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Our guest today is Adam Hadi, VP of Marketing at Current. Adam has been a guest before on the show – and has been a guest on our other show How Things Grow, and we are thrilled to have him back. 

Adam talks about how Current has gone beyond Facebook and Google, exploring additional channels – both online and offline. He discusses why they did this – and how they account for complexities of a typical user’s acquisition and adoption path, how they use a mix of messaging and channels effectively to build trust, and how they think about measuring and tracking impact in the absence of precisely attributable data. 

This is very much a masterclass on adapting to the uncertain, unclear paradigm that a transition to offline marketing often entails. Enjoy!






ABOUT ADAM: LinkedIn  | Twitter | Current| Current Careers




ABOUT ROCKETSHIP HQ: Website | LinkedIn  | Twitter | YouTube


KEY HIGHLIGHTS

📋 How attribution has changed at Current

🤯 Attribution becomes more complex with more channels

🌳 The impact of a long product lifecycle on attribution 

🤲 How Current serves an underrepresented group

🏦 Why banking is a high retention sector

🤝 Building trust is very important in fintech

🗺️ The different paths to becoming a customer

📍 It is important to know where your customers are

🧗 Mapping out the multi-step user journey 

🌈 Different strokes for different categories 

👍 Leveraging the implied trust of offline and traditional channels

🧨 Why influencers generate a huge boost

🍊 Apples and oranges: hyper casual and fintech

🎨 The spectrum of direct response

☑️ How to draw the right conclusion from the wrong marketing move

🎚️ The nuances of fintech products

🚀 The impetus to embrace offline channels

🎢 Understanding the stakes of apps

↕️ Banking naturally lends itself to measuring uplift

⚖️ Different challenges for changing scales

🧩 Putting the pieces of user attribution puzzle together

🎤 Qualitative insight from customer interviews is very enlightening

⏳ The importance of predictive events for optimizing a long acquisition cycle 

🔮 Data Science is the future

KEY QUOTES

Why customer trust is critical

If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, and I’m over here asking for your paycheck, what I’m literally doing is asking for all your money. Which is a huge ask, because if that doesn’t work, you’re in trouble. That means you’re not eating; you can’t get groceries. It’s not like you’re in a position here where you are: “Oh, well I’ll just dip into these funds or use this card or that card.”

Consideration phases vary across genres

Now to take that, and let’s apply it to a hyper casual game. These are completely different fields. They’re almost not even worth comparing. The consideration phase to download a bouncing ball app is about three seconds: “Ooh, that looks fun.” and then you do it. No one’s ever seen an ad for a hyper casual game and then searched for it three weeks later, and been like: “Yeah, that’s what I want right now.”

On the spectrum of customer behaviour, something like a hyper casual game is hyper direct response. Something like a bank account is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, where direct response is obviously important, but not the only thing that matters. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s probably something like dishwasher detergent. No one’s ever seen an ad for Cascade pods, and then was like: “Yeah, I got to do this right now!”

The consumer journey is layered and complex

There is a European fintech, who entered the US market with a huge splash—a huge out-of-home splash. If you were in New York, the summer before, they were everywhere. They were there across bus stations, billboards, everything. And so that was a little bit of an experiment, in some form of how did that do. Even just looking at the App Store, it didn’t move the needle at all. 

Now, one conclusion from that would be: “Oh, well, out-of-home doesn’t work.” But I think that will be the false conclusion from that. A conclusion from that is out-of-home doesn’t work, if people have no idea what your product is, or what your brand is, or anything else.

The impetus to move offline

When we’ve talked with our customers, over and over and over again, the conversation always came around to trust. And for us, that’s a really challenging conversation, because I can sit here and shit on Wells Fargo all day, but they’ve been around for 100 years. They have a retail location around the corner from you, where you can go and talk to real people. There’s trust there that would be very difficult for a company like ours, which is just a few years old, to try to rival. And so that’s always been a challenge for us. 

So our question is, well, how do you fast-track that trust?

