--- title: How do I acquire new mobile app users? description: Learn how to acquire mobile app users through paid ads, ASO, referrals and viral loops, plus why retention and onboarding matter just as much as downloads. image: https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/learning-centre-images/how-do-i-acquire-new-mobile-app-users.webp --- [Skip to content](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/how-do-i-acquire-new-mobile-app-users#main-content) [![we\_are\_affective\_logo\_200](https://weareaffective.com/hs-fs/hubfs/we_are_affective_logo_200.png?width=175&height=48&name=we_are_affective_logo_200.png "we_are_affective_logo_200")](https://weareaffective.com) - [Home](https://weareaffective.com) - About Us - [Our Story](https://weareaffective.com/about) - [How We Work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) - Our Services - [App Planning & Strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) - [App Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-design-agency) - [App UX Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ux-design) - [App UI Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) - [App Technical Architecture](https://weareaffective.com/app-architecture) - [Existing App Audits](https://weareaffective.com/app-audit) - [Case Studies](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies) - [Pricing](https://weareaffective.com/pricing) - [Learning Centre](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre) - [Get Started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) Expert Guide Series # How do I acquire new mobile app users? Table of Contents Acquiring new users for a mobile app is the question almost every product team asks first, and it is rarely the right first question. The channels are straightforward enough: paid social, app store search, referral programmes, content. What is harder to accept is that pouring users into a product that loses them within 72 hours is an expensive way to fill a leaking bucket. > Getting acquisition right means understanding what happens after the download, not just before it. We have worked on products across travel, fitness, gifting, and entertainment, and the pattern repeats. Teams celebrate rising download numbers, then quietly ignore the fact that a quarter of those users never open the app a second time. Approximately 25 per cent of mobile apps are abandoned after a single use, which means that acquisition and retention are the same problem, and the [decisions made long before a user downloads](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) the app shape whether they stay. This article covers the main acquisition channels and the mechanics behind each of them, but it spends equal time on what happens once a user arrives. Because the most effective acquisition strategy is a product people want to keep using, and that starts with the first screen they see. ## Paid advertising and social media campaigns Paid acquisition is the most direct lever available to a product team with a budget. Meta, TikTok, and Google App Campaigns all allow you to reach defined audiences and drive installs at measurable cost per acquisition. The economics are straightforward: you spend money, users arrive, you measure how many of them do something useful once they are inside the product. The trap is optimising for cost per install rather than cost per retained user. An install that evaporates within three days costs exactly the same as one that becomes a loyal, paying user, but only one of those is worth anything. Paid campaigns that target broad audiences tend to produce cheaper installs and worse retention, because the users arriving have weaker intent. Narrower targeting, even at higher cost per install, tends to produce better downstream behaviour. Creative quality matters more than studios typically expect. A user who sees an ad that accurately reflects the product experience arrives with calibrated expectations. One who sees something aspirational and finds a more ordinary product on download is already disappointed before they have tapped a single button. #### Platform choice and audience intent Search-based acquisition, through Apple Search Ads or Google App Campaigns, captures users who are already looking for something in the category. Social acquisition, through Meta or TikTok, intercepts users who were not looking. Both have their place, but the [emotional state of the user arriving](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/how-to-read-a-user-session-recording-for-emotional-signal-rather-than-task-compl) from each channel is different, and the onboarding experience should account for that. ## App Store Optimisation App Store Optimisation is often treated as a nice-to-have, something to revisit once the product is performing. We think this gets the sequencing wrong. On a gifting and wishlist platform we worked on, the client was reluctant to invest in ASO at all, believing that the social and group nature of the product meant word-of-mouth referral would carry the weight of acquisition. Our position was that ASO remains necessary regardless of how strong the referral mechanic is. The icon, the title, the screenshots, the first two lines of copy: these are the filter through which every prospective user passes. A listing that communicates clearly what the product does and who it is for performs a function that goes beyond search ranking. It lets users self-select before they download. The person who reads the listing, understands the product, and still taps install arrives in a completely different psychological state to someone who downloaded on a vague hunch and is still working out what they are looking at. That [self-selection matters because misaligned downloads](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/5-things-that-make-the-difference-between-so-so-apps-and-stellar-apps-what-your-) are a churn driver before the product has done anything wrong. If your listing attracts users who are not actually your audience, no amount of onboarding