Why is this work relevant for Innovation?

Ruangguru’s mobile strategy was a large part of its winning formula. In essence, the campaign needed to be more than just about awareness and branding. A performance-based marketing campaign successfully transformed product awareness to intention to actual installs and then in-app purchases repeatedly. The objective was to get users to install and use the free online school offering, which posed a challenge as pupils and teachers were rushing to find similar educational products during the first COVID-19 lockdown. One major issue with app install campaigns is the proliferance of fraudulent installs.

Background

Ruangguru was initially set-up as an after school online tuition service with 4.6 million app users. Since its launch in 2016, the mobile app has grown by an average of 1.5 million app users per year. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting school closures in March 2020, the app users base rapidly grew to 8.4 million users within the year – an astounding 82% increase. The usage of the app has also evolved to mobile learning and not just after school online tuition as students and teachers could not attend classes in person.

Describe the idea

Ruangguru launched a free 18-channel, livestreamed school less than a week after the Indonesian government closed schools for its 50 million+ students in March 2020 The popularity of this offering helped propel the Ruangguru app to the top of the app store charts. Ruangguru quickly developed a strategy to utilize multimedia channel targeting and successfully directed their audience into the funnel to get higher conversion and purchase rates. It was able to break its own average network purchase rate of 6% to 8% – a 30% increase. Having run its app user acquisition campaigns in the new innovative placements on OEMs, Ruangguru has opened a new market for app advertising from in-app to on-device. This new technology also proved to be very effective in managing fraudulent installs and has yielded quality app users who contributed to the 30% increase in purchase rate.

What were the key dates in the development process?

Ruangguru serves more than 22 million users across Indonesia as of December 2020. This marks a record increase of 7 million users, which is equivalent to 46% when compared to December 2019. Out of the 22 million users, 8.4 million, or almost 40%, are mobile app users. Online learning has now become widespread and is increasingly a necessity all over the world. 2020 was a year of huge innovation and expansion for Ruangguru as its expanded into Thailand with the StartDee App, and in Vietnam with the Kien Guru App. Ruangguru also received funding of US$ 55 million or around Rp 800 billion in April 2021 from Tiger Global Management after showing profitability in 2020. The series of funding that Ruangguru has successfully secured increased its valuation figure to around US$900 million, bringing it even closer to the Unicorn level. This achievement has encouraged the talented and dynamic Ruangguru team, who are excited to continue developing new features and build the company into the best interactive education provider ever. Educating Indonesia is just the beginning!

Describe the innovation / technology

The campaign focused on performance marketing as Ruangguru raced towards expanding its app user base as it fulfilled the market demand for a mobile app solution to online learning. The tactical approach put mobile in the spotlight as potential mobile app users were targeted with an app install campaign optimized towards the purchase action within the app. Parents and children were creatively discovered as they swiped their Android devices and were shown the Ruangguru app in various placements on-device. Ruangguru was able to interact throughout the day with the users in its target market as they went about their mobile journey daily.

Describe the expectations / outcome

Ruangguru serves more than 22 million users across Indonesia as of December 2020. This marks a record increase of 7million users, which is equivalent to 46% when compared to December 2019. Out of the 22 million users, 8.4 million, or almost 40%, are mobile app users. Online learning has now become widespread and is increasingly a necessity all over the world. 2020 was a year of huge innovation and expansion for Ruangguru as its expanded into Thailand with the StartDee App, and in Vietnam with the Kien Guru App. Ruangguru also received funding of US$ 55 million or around Rp 800 billion in April 2021 from Tiger Global Management after showing profitability in 2020. The series of funding that Ruangguru has successfully secured increased its valuation figure to around US$900 million, bringing it even closer to the Unicorn level.ROI for the mobile app install campaigns yielded a very good result