The Knot is the leading provider of wedding resources for couples looking to seamlessly plan and execute dream weddings. By creating personalized web-to-app experiences using Branch Journeys, The Knot doubled conversion rate of pageview to app install in just two months, has continued to reach its goals with Branch. In addition to driving 45% more Android app growth and 35% more iOS app growth, as well as higher user engagement and conversion across both web and app, The Knot has optimized acquisition strategies and product roadmaps with the valuable cross-platform data provided by Branch’s Attribution Engine.
The Mobile Success from The Knot
Founded in 1996, The Knot, the flagship brand of XO Group Inc. (NYSE: XOXO), is the leading wedding resource devoted to providing couples with the trusted information, products, and advice they need to easily plan and execute their dream weddings. The Knot’s native app has long been an essential part of this customer journey, but is best introduced after the couple has started to engage with the brand.
Knowing how and when to introduce the native app as the next step in the user journey has historically been a challenge for The Knot’s product team. If they asked users to download too early in the user lifecycle, drop-off would be high, as app install is a high-friction proces. Introducing the app too far along in the customer journey, however, leads to a relatively low mobile web conversion rate that quickly takes its toll on the funnel.
By creating personalized web-to-app experiences using Branch Journeys, The Knot has doubled conversion rate of pageview to app install in just two months with highly successful app adoption results, and continues to reach their goals with Branch, ultimately driving far higher user engagement and conversion across both web and app.
Beyond Branch Journeys, cross-platform data from Branch’s Attribution Engine has empowered The Knot’s product team to optimize acquisition strategies and inform strategic product roadmaps.
Bridging the Web-to-App Journey
Having inspired more than 25 million wedding plans, The Knot strives to offer the best possible wedding planning experience on the most preferred platforms for couples throughout their wedding journeys. At some point in the consumer journey, they needed to suggest that the user adopt the native app to optimize the remainder of their planning activities. Branch’s Journeys web-to-app optimization platform and the attribution platform made the perfect pairing to help The Knot team to connect the user experience dots with confidence.
The Data-Driven Approach
The Knot has taken a data-driven approach to getting the most value from Journeys. With the highly intuitive user interface, the ability to create unlimited templates, and A/B testing, The Knot quickly achieved a significant lift in conversion by deploying a wide array of banners that leveraged Journeys’ flexible and intuitive audience targeting capabilities.
Customized Journeys for Targeted Audiences
Instead of rolling out a single ubiquitous Journeys banner across the entire website (the fastest option), The Knot analyzed their traffic data and determined what the most important web pages were in terms of volume and intent, and then created custom copy and creatives to match the intent. Creating unique Journeys campaigns for each
section of the site paid off immediately. The team was able to iterate on the messaging extremely quickly, doubling the average conversion rate of pageview to install within the first two months after going live.
Testing and Optimizing
Serving the most optimal banner to the right audience was no easy task, as the user journey is often complex and difficult to anticipate. The A/B testing capabilities of Branch’s Journeys platform were invaluable for The Knot’s product team to test banner elements ranging from design to messaging, and to segment where each banner appears on the mobile website. In addition, Branch’s attribution platform has illuminated where the most engaged and loyal customers originate, and what features drive the greatest value for them (at least initially). These learnings have become major drivers of everything from acquisition strategies to finessing product roadmaps.
From Insights to Actions
The insights from Branch’s Journeys have also provided critical input for The Knot to decide what needs to be built and supported across the mobile website and the app. As the team becomes increasingly drives app adoption with Branch, it has started using Journeys to determine whether a certain feature should be built for the mobile website, or whether a mobile web version is needed at all.
More specifically, The Knot can put up a full-page Journeys banner in a matter of minutes and drive web visitors into the app with the same content in the most frictionless way. This capability enables the team to easily test the ROI of acquiring an app user vs. driving adoption of a particular feature on mobile web, drastically reducing the cost to test new features while speeding up product decision making.
“We’ve long viewed our customer journey as beginning on our web properties but ultimately ending with engaged, native app users,” said Conner Boyd, Senior Product Manager at The Knot. Maintaining the user’s context through the app install, and being able to attribute the download source, has always been a huge undertaking. With Journeys, we’ve quickly deployed and iterated various web-to-app user flows, all while letting us measure every step of the way. We’ve also expanded beyond Journeys to leverage Branch in our email, social, and paid marketing. Long story short, Branch has allowed us to finally start living up to our cross-platform users’ expectations, more or less with the flip of a switch.“
Want more where that came from? Check out the full case study here or tune into the first episode of our Mobile Transformation series, featuring The Knot’s Director of Consumer & Product Marketing, Amanda Goetz!