How to validate offline marketing activities

We use a mobile attribution provider—that shouldn’t come as a surprise—for our digital stuff. But you move beyond that, and we have a ‘How did you hear about us?’ That’s also fairly standard. It is a fun hobby of mine is comparing those two; I think it tells you a lot. Again, and neither are a source of truth, in my opinion, both of these tell you a piece of the puzzle, and then you look at uplift. You have uplift by region, you have uplift by time—both of those exist. There’s pretty well built up models for TV, a linear TV, at least when it comes to time based uplift. 

But actually the most obvious examples for us come with influencers. You have some big YouTuber who puts out a video and gets millions of views in a matter of hours. It’s not hard to see the difference between what you get attributed and what you don’t. Again, the numbers are just so big and so fast, and in a space like that, but that same principle, again, applies to other offline channels. 

There is some difference between attribution and reality

You’ll say, ‘how did you hear about this’—Well, I heard about on Facebook. But that’s different than ‘Why did you download it?’, ‘Why did you sign up?’ ‘Why did you convert?’ And that could be because of our marketing—it could be part of marketing—or it could because my friend told me or my grandma told me or my sister told me. Or I, again, had heard about it on Facebook, and then it was some separate event that actually made me then go and search for it, click the Google ad and download the thing. So there’s all these complex paths that people take. So be able to compare on the user level, your survey response along with your attribution, kind of combine that with the stories that your customers actually tell. And I think you can come up with interesting narratives, which again, do a better job of reflecting reality.

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Shamanth: I’m very excited to welcome back Adam Hadi, to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Adam, welcome back.

Adam: Back! That’s really exciting. Wonderful. I’m glad that the first time around went okay enough to be back.

Shamanth: No, the first time was great! Actually, you’re here a third time, if we count How Things Grow. The first episode we did with you on How Things Grow: that was so interesting and fascinating about how the entire influencer marketing world works; very much of inside baseball. I liked that a lot.

Adam: That was a fun one.

Shamanth: Indeed, indeed. As was the last one we did: how you guys are very brand conscious and how important that is, in ways that I don’t think is very obvious to a lot of folks who are looking from the outside in. And this is number three! So, excited to have you; excited to dive into things that I feel you have such unique insights and perspectives on. So let’s jump right in.

Adam: It’s an honour, Shamanth, because I love this podcast. It’s the Mobile UA Show; it’s for us. But, really, across the industry, this is second to none. It’s such a great source of information. I’ve learned a lot from a lot of the really, really smart guests you’ve had on here, from yourself. So I’m honoured to be able to contribute back. Also How Things Grow: that’s a great one. If you guys haven’t listened to How Things Grow, check that one out. Actually, the episode we did was with an influencer, Sophie, she’s since blown up on TikTok. She does beatboxing, among other things. So it’s a cool thing!

Shamanth: Crazy. And today we’re going to talk about things that certainly include how that affects the marketing world, but certainly is more encompassing than that. Let’s jump in. The last time we spoke, you said: “The one big difference between what we do at Current now, versus two years ago, is that, if a user signed up for Current two years ago: I know exactly how you signed up; which ad you saw; how you went in; and what was your flow. The attribution was very simple, and that’s no longer the case.” Can you talk about what changed?

Adam: Yeah, what’s changed is we’ve grown. And so, when you don’t have that many customers, and you’re not operating on that many channels, it becomes a lot easier to determine, hey, where and why did somebody come in. Now, with a product like ours—and I’ll do a little bit of an introduction here to Current—but with a product like ours, we have a very long lifecycle, and that introduces lots of complexities in that attribution model. 

So yeah, what’s Current for those who are listening: we’re a mobile bank, based here in the United States, for people who are overlooked by traditional banks. If you are a working professional—likely, if you are listening to this podcast—you’re probably decently served by your existing bank: Chase or Bank of America, etc. But for the other half of the country, particularly young people, particularly people who are hourly workers or living paycheck to paycheck, that’s not the case. They’re being charged minimum balance fees, maintenance fees, overdraft fees, literally hundreds of dollars a year. And it’s just a completely irrelevant experience to them. That banking product was not built with them in mind. 

