#MGS2018: TextNow Talks Growth At This Year’s Mobile Growth Summit

From February 7–8, San Francisco will be host to the Mobile Growth Summit 2018, a gathering of mobile marketing, engagement, retention, monetization, data science and analytics folks discussing strategies on growing your mobile app in the marketplace.

And one of those folks who will be discussing all things growable is TextNow’s very own Ajay Sampat. We sat down for a quick Q&A about what to expect from his talk.

‍Kevin Cogliano: Hi, Ajay! True or false: You are the head of growth at TextNow.

‍Ajay Sampat: True.

‍KC: Off to a great start! Can you tell me a bit about what a Growth Team means for app development?

‍AS: Sure! Basically, a “growth” team is responsible for expanding both the customer base of TextNow (in terms of raw numbers of people using it) and also the value of each individual customer.

‍KC: Sounds super easy. So you hand out a bunch of flyers saying “Give TextNow a try”?

‍AS: (Laughs) Not so much. We use data gathering and experimentation to figure out our best approach for growth. So we pull a little bit from different disciplines and teams from within the company — engineering, automation, marketing— to design experiments to see how we can improve growth. Then, we take the data from those experiments and go from there.On a more strategic level, the Growth team works at building the right team and the right tools. With the right team, we build the right stack — the set of tools used to collect data from our systems — to get the information needed to achieve our growth goals.We’re also constantly learning from the best in the industry, like Dave McClure, Brian Balfour, and Sean Ellis, and applying their insights to TextNow.

‍KC: So, experimentation leads to data, and the data gives insights on how to create long-term value with our app users.

‍AS: Yes. With the data we can design effective strategies, like marketing towards users along their entire lifecycle within the app for example. We have a growth process that is structured, as it needs to be in order to generate good strategies, but nimble enough to react quickly: gather ideas, prioritize those ideas, test those ideas, and analyze the results.

‍KC: And that’s what you’ll be talking about at the Mobile Growth Summit?

‍AS: Exactly. I’ll be going into greater detail about our methodologies that have led TextNow to be the leader in our app category, thanks to our innovative strategies that accelerate mobile growth and engagement.

‍KC: Nice plug, and thanks for chatting with us.

‍AS: Thanks!

If you want to find out more about the Mobile Growth Summit, you can check out the full schedule on their website. Ajay will be giving his chat at 11:15am-12pm, February 7th, at the Park Central Hotel in San Francisco. And you can check out more from Ajay on Medium!