler, Head of Marketing and Growth at MyGroove. We discussed how to reduce the UA costs.

You can listen to the full episode here:

In this episode of 3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE, George Natsvlishvili is joined by Ekaterina Gamsriegler, Head of Marketing and Growth at MyGroove. MyGroove is an app that allows the user to play instruments together with world famous artists and groove with them in a band.

Ekaterina shares his experience as a Mobile Growth Expert regarding the UA Costs Optimization.

Check out all the other episodes of 3 MINUTES BULLSHIT WITH GEORGE on our website or on Youtube channel.

Connect with Ekaterina and MyGroove here:

Timestamps:

00:00 Dance

00:16 Ekaterina’s Introduction

00:28 Localization Strategy

04:40 Bloopers

Transcript & Key takeaways from the episode:

How to Reduce and Optimize Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

Start with a full-funnel review, analyzing performance from ad impression through purchase to identify where cost increases are occurring.
Factor in seasonality and CPM changes, which may be outside of direct control, and mitigate impact through smart budget reallocation across channels.
Continuously test and optimize creatives to maintain strong click-through rates and avoid inefficiencies at the top of the funnel.
Monitor App Store performance and ASO signals, including visuals, ratings, and reviews, as these directly influence conversion to install and overall CPI.
Track post-install performance closely, including first opens, trial starts, and purchases, and ensure alignment with product and growth teams.
Stay aligned on product, pricing, and CRM changes, as even small adjustments can significantly affect trial and paid conversion rates.
Break down performance by channel and geography, since funnels behave differently across markets and acquisition sources.

CAC optimization requires continuous, cross-functional funnel monitoring - both vertically and across channels and regions.

George: How to reduce and optimize the customer acquisition costs?

Ekaterina: Yeah. I think that's a very common question that I also get asked a lot. And also there are different moments in the work like biweekly or monthly when the customer acquisition costs increase. Unfortunately you have to accept it. And my go-to solution is to obviously, look at the whole funnel first to try to figure out where and what has changed because the funnel is long. It starts from an ad impression and it ends with the purchase. And a lot of things can obviously happen in between. Maybe your CPM has increased and maybe because of the seasonality. There is a Black Friday coming up. So you're suddenly getting your impressions to begin with. Not much you can do about it apart from maybe redistributing the budgets between multiple channels. But then you also have clicks through rates, maybe you have a bench of four five, creatives, which are not very successful. You are running an experiment. Then clicks through rate do not really work out. Then you have the download stage, where you also experiment with your visuals, on the scores, maybe the ratings get suddenly much worse, like all of this like ASO work can also lead to a higher cost per download. The other very interesting part is everything that starts from CPI’s, from the installs, first step opens to purchase. The problem here is that this is usually owned by a different part of the team, which is the product team of the growth team. And it's much harder to always be aware of what’s exactly happening here and there, apart from community and sharing regular updates and summaries of what every team is experimenting with. I don't necessarily see a solution, but what can happen is, your product team has changed the table, maybe the experiment with it. Maybe they just decided to change. Maybe the change the price and, and you've been optimizing for the trial start events or for the purchase events. And suddenly you just get in with fewer of those, not ideal. Your campaigns suffer and obviously something to tackle. It might also happen that the conversion from trial to paid dropped. Maybe there were some changes in the product in terms of features, maybe your ultimate CRM campaigns stop delivering for some reason. It happens sometimes that the backend decides to remove a certain event, which has triggered the campaigns. So it might happen that the CRM has been playing a significant role in this and suddenly just doesn't. So the point here is to look at the whole funnel vertically to figure out what has changed. And another layer to add to this is also to figure out what has changed horizontally in terms of how the funnel looks across the different channels. Maybe you disable the good one, which was bringing the customers with a really low acquisition cost. That will be stupid, but who knows? Then, maybe on the other hand, you distribute the budget differently. So, a funnel can work in one channel but not in another. It can work for the United States but not necessarily work for Germany. So all of these breakdowns are also super important to look at.

George: Got it. So, mostly you have to analyze vertically and horizontally the whole funnel from user reposition per each channel. From visuals, then from product, conversions, app store optimization, the product, what’s going on onboarding and paywall, how people are converted, what they are doing there, and which kind of tests, which seasonality, in which time you launched the campaign is also important. And very important is the CRM and engagement as well.

Ekaterina: Yeah.

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