So enter Current. Obviously, we’re far more cost effective, as we’re online-only, app-only. And we don’t just have a business model that can encompass that, but also have a product that’s been built for young people and a brand that’s been built for young people, and aims to solve their problems. 

So we are now touching back on a bit of what that means in terms of attribution. You—listener, I’m speaking to you—have had your bank account forever. Banking is a very, very, very high retaining category. I know I’ve had my bank account for a decade—plus actually. It’s just not something that switches very often. You’ve probably had your bank account longer than you’ve had an iPhone; it’s crazy in terms of the space. 

What that means for us is that we now have over 2 million members; that’s 2 million people who are out there; who’ve gotten the card; who are swiping every day; who are using it; who are telling their friends; who are paying with their Current debit card; who are getting paid and getting notifications, saying, “Hey, you just got paid. You got paid faster—this is great.” That’s actually happening now in the world, which creates a little bit more complexity. 

On top of that—from our customer acquisition funnel—there is a very long consideration phase that goes into it. But even starting at an install, is quite a long conversion funnel to where we ultimately want to get you, which is getting your direct deposit. Now that is something that takes, minimum, weeks, and in some cases, months, as we build trust in our customers. 

If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, and I’m over here asking for your paycheck, what I’m literally doing is asking for all your money. Which is a huge ask, because if that doesn’t work, you’re in trouble. That means you’re not eating; you can’t get groceries. It’s not like you’re in a position here where you are: “Oh, well I’ll just dip into these funds or use this card or that card.”

Right? No, it’s super critical that that works. And so it’s a long funnel from both conversion to then usage. And again, that’s just starting at install; not to mention consideration. 

And so for that reason, Shamanth, it’s pretty complex; and a lot more complex than it was. And then you add on to that us operating on all these different channels, it paints a pretty complex path to becoming a Current customer.

Shamanth: Yeah. And you did allude to the fact that you guys are on multiple channels: many online channels and many offline channels; from Facebook and Google of the world, to influencers, to out-of-home channels as well. So it’s the impression of a lot of people that the vast majority of users are on Facebook and Google. So as a business, how did you make the case for starting to test other channels, including offline channels? And going beyond what could be direct response, directly attributable channels? 

Adam: Well, I think that you start with working backwards: Where are your customers? Where are they in this world? And the truth is, Facebook owns an insane amount of people’s time in this world; Instagram, being a reflection of that as well, obviously; going into YouTube, going into TikTok, going into all those social platforms—monetize a lot of people’s time. A lot of this is dependent on what vertical you’re in, obviously. But on the spectrum of fully direct response to fully brand, we’re somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. 

I’ll give you a sample of how somebody might end up becoming a Current customer. You hear about Current from Facebook ads; you see it a few different times. So you get an idea that, okay, well Current’s a bank that has some features that could help me. You then see an influencer talk about it—someone who you watch—and they actually go into detail. And you’re like: “Wow, this is actually cool, and it’s a pretty cool looking card.” Something like that. But you’re still just aware of it, and aware that it solves some of the problems that you have. But are you really going to install the app right now, sign up, verify your identity and do all this stuff? Probably not because you’re a busy person. And we’re not talking about high intent channels, like a Google search or something like that. 

Then, three weeks later, midweek, you get hit with another two overdraft fees from Wells Fargo. And you’re like: “Okay, I’m done. I’m making the switch to Current now.” How do you attribute that user, right? How does that play in? I just talked about digital, attributable channels. How does the fact that your cousin uses Current, and you knew that, play into the picture? How about seeing a TV ad; hearing about it on the radio? Because anybody can run a Facebook ad. “I saw the Facebook ad, but then when I heard it on the radio—the same radio station I’ve been listening to for the last five years, every single day on this drive—I guess that makes it pretty legit. Because not anybody can be on this station, they have to have vetted this somehow.” The same, of course, applies to TV. The same also applies to influencers actually, if not more. That’s a really strong endorsement. And so it becomes easier to justify, like you say Shamanth, because of that customer experience. 

