What is Alau.me?

Alau.me is an iOS App Referral Tracking Platform. It allows you, the app developer, to create short referral links pointing to an app on the App Store, and then track the resulting app installs. Kind of like bit.ly, except tailored specifically to apps. But unlike bit.ly, alau.me links let you track not just how many people clicked the link, but how many people went on to download and use the app. Watch the video or read below about some of the things you can do with Alau.me API.

App Store Conversion Tracking

You can use Alau.me to track conversions of your web and print ads. Instead of publishing an App Store link, you can publish a QR code of your alau.me link, and then determine how many people scanned the code and ultimately downloaded the app. Since you can create as many alau.me links as you need, you can use a different link for every ad. QR codes are becoming more and more popular. According to Forrester study, over 15% of smartphone users used QR codes in 2011. In Japan, QR codes are everywhere, but even in U.S., their usage in magazines grew 228% in 2011, according to Nellymoser survey. And advertisers have barely scratched the surface with the possibilities. Here's a great Mashable article with just a few creative ideas. But of course, you don't need to use QR codes with Alau.me. You can create an easily readable (and memorable) link, which redirects from your domain to a custom alau.me link and still track download conversions.

Referral Programs

With Alau.me, you can programmatically create a unique referral link for each of your users, and let them share that link with their friends and followers. Everyone loves to feel special. Those who love your app will be delighted to get something extra for spreading the word about your app. Now you can create your very own "VIP" program. And the best part is, we make it trivial for you to implement it. You can create your own user interface that fits perfectly with the visual design of your app, and you can decide how you will thank those users. In case of a game, for example, you could unlock additional levels. If you offer some premium content available through in-app purchases, you could unlock it. You can even offer Amazon or PayPal gifts. Alau.me is fully integrated with PayPal MassPay service and you can use it to send micro-payments.

Special Promotions

You could offer something special to those users who download your app. For example, you could launch a Twitter contest where anyone who downloads the app using your promotion link can win an iPad. In the past, Twitter contests were great at attracting bots and spammers. Now you can easily create a contest where participants actually need to download your app. You can even offer select users a discount on your app in the form of a PayPal rebate. This latter option is particularly exciting for the high-end apps, costing $9.99 or more. A great addition to your app marketing toolbox, especially around the holidays.

With over 500,000 apps in the App Store, it's difficult to get noticed. Creating a beautiful, immersive and high-quality application is necessary, but not sufficient to excel. You need to do everything you can, to make your customers happy, and tell the world about your app. Alau.me helps you with the latter.

How does Alau.me track referrals? How accurate is it?

Alau.me uses IP address matching to track referrals and this is the primary determinant of its accuracy. In order for a referral to be registered, the referral link and the newly installed app must be opened from the same IP address and within an hour of each other (the order doesn't matter). Of course, IP addresses are not unique. In NAT scenarios, many users share the same publicly visible address. However, it is very unlikely that a random user opens a referral link and another user downloads the corresponding app, behind the same IP address, independent of each other and within an hour. This is true even for very popular apps which get downloded tens of thousands of times a day.

In our experience, the accuracy is more than adequate to create referral programs or track ad performance. In case of apps over 50 MB (which must always be downloaded over Wi-Fi), the accuracy drops simply because a greater percentage of users will be forced to switch to Wi-Fi after they've clicked the referral link. In this case, we do offer a solution which improves accuracy. Here's how it works: normally Alau.me referral links point to the App Store, but you can point them to a mobile landing page (containing a video for example), with a "Download" and "Redeem" links. The redeem link launches the app and passes the promo code to the app via a custom URL scheme and thus can be used to further improve tracking accuracy.

Regardless of the mechanism used, referral tracking cannot be absolute unless you require user input. There are always cases where a user opens your referral link on one computer and then decides to download the app on his device. In those cases, the only option would be to ask the user to enter their 4-6 character promo code (which you can do using the same mechanism outline above). For more information, see the [AMConnect referredBy] property in AMConnect.h file.

Does Alau.me use [UIDevice uniqueIdentifier] method?

No, Alau.me does not use the [UIDevice uniqueIdentifier] method, which has been deprecated in iOS 5, nor any other property, such as the NIC address, that would compromise the privacy of your users. Referral tracking is enabled using identifiers specific to your app, which are saved to the keychain to make sure they persist even if the app gets re-installed.