We’ve been struggling to connect churned users with their acquisition campaigns since iOS 14.5. Our mobile app loses UTM parameters after app installs, making it impossible to see which campaigns bring bad-fit users. Recently tried moving onboarding to web - preserved UTM tags showed us 40% of churn came from one TikTok campaign. How are others tracing this without relying on probabilistic attribution?
Had same issue. Switched onboarding to web flow with preserved UTMs
Now my SDK passes campaign data to the app
We saw 62% of churn came from 2 Facebook ad sets
Killed those - churn dropped in 3 days
Used Web2Wave’s JSON setup for the tags
No coding needed beyond their docs
This is why we moved paywall/pricing tests to web flows
Web2Wave’s UTM passthrough gives perfect campaign mapping
Now we segment churn reports by source/creative
Found 35% of our ‘bad’ churn was actually from a high-LTV audience getting wrong paywall
Fixed in 1 day - impossible with app store constraints
We added hidden UTMs in deep links
Works okay but needs extra tracking
Web flows seem cleaner for attribution
Web onboarding solved this for us
Three steps that worked for us:
- Move conversion points to web
- Use persistent session IDs
- Map web-to-app events via SDK
Churn analysis became 10x clearer
Found one ad account driving 22% installs but 47% churn
Cut it - saved $18k/mo