Now to take that, and let’s apply it to a hyper casual game. These are completely different fields. They’re almost not even worth comparing. The consideration phase to download a bouncing ball app is about three seconds: “Ooh, that looks fun.” and then you do it. No one’s ever seen an ad for a hyper casual game and then searched for it three weeks later, and been like: “Yeah, that’s what I want right now.”

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like there’s just one path to download a hyper casual game, because you might, for example, check the App Store for games—that still might be a behaviour that people exhibit, although certainly not as much as they used to. Or again, ask their friends or be like: “Hey, what’s that on your phone? Okay, that looks fun, let me play.” There’s different things that you can do there, beyond just direct response ads to drive growth, is my point. 

But

on the spectrum of customer behaviour, something like a hyper casual game is hyper direct response. Something like a bank account is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, where direct response is obviously important, but not the only thing that matters. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s probably something like dishwasher detergent. No one’s ever seen an ad for Cascade pods, and then was like: “Yeah, I got to do this right now!”

Hmm, I shouldn’t say that. Because actually, now with Amazon, sometimes they get me. I’m checking out and they’re like: Oh, don’t you have to reload on this?” And I’m like: “Oh, yeah actually, that’s true.” Actually, I take that back. Even dishwasher detergent right now, it’s somewhat on the direct response spectrum. But if I was going to a grocery store in person to buy it, it would absolutely be the opposite.

Shamanth: Yeah, so it sounds like a lot of the offline marketing has been driven by knowing and understanding, and thinking about where the users are in their lives, as much as in their buying journey. Would it be fair to say that when you guys started your growth and acquisition activity, you guys were on primarily digital channels, or were you guys offline also? 

Adam: Yeah, 100%. That doesn’t make us much different than most startups. I’m not going to name names, because that’d be rude, but

there is a European fintech, who entered the US market with a huge splash—a huge out-of-home splash. If you were in New York, the summer before, they were everywhere. They were there across bus stations, billboards, everything. And so that was a little bit of an experiment, in some form of how did that do. Even just looking at the App Store, it didn’t move the needle at all. 

Now, one conclusion from that would be: “Oh, well, out-of-home doesn’t work.” But I think that will be the false conclusion from that. A conclusion from that is out-of-home doesn’t work, if people have no idea what your product is, or what your brand is, or anything else.

If you’re something like banking, it’s a nuance. There’s a million banks out there; there’s a million financial products. Everybody knows these things exist. But why is this one for me? Why this one? Why am I going to choose American Express, or Chase, or Current, or Citibank or Capital One or—the list goes on. So there’s a lot of nuance to that. And you can’t deliver that nuance via outdoor ads, at least in the category of finance. So you could probably do it in a category of, let’s say, fashion. So out-of-home can deliver other things, but it’s not going to drive direct response. It was a fun experiment, because rarely would you ever see a company start and enter a market off digital or primarily off digital. But that was an example of it. They were well capitalised in Europe, and so were able to come here and do that, albeit unsuccessfully. Like most other startups, you’re going to start on the lowest hanging fruit, the most attributable channels, and that makes sense.

Shamanth: Yeah, so a) you guys started on direct response channels; b) eventually you move to offline channels as well, because that’s where your customers are. Can you speak to what the inflection was when you guys were like: “Okay, this is when we need to look at offline.” Was there anything in the metrics, anything in that business that impelled you guys to say: “All right, this is a time when we got to go off direct response.”

Adam: It was fairly early on, and it wasn’t so much something in the metric; it was more so understanding that trust component.

