Customer engagement and loyalty is becoming ever more important in the digital age.
At the centre of everything lies the smartphone. While a customer may touch a brand once a month in-store, or once a week online, there is a good chance they will log into its app daily.
“The app is the main touch point for the consumer,” Mike Rhodes, founder and CEO of ConsultMyApp, tells BusinessCloud.
Founded in 2016, the startup already works with some of the world’s biggest brands including O2, Deliveroo, King.com, Tide, Virgin, Trainline and Pure Gym.
For example, it worked with O2 Priority to increase its market share by 78% and organic install volumes by 54% in just three months.
“It’s vital to optimise apps and ensure they are as user-friendly as possible,” says Rhodes. “It would be money down the drain if a company was to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds designing an app or encouraging customers to download it, only for all of those customers to uninstall the app on day three.”
ConsultMyApp, based in London’s Gherkin, focuses on three main areas: implementing app management, growing apps and engaging users. It helps brands to build out strategies, design paid media budget plans and implement and optimise app campaigns to drive the highest quality traffic at the lowest possible cost.
Silicon Valley pedigree
Having worked for Silicon Valley startups, data security specialist Rhodes had a good feel for the app landscape and was able to identify gaps in the app strategies of even the world’s largest brands.
He has taken the business from a one-man band during its first 12 months to 40 staff today, with almost two-thirds of its workforce – and more than two-thirds of the management team – identifying as female.
“We pride ourselves on being truly diverse. Whether that is by race, gender, age or nationality, we hire based on the best raw talent, irrespective of industry stereotypes,” explains Rhodes.
“The team is wonderfully multicultural, with over 15 languages spoken amongst our employees and 40% of our talent coming from overseas.”
AMP it up
In the last 12 months alone, CMA nearly doubled its EBIT and the company grew by 1.7x. Alongside its servicing and consultancy work – “which comes from keeping our ear to the ground” – it has built App Market Pro (AMP), described as the world’s most sophisticated AI bidding engine, designed to ensure that digital app campaigns are optimised 24/7 using real-time App Store data.
Given the rapid rise of the company, it may come as a surprise that CMA has not been supported by any external funding models or VCs. That may change after it won its biggest client to date, US giant General Motors.
“This is extremely exciting for the business,” says Rhodes. “To have such a historical and established company like GM trust our expertise feels like a ‘pinch yourself’ moment.
“When it comes to international expansion, we may need to consider investment; but because the business is highly profitable and rapidly growing, this opens up other avenues for funding that don’t require the release of equity from the business.
“Funding is great and might make things easier, but building a solid, profitable company with a great service and product first is much more important. The rest can follow.”
CMA already works across 21 countries, with clients based in the UK, US, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Sweden, Gibraltar, Thailand, South Africa and Cyprus.