APP Promotion: How to write an email to apply for App Store Featured Recommendation (Example)

If an App can be selected as a "Featured Recommendation" by Apple, it is a great blessing for the developer. Regardless of the huge traffic that can bring many real users to the product, being on the App Store homepage itself has a considerable publicity effect.

But then again, the featured recommendations are ultimately manually screened by Apple staff. In the App Store with a massive number of apps, the apps that are paid attention to and selected are ultimately one in ten thousand.

We don't have many opportunities to interact with Apple staff, and it is even more impossible for us to go to California in person to have dinner with them, so the value of a private email directly to Apple editors is crucial. The advantages of such a bold "direct confession" are very obvious:

1. Greatly increase the probability of being noticed by editors;

2. It saves editors the time and energy of screening and editing;

Compared to waiting for pie in the sky, apps that proactively seek opportunities are much more likely to be listed as “Featured Recommendations”.

Steve Young, founder of App Masters, shared the specific methods and steps of this strategy, which he used to help the independent game Are You In Your Head get on the App Store's recommended page.

1. The app must be high-quality first

Although the importance of product quality has been mentioned thousands of times, this point still needs to be mentioned first.

Frankly speaking, not all apps are worthy of being recommended by Apple, but those that are recommended are all Apple’s way of showing its attitude - to show the best and most refined products to users.

But in reality, most apps are not that good, so those who think their products are still a little far from Apple's strict standards for selecting excellent apps don't have to be disappointed;

However, if your own app is really good but unfortunately fails to make it to the recommendation list, you don’t have to worry too much about it. Just focus on other channels.

2. Find the right person

This step is critical. Since Apple’s official mailbox is almost overwhelmed by developers’ self-recommendation emails, private emails directly to relevant staff are of extraordinary value.

All we have to do is search for “App store manager” on LinkedIn, then check “Apple” in the “Current employment” column and check “United States” in the “Region” if necessary.

3. Get email address

Then download the Email Hunter Chrome extension, which can help us get the email address of the target user on LinkedIn.

Download and install link: emailhunter.co/chrome

This red button is the new function after installing Email Hunter.

If Email Hunter doesn't work, try a similar app like Rapportive .

4. Write an attractive email

Here comes the point. In this email, the App cannot be just an ordinary App. It must also have (and must have) its own unique features that we need to emphasize and introduce.

So we should at least pay attention to the following points when writing emails:

(1) Add a video. If you want people to quickly understand an app, video is the most suitable medium; it should be noted that the quality of the video often reflects the quality of the app.

(2) You can mention in the email that your app has been featured on the featured recommendation page before, or tell the other party that this app has achieved impressive download results.

(3) If it involves Apple’s latest features, such as 3D Touch, be sure to mention it!

(4) Keep the content of the email as brief as possible: The editors obviously cannot waste too much time studying your long article, so it is very important to express the key points as concisely as possible. Please note that English must be used here. If your English level is average, you should find a skilled person to do it for you. Translation software is sometimes unreliable.

(5) Request feedback. If we can get feedback and suggestions from these professionals, especially replies to private emails, it will help us perform better on the App Store.

5. Upload information

If you are selected by the App Store Manager, there will be a small number of forms for you to fill out in the reply email. At this time, you need to fill in the relevant information accurately, and of course, the sooner the better.

Of course, filling out this form does not necessarily mean that your app will be recommended by Apple. Maybe after a while, you will not receive any notification from Apple about the recommended app. We can just wait until next Thursday (when the recommendation page is updated) to verify it.

It should be noted that if the App is not recommended on the main page of the App Store, you can pay attention to the featured recommendations in the sub-list. For example, Are You In Over Your Head? is on the recommendation page for Arcade Games and Family Games.

In fact, writing a recommendation letter with a high success rate is a highly demanding craft. Below, we share a successful case of writing a recommendation letter, which helped FitMenCook get recommended by BGR, Mac|Life, AppAdvice, Apple World Today and many other media.

Through PR on these media, such as Product Hunt and Kevin Curry's own list, FitMenCook ranked second on the paid list within a week.

The even better news is that a few weeks later, Apple noticed the news in various media and FitMenCook’s performance on the charts, and decided to put it on the App Store’s recommendation page - Best New Apps.