When we’ve talked with our customers, over and over and over again, the conversation always came around to trust. And for us, that’s a really challenging conversation, because I can sit here and shit on Wells Fargo all day, but they’ve been around for 100 years. They have a retail location around the corner from you, where you can go and talk to real people. There’s trust there that would be very difficult for a company like ours, which is just a few years old, to try to rival. And so that’s always been a challenge for us. 

So our question is, well, how do you fast-track that trust?

Because we know we don’t want to be around for 100 years to wait to gain it; we need to gain it today, we needed to gain it yesterday. And one of those ways is with traditional media. It adds validation in customers’ minds about those channels. And so again, going back to a gaming example, I don’t need to trust Candy Crush. The consequences are not that dire. My mom would say otherwise, given what level she’s on—man, if she ever lost that, it’d be a traumatic event. But functionally, to take that leap of faith, it’s a small gap that you’re leaping over. Whereas in the space of finance, there’s this huge gap. And I’m not speaking just in terms of finance, this applies to tons of different categories. It was that realisation that then led us down this path. 

Obviously we’ve mentioned influencers a couple of times here; that’s another path that we’ve taken, which has validated that. Our customer is largely Gen Z for context; they’ve grown up knowing nothing except for social media ads. And they very much come to distrust them. Just because somebody is running an ad on Instagram, literally, we’ll call those an Instagram brand. There is little faith that that means anything, because anybody can do that, and this is a generation that very much realises that. And so, getting the endorsement of an influencer is something that really matters. Again, something that wouldn’t matter in a category, like media consumption that’s like: “Hey, I’ll try this free trial. I don’t really need to trust that this streaming function works. If it doesn’t work. There’s no real consequences.”

Shamanth: Yeah, that’s so interesting. So it sounds like this decision to go offline came mainly off of talking to customers, and you’re like: “Look, how do we build this trust?” Offline marketing will build that legitimacy; will at least make the users perceive you much more trustworthy than if you were just a digital brand. Again, you guys were digital, then you started testing offline. How did you quantify the first time that it was working? And how did you justify that the investment was worth the while, the first time you said: “Right, we need to build trust. Digital isn’t always the best way; let’s do something offline. Maybe that’s influencers, maybe that’s radio. But I can’t measure the ROI off of that.” So how did you think about it the first time around?

Adam: Yeah, we’re fairly lucky, because of, again, the vertical we’re in. We KYC customers—that stands for Know Your Customer—meaning that we verify people’s identity. So we know their name, we know their address, we know their age, we know their phone number; all those things are confirmed. What you don’t know in a lot of verticals: you maybe know their country and some stuff about their device, but you don’t actually know stuff about them. And so, that allows us to measure things on a regional basis. Again, this doesn’t just exist in finance, while the KYC processes exist, dating is a good example of this. Dating is hyper regional, hyper local. And so you can do stuff on a local basis and see local uplift, both digitally and offline. That gives us a degree of measurement that maybe not everybody has, where we can validate things on small scale. We don’t need to run some $10 million nationwide campaign, and then measure  uplift off of that to understand improvement. It can happen on a very small level, and then you scale it up.

Shamanth: Understood. So you guys started in a local area, you measure the uplift, validate that it’s working, and went ahead.

Adam: Again, that uplift, it’s not just about consumer acquisition. I mean, that’s part of it, but it’s consumer behaviour of your existing customers, or people who are in that funnel. And they’re like: :Hey, I did sign up for a Current account. But I didn’t do X, Y, and Z yet.” The bigger your user base, the bigger of an impact you can make there. So a lot of things just don’t make sense in the small scale that start to make sense at larger scale. Now we have millions of users, many millions of dollars. When I joined Current, we were less than 20 people, early Series A company. This past fall, we raised our Series C $131 million which is just different challenges and different opportunities.

Shamanth: Yeah. So I was asking, is there an example that comes to mind of consumer behaviour of your existing users, that would have changed as a result of some of the offline marketing efforts?

