Case Study: SofaScore

As a free-to-download app, SofaScore's main source of revenue is in-app advertising (IAA). For this monetization strategy, retention of both organic and paid users is one of the most vital metrics. Acquiring users is only the first step to achieving significant growth. It’s high life-time value (LTV) users, or those who continually visit and actively engage with the app, that drive the most revenue. That's why SofaScore needed to focus on acquiring high LTV users at a competitive price. However, this was challenging, as they had to tailor their approach in every market, optimizing the target cost per install (eCPI) with the revenue data for specific regions.

SofaScore is always looking for new ways to improve their user acquisition (UA) strategy, user experience and user retention rate. The best way to develop a retention strategy geared at keeping users engaged in-app is to map and understand the entire user journey. In doing this, they've focused on exploring and testing different channels to identify which platform brings in the most users with high LTV. This is where SofaScore recognized the need for a mobile attribution provider like Adjust that would enable them to accurately attribute installs, track data on a granular level and benefit from a holistic marketing stack with all of their data in one place.

Using Adjust Measure, SofaScore now has a better understanding of the user journey based on installs from all channels on which they run campaigns. Adjust Attribution enables them to track user behavior such as in-app activity and retention patterns between users acquired from different media sources. With access to detailed reporting on all the essential and relevant metrics, they can now figure out where quality users are coming from and when users may start to churn.

Leveraging Adjust’s uninstalls and reinstalls data is a highly effective way to improve engagement campaigns and your overall retention strategy. It helps apps to determine when users are churning and when to most effectively engage with them. By identifying and addressing churn points, SofaScore significantly increased UX and user satisfaction. This also means that reattributed users who had previously churned are now less likely to do so.

Reinstall tracking at Adjust provides valuable insights because it is distinct from sessions and re-attribution data. Due to this, SofaScore is now able to determine if a campaign delivered users who churned immediately versus users who uninstalled the app and then reinstalled it later, helping them build a solid UA strategy.

With the help of Adjust, SofaScore plans on tackling further challenges:

• Determining the difference between first-time users and returning users by leveraging the uninstall and reinstall data.
• Assessing which UA channels align with their goals to then utilize those channels as best as possible.
• Continuing to experiment with different channels and UA strategies.
• Their main focus was to expand upon and improve the user experience—a product can always be enhanced. The aim is to have users try it for free and hopefully come away from the trial excited and ready to continue their guitar playing journey.

Since partnering with Adjust, SofaScore has gained deeper insights into the entire user lifecycle, allowing them to optimize their UA campaigns, retarget with precision and ensure that users keep coming back to their app.

SofaScore efforts with Adjust have resulted in:

• A 238% increase in reinstalls
• A 36% decrease in app churn
• A 84% decrease in average CPI from 2020 to 2021

Founded in 2010, SofaScore is a sports app that provides live scores and detailed sports statistics in the form of insightful infographics.

They started solely as a live scores service but have since transformed into an analytical tool that collects data in real-time and offers statistical features and innovations including:

• Attack Momentum -a live statistical feature
• Attribute Overview -a breakdown of player performance based on five categories
• Season heatmaps and shot maps
• By covering 11,000 sporting events and 23 sports in 33 languages, SofaScore offers a unique and personalized experience to sports fans and professionals who love stats and data. Based in Zagreb, Croatia, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they are now one of the highest-rated sports apps (4.8 on Google Play Store and 4.9 on App Store) and have 20 million monthly active users (MAUs).