We are moving into an era of “super apps”, with developers intent on persuading users who have downloaded their app to access ever more services and features. How, though, do developers manage that feat when most users are typically focused on a small number of use cases for each app they have? San Franscisco- and Bengaluru-based start-up Plotline, which will today announce a successful $2.6 million fundraising, claims to have the answer.
Plotline targets the marketers who are charged with getting app users to do more than just continue to access the core services that persuaded them to download in the first place. These marketers have pretty limited tools at their disposals – they can use email campaigns and push notifications to tell app users about what else they could be doing, but these have poor take-up rates; click-through rates of 1.5% or less are common. Alternatively, they can ask app developers to engage with users inside the app, but they have to join the queue of people in the business seeking to make changes and updates.
In any case, in-app marketing is difficult to get right. The average user spends just 40 seconds in an app in a typical session, usually opening it for a specific purpose and then moving on. That’s a very narrow window for marketeers – even assuming they can get their message on to the app in the first place.
“This is a real problem for any business hoping to expand its app with new products and services,” says Shubham Jindal, who co-founded Plotline with Adarsh Tadimari. “As apps transition from single-function tools to vertical super apps, there is a real puzzle about how to unlock their full value.”
Jindal is convinced that Plotline, an app adoption platform, can play a crucial role in solving that challenge. Its platform syncs with the clients’ app in order to recommend campaigns that marketers should run to build broader engagement; it will also develop the campaigns on their behalf.
Crucially, these promotions happen inside the app. And they are personalised to each user. Plotline’s technology uses artificial intelligence to analyse how users with different profiles behave and what they’re most likely to be interested in. A user who has just downloaded the app, for example, will see different promotions, nudges and options than someone who already uses it for multiple services.
“Web personalisation has now reached mass adoption, but we’ve seen far fewer efforts at mobile personalisation,” Jindal explains. “We think it is crucial to driving up engagement rates.”
That said, Plotline advises clients to tread carefully – by setting limits around the volume of messaging that users receive, for example. “There’s a fine balance to tread between spamming users with marketing messages and encouraging them to use more of your app,” warns Jindal.
Launched in 2022, Plotline has built up its client base steadily, with around 50 customers now onboarded, and is on target to bring in revenues of $5 million this year. Jindal says early adopters are now shifting to extended contracts following encouraging results from using the platform. One client is recording triple the number of click-throughs on its in-app campaigns compared to its previous approach, he says. Another has improved its activation rates by 120%.
Fintech app developers are a particular target for the company, with several clients from this sector. “We onboarded Plotline to create app widgets effortlessly and scale in-app as a growth channel – this has helped us drive adoption and reduced the burden on internal teams”, says Minal Thukram, vice president of growth at cryptocurrency specialist CoinDCX.
Carter Hansen, head of marketing at banking services specialist Step, is also positive. “We brought in Plotline to increase onboarding and product adoption within our app,” he says. “We can move faster and have seen strong conversions on our early campaigns.”
Today’s fundraising will bring in capital for investment in further product development and expansion of the sales and marketing team internationally. The $2.6 million is coming from technology investor Elevation Capital.
“With the rise of vertical super apps, Plotline helps consumer apps cut through the noise and deliver the best in-app experiences through their no-code platform that allows growth marketers to craft and launch tailored user experience campaigns,” explains Poorvi Vijay, a vice president at Elevation.
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