Adam: Yeah, that is conversion right there. Because of the space we’re in, it’s a little bit different than a lot of other companies, in that we have this conversion time frame, this conversion phase, and then this usage phase. And so once you’ve converted, again, we have extremely high retention. There’re a million things that affect user behaviour in terms of like how much people get paid, how much people spend, where they spend—that’s absolutely fascinating, if you’re into data, you’re into macro economic stuff. 

I remember there was a gaming company I worked with years back, that saw its highest spending days were on Fridays. Every other Friday was a little bit higher, and it took them a long time to even realize that pattern. And now I look and I’m like: “Oh, well, that’s payday. That’s why that’s happening.” Today, it’s extremely obvious because I have access to all that data. And again, just consumer behaviours on the whole. So yes, our advertising on the market is not going to affect how much somebody gets paid or where they spend their money, but it will definitely affect something like that.

Shamanth: Understood. And that’s how you guys validated your early offline marketing efforts. Can you just talk about what your offline mix looks like, today, and how you measure the efficacy of the offline channels?

Adam: We use a few measures. Number one,

we use a mobile attribution provider—that shouldn’t come as a surprise—for our digital stuff. But you move beyond that, and we have a ‘How did you hear about us?’ That’s also fairly standard. It is a fun hobby of mine is comparing those two; I think it tells you a lot. Again, and neither are a source of truth, in my opinion, both of these tell you a piece of the puzzle, and then you look at uplift. You have uplift by region, you have uplift by time—both of those exist. There’s pretty well built up models for TV, a linear TV, at least when it comes to time based uplift. 

But actually the most obvious examples for us come with influencers. You have some big YouTuber who puts out a video and gets millions of views in a matter of hours. It’s not hard to see the difference between what you get attributed and what you don’t. Again, the numbers are just so big and so fast, and in a space like that, but that same principle, again, applies to other offline channels. 

And then you still have your uplift in conversion or in acquisition, and your uplift in both. Now that said, this is extremely complex and it’s not something that we have an extremely high degree of precision on. There’s nuances, there’s assumptions. We’re constantly refining this. We’re constantly looking at this, questioning it, poking it, and at the end of the day, coming up with what’s our best estimate. That’s what it is: it’s an estimate. Which, that’s all traditional attribution is either in the mobile space! When AppsFlyer or Adjust tells you that this user came from this network, that’s an estimate. We all know that. But because they’re so definitive, there’s a lot of comfort in that determination, that you’ll eventually forget that: “Oh, this is actually just an estimate of what we expect based on customer behaviour.”

Shamanth: Yeah, that’s very interesting, and a lot of marketers in mobile operate and have operated—and that’s going to change—in a world that’s very deterministic in that sense. That’s all going to be much more fuzzy going forward. So it’s very interesting to hear how you have approached acquisition. 

So I know you said: “You’re looking at ‘how did you hear about us’, you’re looking at mobile attribution, you’re looking at time and region based uplift.” What happens if all three of them tell you very different things, like wildly different results, maybe even just contradictory results? Is that an example that comes to mind?

Adam: Wildly different? I don’t know, at least not on anything major, or at any major scale. I think the user level stuff is very interesting in the short term, particularly because of changes. I think, take advantage of user level attribution right now, because that may be disappearing for the majority of your customers. But yeah, that may be a case in which, again, looking at survey response—which you have on a user level—and looking at attribution—which you have on a user level—there’s contrast there, which I think can really inform your opinion on things like view-through attribution, for example. I know that’s always the question that people have. 

And also every company, every business, every product is different in this regard. We do tons of customer interviews—I mean an insane amount. I’ve never been part of an organisation that does quite as many. But you really learn a lot from that qualitative feedback, in terms of the paths that people take. 

