Your First 30 Days After Launching a Club App

The week before launch

Don't launch an empty app. Before the store links go out:

• Load five or six news stories, the fixture and one poll, so there's something to open on day one.
• Install it on the committee's phones and send a test push. Fix anything that looks wrong now, not after 500 people have seen it.
• Decide the one thing fans will only get in the app. Team selections an hour early, the Player of the Match vote, a partner's offer. That's your launch message.
• Print a QR code that goes to the store listing, for the gate, the canteen and the clubrooms.

Week 1: launch

Announce it everywhere at once: social, email, the website, the PA on game day. Use direct store links and lead with the reason to download, not the fact that the app exists.

Send a welcome push on day one with something useful in it. Ask coaches and captains to have players install it at training while you're standing there. That gets more installs than any post.

Pick a target before you start. Use your own lists, not a benchmark: members, registered players and their families. Then you'll know what “good” means for your club.

Week 2: set a rhythm

Fans come back when they know what's coming. Give the week a shape and keep to it. For example:

• Monday: results and the weekend's photos
• Wednesday: club news and selections
• Friday: match preview and a poll
• Game day: live scores and the Player of the Match vote

Send a push only when someone would want to know: selections, a late venue change, kick-off, the final score. Schedule the routine ones ahead in Mission Control. Push only reaches fans who opted in, so every one you waste costs you some of those.

Put one thing inside the app each week that isn't on social. Post the teaser to social and keep the full story in the app.

Week 3: ask, then fix

By now you have early users. Ask them what they want more of with a poll in the app, and ask the committee what fans have said to them at the ground. Then fix the top complaint, even if it's small, and tell people you fixed it.

This is also the week to check that more than one person knows how to run the app. When one volunteer does everything, the app goes quiet the week they're away.

Week 4: measure

Three sets of numbers are worth looking at after a month:

• Downloads, from App Store Connect and the Google Play Console. Compare them with the target you set in week 1.
• Fan accounts, from Mission Control. Downloads tell you who installed the app; accounts tell you who you can now reach by name.
• What people opened. Mission Control's analytics export gives you sessions and events by day. Look at the days after each push and after each game. Those tell you which messages bring people back.

Use what you find to plan month two: more of what got opened, less of what didn't.

Mistakes we see in the first month

• Launching with nothing in it. An empty app on day one loses people it can't win back.
• Pushing every story. Fans switch notifications off. Then you've lost the most useful thing the app has.
• Treating the app as a copy of social. If everything is on Facebook first, nobody needs the app.
• One person running it alone. When they're away, it stops.
• Judging it on week one. Installs come in waves: launch day, the first home game, the first big result. Judge it on the month.

The full plan, from six weeks out to the end of the season, is in the Club App Launch Playbook.