polish will recover them. Getting the listing accurate is, in that sense, an early retention decision disguised as a marketing one. #### Ratings and the feedback timing problem Ratings influence conversion in the app store, and for a long time the way ratings were collected made them structurally unreliable. Rating prompts used to surface at the point a user uninstalled an app, which meant the feedback collected came almost entirely from people who had either finished with the product or had a bad experience. Neither group was representative. Prompting for ratings after a genuinely positive moment, a completed booking, a personal best, a successful transaction, produces a more honest and useful distribution. ## UX/UI design built around *real* psychology We design app interfaces around how people actually think and behave. User research, psychology-driven UX/UI design and technical specs delivered as one complete package. [See how we work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) [Get started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) No commitment ## Referral schemes and word-of-mouth mechanics Referral programmes work when the product is genuinely social by nature, meaning the act of sharing is useful to both the person sharing and the person receiving. Discount-based referral, where a user gets credit for inviting a friend, can drive installs but tends to attract users motivated by the incentive rather than the product. Those users churn faster and have lower lifetime value. The more durable version is when referral is embedded in a real use case. On the travel OTA product we worked on, aimed at younger adults booking group trips, we tried several post-launch acquisition tactics: referral discounts, push notifications, social sharing of itineraries, and email campaigns. Each produced some activity. None of them moved the numbers in a sustained way. > The mechanics that moved the numbers were built into the core booking flow itself. What actually worked was a viral loop built directly into the booking process. When someone organised a group trip, the app prompted each individual traveller to download the product to handle communication and submit their passport details. One person booking a trip for ten people instantly generated nine new users, each of whom could then trigger their own cohort. That is qualitatively different from a refer-a-friend discount, because the reason to download is functional and immediate rather than incentive-driven. Before building a referral scheme, ask whether the product has a natural sharing moment already built into its core flow. If it does, build the referral mechanic around that moment rather than adding a separate incentive layer on top. ## Viral loops built into the product itself A viral loop is a mechanism where using the product creates new users as a [natural consequence of that use](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/going-mobile-7-ways-that-a-mobile-app-will-help-your-business). The travel product example above is a clean illustration: the booking process itself was the acquisition channel. No additional incentive was required because the reason to invite others was inherent in the activity. Not every product has an obvious social layer to build on, but it is worth mapping the use cases carefully before concluding that viral growth is unavailable. Fitness products can surface loops through shared achievements or group challenges. Charity fundraising products generate new users every time a supporter shares a campaign page. Property search products can generate referrals when users forward listings to people they are moving with. #### Designing for natural sharing The design question is where sharing feels like a useful action rather than a promotional one. A user who shares because doing so helps them, or because it adds value to someone else they care about, is a fundamentally different acquisition source to a user who shares for a discount code. The former generates users who arrive with intent. The latter generates users who arrive for the incentive and leave when it is spent. Map every stage of your core user journey and identify where another person naturally needs to be involved. That is usually where a viral loop can sit without feeling forced. ## Why download numbers lie Download numbers are easy to read and easy to celebrate. They go up in a satisfying linear way when acquisition is working, and they provide a clear answer to the question "is the product growing?" The problem is that they answer the wrong question. We have seen product teams focus intensely on new user acquisition while overlooking retention at day three, day five, and day seven. The downloads keep rising. The product looks healthy. Meanwhile, a large proportion of those users are quietly churning, and the actual active user base is much smaller than the cumulative download figure suggests. According to [Andrew Chen](https://andrewchen.com/new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-mobile-users-is-normal-and-that-best-apps-do-much-better/), most mobile apps lose 77 per cent of their daily active users within three days of install. Even strong products see a 40 to 50 per cent drop over the same period. The gap between those two figures is where good design and good onboarding live. Looking at downloads alone creates a false reading of product health. A product with 50,000 downloads and 30 per cent seven-day retention is in a very different position to one with 50,000 downloads and 5 per cent seven-day retention, but both show the same number on the dashboard developers look at first. #### The metrics worth watching instead | Metric | What it measures | Why it matters | | --- | --- | --- | | Day 1 retention | Users who return the next day | First indicator of whether the product delivered on its promise | | Day 3 retention | Users still active after 72 hours | The benchmark studios most commonly underperform against | | Day 7 retention | Users who have formed an early habit | Strongly predictive of