Liftoff, the leading growth acceleration platform for the mobile industry, unveiled its annual Mobile Finance Apps report, offering key insights on how finance app marketers can acquire high-quality users amid inflation and market volatility.

As customers sought new ways to access financial resources beyond traditional banks throughout the pandemic, banking, investing and fintech apps saw tremendous growth. Such growth, however, meant the cost of user acquisition for these apps spiked, with mobile marketers forced to refine their approach to user acquisition amid an increasingly competitive landscape.

Whether fintech apps can continue to scale will depend on the ability of mobile marketers in the finance space to attract new users. Liftoff’s finance apps data, which draws on more than 182 billion ad impressions and 2.4 billion clicks across 16.5 million installs between June 1, 2021, and June 1, 2022, shares key findings to help app marketers stay ahead of the curve.

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Key highlights include:

• Finance Apps’ Cost-Per-Install (CPI) Shows YoY Decrease
  Over the past year, the average cost per registration (CPR) and cost per activation (CPA) of finance apps both increased, while install to action (ITA) rates fell.
• Fintech Users Activate at Higher Rates Than Banking App Users
  Fintech apps offer a more modern, innovative, and easy user experience. Liftoff’s report finds that though it costs more to get fintech users to register ($17.96), fintech apps activate accounts at high rates (56.3%). Banking app users cost the least to acquire ($1.50), but they register at lower rates (10.2%).
• iOS Users More Costly to Acquire Compared to Androids
  Liftoff’s report finds that platform does make a difference when targeting finance users. In fact, Android users are more cost-effective to acquire than their iOS counterparts ($2.09 CPI compared to $4.35). They are also over 2x as likely to activate (15.9% CPA-activation compared to 6.5%).
• Latin American Users Most Cost-Effective to Acquire
  Latin American (LATAM) users are cost-effective to acquire ($1.60), but they also register at lower rates (18.3%). EMEA users register at the highest rates (34.8%), but only 4.3% go on to activate an account. LATAM users activate at the highest rate of 38.2%.

Proven ad creative tips for finance experts:

• Demystify investing & crypto apps: Make apps look simple, like something everyone can do.
• Drive attributable conversions through email: Email works for iOS, but non-email campaigns remain successful for Android.
• Set up a two-step sign-up funnel: Ask for customer information on a landing page, and after they verify their email, ask them to install the app to complete the journey.
• Gamify your ads: Incorporating playable style ads offer great potential—when approached with caution—as finance apps do not want to appear as games but as engaging, reliable platforms for their users.

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