A better example of this is probably insurance; because nobody talks about insurance, nobody knows what insurance anybody else has. There’s only so many channels you could have heard this about. And so if somebody tells you: “Yeah, I heard about this new insurance…” Let’s call it a new product to simplify the analogy. They’re probably right. They’re probably not lying on their survey response, not to a large degree. There’s ways to control for small variances. But for something that’s, again, in our category, maybe you heard about it on Facebook. And so

you’ll say, ‘how did you hear about this’—Well, I heard about on Facebook. But that’s different than ‘Why did you download it?’, ‘Why did you sign up?’ ‘Why did you convert?’ And that could be because of our marketing—it could be part of marketing—or it could because my friend told me or my grandma told me or my sister told me. Or I, again, had heard about it on Facebook, and then it was some separate event that actually made me then go and search for it, click the Google ad and download the thing. So there’s all these complex paths that people take. So be able to compare on the user level, your survey response along with your attribution, kind of combine that with the stories that your customers actually tell. And I think you can come up with interesting narratives, which again, do a better job of reflecting reality.

Shamanth: Right, certainly, it’s not an exact science from everything you’re saying. 

Just to switch gears a bit, you guys still do continue to invest on digital channels. And you did express how a customer decision is a relatively long drawn process, so in many ways, it’s somewhat akin to a B2B product—just because there’s just that sort of a sales cycle. Considering that a lot of the digital ad tech products optimise for early signals, 1 to 7 days, how do you account for the downstream behaviour when you’re optimising your digital channels?

Adam: Well, yeah, we have to use predictive events, otherwise it functionally wouldn’t work out for us much; even days, not to mention for us weeks. And this is something that is a little bit of a mistake I often see companies make, where they rely very much so on explicit events that may happen—something like if they were in ecommerce it might be add-to-cart; if it’s a game it might be purchase. Oftentimes, maybe that works. Maybe that ultimately is the best indicator of intent or a good customer or anything like that. 

Other times, it can be a synthetic event, something that’s not explicit—some explicit action that people take. Now, I think a reason a lot of companies start in that first territory is because those are the events that they’re tracking anyways. Although, that’s not the event that the marketing team chose to tag at some point, or the user acquisition team chose to tag. No, that was the events that the product team or the merge team, or whenever had, and those are obviously things that need to be tracked. So it’s like, oh, well, we already have that data, so let’s use it. And again, in many cases, I think that can be the best thing to optimise towards. But for us, it’s a combination of signals. It’s a little bit of a secret sauce. Not that if I disclosed it, it would be like: “Oh, well, that’s the answer.” No, it’s going to be different for every business. And so if you try to copy this, that’s probably a bad approach, even if you’re in the same vertical. But you have to absolutely come up with something that’s an early indicator. And again, similar to attribution, it’s not like: “Oh, we nailed it, we found it, we got the silver bullet.” This is something that changes over time; that you retest; that you adapt; that you learn; that you get better at.

Shamanth: Certainly, that all makes sense. This is all very interesting, Adam. So I know you’ve explained how you guys evaluate all of your offline and online channels. Do you guys consider methodologies like multi-touch attribution, or econometric models? Do you evaluate such techniques or how do you think about those things?

Adam: You could say what we’re doing today is like a rudimentary version of that. But yeah, that’s where we’re looking to go. And putting more and more data science behind this is kind of our plan. We’re not there today. I would be lying if I said we had, you know, the world’s most sophisticated attribution model in place. But we know the inputs, at least, we feel pretty good about that. Any data scientists listening? I should mention we are, at Current, hiring pretty aggressively here in New York City.

Shamanth: Yeah, we will link to your hiring pages, certainly. Excellent. Adam, that’s so fascinating. I know, we’re kind of up on time. So this is perhaps a good place for us to start to wrap up. But before we do that, can you tell folks how they can find out more about you and everything you do?

Adam: Yeah, most importantly, check out Current! Even better current.com/careers. That’s my main plug. You can find me on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and all that stuff. But Current is far more interesting. 

Shamanth: Excellent. And of course, we will link to Adam’s LinkedIn and Twitter just as well. Adam, it’s an honour having you. Thank you for being a guest on the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Adam: Thank you so much, Shamanth. Keep this going. Again, this is how I get smarter. Listening to this podcast.

Shamanth: Wonderful, sir. Thank you.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!

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