longer-term value | | Session depth | What users do within a session | Shows whether core value is being reached | ## The first 72 hours: where new users are lost The first 72 hours after download are the period that determines whether an acquisition becomes a user or a statistic. Most products lose the majority of their churned users in this window, and most of that churn is preventable. The critical variable is whether a user reaches the core value of the product before they run out of patience. This is sometimes called time-to-value, and it is shorter than most product teams assume. A user who downloads a meal planning app and spends four minutes answering questions before seeing a single recipe has not experienced the product. They have experienced the cost of the product. The value comes after, and if the cost feels too high, they leave before reaching it. On a genetics wellness product we worked on, retention had degraded and the temptation was to respond by adding new features. What we found instead was that the core problem was not a lack of features but a loss of the narrative layer that had made the product feel personal in the first place. By bringing storytelling back into the experience and restoring a sense of individual identity within the product, giving users the feeling that the [app was speaking to them specifically](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-do-some-apps-feel-like-they-were-made-just-for-you) rather than presenting generic data, retention and engagement recovered. The problem had never been what the product offered. It was how the product communicated its offer to the person using it. ## Onboarding friction and early abandonment Onboarding is where most of the preventable churn happens, and the friction is usually structural rather than accidental. Asking for registration before a user has experienced any value is the most common offender. [Forcing registration early in the app experience](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/what-makes-users-trust-a-product-enough-to-enter-their-card-details) produces a drop-off of 15 to 20 per cent in uninstalls, often within the first 60 to 120 seconds of use. A user who has not yet understood why the product is useful to them has no reason to hand over an email address and create a password. All they can see is an obstacle. Expectation management is equally powerful and far cheaper to implement. On a fitness product we worked on, the onboarding flow required users to answer several [orientation questions before they could access](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/fitness-app-trends-2026-what-users-really-want-from-their-workout-apps) the core experience. The change that reduced early abandonment was simple: we told users upfront how long the questions would take. That single piece of framing changed the emotional state users brought to the process. They entered prepared rather than uncertain, and completion rates improved as a result. Tell users exactly how long an onboarding process takes before they start it. Even if the answer is "about three minutes", the certainty changes how they approach the task. Onboarding friction is rarely one big problem. It is usually a [sequence of small ones, each of which loses](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-do-some-apps-feel-easy-while-others-feel-hard) a few percentage points of users, and the compounding effect is severe. Mapping the drop-off at each step of onboarding reveals where the losses are occurring and makes the solution much more tractable than treating abandonment as a single undifferentiated problem. ## Push notifications and re-engagement campaigns Push notifications are one of the most effective re-engagement tools available, and one of the most frequently misused. According to [Business of Apps](https://www.businessofapps.com/marketplace/push-notifications/research/push-notifications-costs), 78 per cent of users churn in the first week after installation when brands have no clear engagement strategy based on regular push notifications. The operative word is clear. A notification strategy that sends messages because a user has been quiet for a week is noise. Notifications earn their place when they are timely, relevant to what the user is actually trying to do, and triggered by a genuine signal rather than a calendar. A travel app that notifies a user when prices drop for a destination they have searched is providing value. The same app sending a generic "don't miss out" message to its entire dormant user base is providing irritation. #### Permission timing and opt-in rates When you ask for notification permission matters. Requesting it before a user has experienced any value produces significantly lower opt-in rates than waiting until after a positive moment in the product. A user who has just completed their first workout, received a booking confirmation, or reached a goal is in a receptive state. A user who has been in the app for thirty seconds is not. Re-engagement campaigns through email and paid retargeting follow the same principle. The message that works is one that offers a specific reason to return, not a general reminder that the app exists. Personalisation, even at a basic level, dramatically outperforms broadcast messaging because it signals that the communication is relevant to the recipient rather than sent to everyone. ## Conclusion Acquiring new mobile app users is a solvable problem with well-understood channels. Paid advertising, app store search, referral mechanics, and viral loops built into the product itself all have a role, and the right mix depends on the product, the audience, and the budget available. But the channels are only part of the picture. The acquisition question and the retention question are connected in a way that developers tend to treat as sequential when they are actually simultaneous. A product that loses 77 per cent of its users within three days is spending its acquisition budget on churn. An app store listing that attracts the wrong