The Challenge
A fintech app in the payments category was generating a high volume of installs through Google App Campaigns but converting fewer than 12% of installs to activated users, defined as users who completed identity verification and made their first transaction. The marketing team was measuring success on install volume and install CPA, which were both improving, but revenue and active user growth were flat.
The disconnect was in the optimisation signal. UAC was being optimised toward the install event, which was cheap and abundant but had no relationship to user quality. Users who installed the app out of curiosity, or in response to broad keyword triggers, were inflating install numbers while diluting the activated user base. The acquisition cost per genuinely active user was far higher than the install CPA suggested.
The Approach
We rebuilt the event taxonomy from scratch. In-app events were mapped through Firebase: install, onboarding step completion, identity verification start, identity verification complete, first deposit, and first transaction. Each event was passed to Google Ads as a conversion action with an assigned value weighted to reflect its correlation with 30-day LTV, based on cohort analysis of existing users.
UAC campaigns were restructured to optimise toward identity verification completion rather than install. This immediately reduced install volume as UAC's algorithm began filtering for users with higher intent signals, but the users it found converted to activated status at a significantly higher rate. We accepted the short-term volume drop as the expected cost of quality improvement.
In parallel, we rebuilt the onboarding flow communication. Users who installed but stalled at the identity verification step received a targeted push notification and email sequence over 48 hours, walking them through the verification process step by step. The sequence was based on analysis of support tickets and drop-off data that revealed specific friction points users were encountering.
The Results
Install-to-activation rate increased from 12% to over 61% within one quarter. The improvement was driven by both cleaner acquisition targeting and the onboarding re-engagement sequence, which recovered approximately 30% of users who had previously stalled at verification. CPA per activated user dropped 38% despite install CPA increasing slightly, because the ratio of activations per install improved dramatically. D30 retention of newly acquired users increased 27%, as the cohort was now dominated by users who had shown genuine intent rather than passive curiosity installs.
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