1. Carefully craft the title

The email subject line is the most important element in a recommendation letter, because it determines whether the recipient will respond to this email from an unknown source. If the title is not well written, no matter how wonderful the content is, it will be useless.

We can do this by taking the time to prepare 3-5 different headline tests, sending them to friends, family, or even small organizations, and then testing which emails are opened more often or have a higher proportion.

It is reported that there are 3 types of simple words that can increase the probability of a recommendation letter being opened:

a. "Exclusive" means that many media outlets want to push breaking news faster and earlier than others.

b. "Name", the name of the recipient, such as the author's example "Steve, this app is...";

c. " First ", which is similar to "Exclusive".

Borrow interesting sentences from other news, reports, and comments and put them in the title to make your email more outstanding.

I spoke to the guy behind FitMenCook and he mentioned that Kevin Curry’s recipes allow a person to cook a week’s worth of meals in one go.

I realized this was a good idea for marketing.

In the title, you must highlight one highlight of the App, and one is enough.

It takes experience to come up with an attractive title. You can treat it as "How to come up with an article title that will go viral on WeChat Moments". Through the online tool Buzzsumo, you can refer to the most popular titles for the content you want to write.

But it is important to note that content that is so popular that it is everywhere will not be effective. For example, "9 Things You Must Know About Menopause" is not suitable for the title of an email.

We receive a lot of emails every day, so it’s important to highlight the highlights. I previously wrote a testimonial for my own app, oSnap, and tested two versions of the headline:

a. oSnap – The Perfect Camera App for Selfies

b. oSnap – Tap anywhere to take a pic

The test results are amazing, the latter’s opening rate is as high as 99%!

When selecting the highlights of your own app, be sure to think several times about “why this”. Take oSnap as an example, why it is The Perfect Camera App for Selfies is because of its unique gesture operation. This is cool because we don’t have to look for various buttons anymore, we can just touch anywhere on the screen, so the expression effect of “Tap anywhere” is even better.

2. Write the influence in the first two lines of the text

After we have written a title that can attract recipients to open it, the content must also be exciting. A title party will only cause the email to be thrown into the trash, so we have to attach various exciting performances to our App.

In the FitMenCook email, I wrote about Kevin Curry’s review and highlighted that Kevin Curry has nearly 1 million Instagram followers.

The reason we do this is because we consider it from the recipient's perspective, "I receive so many recommendation letters every day, and I have seen a lot of apps of this type." The purpose of the first two lines of our email is not to introduce the app, but to give the recipient motivation to continue reading.

3. Pay attention to the layout of the email

No one likes to read long emails without any gaps, so typography is important in visual presentation.

Proper use of bullet points (that’s the dot “·”), bold, italics, and underlining will make the recipient have a more comfortable reading experience. Sometimes the use of GIFs can also add color to emails.

You can see that I bolded “ONE hack to actually sticking with a diet” in the email to highlight our highlight; then I wrote in italics “Cook delicious healthy food in advance for the week” as further explanation.

I try to break up long sentences in my emails as much as possible. This gives the recipient a break while they read.

4. List the highlights of the product

When listing product highlights, my suggestions are as follows:

Point-by-point lists can make emails more beautiful;

· 3-4 highlights are enough;

Each item should not exceed two sentences in length.

Review it again when you are done and try to make it more concise.

You can also use bold to highlight certain things, but make sure they are worth bolding and not just for the sake of bolding.

5. Add links to related content

Adding links to relevant content in your emails saves recipients the effort of using search engines to find the content.

These links include:

A link to a video from YouTube or Vimeo;

Website address;

iTunes or Google Play link;

· External publicity materials;

Registered address.

It takes a long time for editors to complete an article, so providing as detailed content as possible will increase the other party's favorability towards us, and the probability of being selected for recommendation will be much greater.

For the recommendation position in domestic media, face recognition and money play a greater role than this kind of sincere email; but the editors of App Store are still quite fair, which is also the main purpose of this article. Of course, if we can get the channels, those influential foreign media are worth trying. At this time, the importance of recommendation letters is not only reflected in their impact on the probability of being selected, but also represents the image of the school to a certain extent.