users is generating abandonment before the onboarding even begins. A notification strategy that sends irrelevant messages is actively pushing users out. Consumer app growth is a long-term investment. The products that compound over time are the ones where acquisition brings in the right users, onboarding delivers value before patience runs out, and the core experience gives people a genuine reason to return. Each of those is a design decision, not a marketing one, and they interact with one another in ways that make it difficult to optimise any one of them in isolation. If your product is acquiring users but not keeping them, or if you are planning a launch and want to get the sequencing right from the beginning, [let's talk about your app's acquisition and retention strategy](https://weareaffective.com/get-started). ## Frequently Asked Questions Why do so many users abandon an app after downloading it? Approximately 25 per cent of mobile apps are abandoned after a single use, often because the product fails to meet the expectations set by its marketing or does not deliver value quickly enough. Acquisition and retention are effectively the same problem, meaning the decisions made before a user even downloads the app shape whether they will stay. What is the biggest mistake teams make with paid acquisition? The most common mistake is optimising for cost per install rather than cost per retained user, since a cheap install that disappears within three days has no real value. Narrower audience targeting tends to produce better long-term behaviour, even if the cost per install is higher. Does the quality of ad creative actually affect user retention? Yes, significantly. A user who sees an ad that accurately reflects the product arrives with realistic expectations, whereas aspirational or misleading creative leaves them disappointed before they have even engaged with the app. Creative honesty is not just an ethical consideration, it is a practical retention strategy. What is the difference between search-based and social acquisition? Search-based acquisition through platforms like Apple Search Ads captures users who are already looking for something in your category, while social acquisition through Meta or TikTok reaches users who were not actively searching. The emotional state of users arriving from each channel differs, so the onboarding experience should be tailored accordingly. Is App Store Optimisation really necessary if my app relies on word-of-mouth referrals? Yes, ASO remains necessary regardless of how strong a referral mechanic is. The icon, title, screenshots, and opening lines of copy act as a filter for every prospective user, and a poorly optimised listing will lose people who might otherwise have converted. Which acquisition channels are available to a mobile app product team? The main channels include paid social advertising, app store search, referral programmes, and content marketing. Each channel attracts users with different levels of intent and different expectations, so the choice of channel should inform how the product welcomes new users. What should a team focus on before investing heavily in user acquisition? Before scaling acquisition spend, a team should ensure the product retains users effectively, since driving large numbers of users into an app that loses them within 72 hours is costly and unsustainable. The most effective acquisition strategy is building a product people genuinely want to keep using. How early in the process should acquisition strategy be considered? Acquisition strategy should be considered long before launch, as the decisions made during product planning directly influence whether users stay after downloading. Treating acquisition as something to address only once the product is live means many of the most important levers have already been set. ## Related Articles [![We Are Affective](https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/we_are_affective_logo_mark.svg)](https://weareaffective.com) 20-22 Wenlock Road London, N1 7GU United Kingdom +44 20 4572 8062 [hello@weareaffective.com](mailto:hello@weareaffective.com) Services [App planning & strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) [App design](https://weareaffective.com/app-design-agency) [App UX design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ux-design) [App UI design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) [App technical architecture](https://weareaffective.com/app-architecture) [Existing app audits](https://weareaffective.com/app-audit) Legal [Privacy policy](https://app.termly.io/policy-viewer/policy.html?policyUUID=b8fa9921-7518-4fb5-8ddd-9dc7f5977ed2) [Terms](https://app.termly.io/policy-viewer/policy.html?policyUUID=8b6a6ad5-91bd-4176-a5f7-6d36b0398f70) Case studies [TravAI](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/travai) [Meditech](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/harley) [WorkingWeight](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/workingweight) [SkinSync](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/skinsync) [Three Lochs](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/three-lochs) [Drift](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/drift) About us [Our Story](https://weareaffective.com/about) [How We Work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) Guides [Creating an app](https://weareaffective.com/how-to-create-an-app) [Building an MVP](https://weareaffective.com/building-an-mvp) [Cost and budgeting](https://weareaffective.com/app-development-cost) [App technology](https://weareaffective.com/app-development) [Planning and strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) [User research](https://weareaffective.com/app-user-research) [Onboarding design](https://weareaffective.com/app-onboarding-design) [User psychology](https://weareaffective.com/user-psychology-app-design) [Launch and growth](https://weareaffective.com/app-launch-growth) Copyright © 2026, weareaffective.com. 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