Tara Meyer
There’s a gap in user retention metrics that should make every mobile game developer, studio, or marketing squirm.
In Tenjin’s ROI 101, we spoke with founder Evelin Herrera from EVHM Capital, who spends her days evaluating mobile businesses for acquisition, to understand the retention gap that’s shaping the industry. The numbers she shared reveal why utility and lifestyle apps are building sustainable, valuable businesses while even top-performing games struggle to keep users past a few months.
“[Non-gaming] apps can become part of your lifestyle,” Evelin explains. “Look at Life360, a safety app where you can track where your kids and family are. If you’re a mother and your kid is three years old going to kindergarten, you’ll want to track them through primary school, high school, and university. That’s an LTV of twelve years, from age three to fifteen. That’s crazy.”
Keeping users for one month compared to twelve years presents two completely separate scenarios.
These app economics and app LTV from a long-term scale changes perspectives for future mobile app retention strategies. We’ll break down the key differences in user retention metrics between games and apps, why subscription models create long-term relationships, and how your mobile strategy can adapt.
Retention Metrics Benchmarks: What’s Elite For Games Is Catastrophic For Apps
The comparison and app competition between mobile apps is staggering.
For gaming apps, shooting for a D30 retention rate of 5% would be elite. With this rate, “ it’s like, wow, gold mine—you’re one of the best ones in the market,” Evelin notes. But there’s a devastating follow-up: “By D60, what do you have left? 1% of users.”
For non-gaming apps, these standards would be considered catastrophic. “If D30 retention is 5%, you’re terrible and no buyer will want to talk with you,” she says bluntly.
Comparing these industry standards creates a disconnect. What is considered exemplary in gaming is nothing but a scratch for most apps. That’s because the entire framework for thinking about user relationships and maintaining them is fundamentally different.
Premiums for Predictability
This retention advantage translates directly into revenue predictability.
We’ve seen already that there’s an array of app monetization differentiation across game genres. However there is one main monetization pillar across all apps, both gaming and non-gaming alike.
“Apps usually use subscriptions, which makes revenue very predictable, “ Evelin explains.
She adds that with a subscription-based model, you’re not chasing daily sessions or optimizing for the perfect ad placement between levels. You’re constantly adding, building a service that can easily become woven into someone’s daily routine. This all means that users usually stay longer – and have longer retention rates.
From an investment or buyers perspective, this predictability transforms everything. By having a subscription revenue, you can model out cash flow months or years in advance. You probably have consistent churn rates. You know your expansion revenue from upgrades. The business becomes “safer” and fundable by traditional lenders due to the more stable environment presented by apps with subscription-based models.
In contrast, gaming apps that don’t utilize subscriptions are more volatile with a shorter life-cycle. They live and die by engagement spikes and have a higher churn rate. If there’s a new event, revenue jumps. If the content goes stale, revenue rates start to crater. The elite, gold standard of reaching a 5% D30 retention rate requires constant feeding, and it’s always hungry for new content. Constant events, constant spend.
Variance in App Valuation
When predictable subscription revenue meets long-term retention, something magical happens to app valuations in your app portfolio.
“Usually it’s based on profit,” Evelin explains when discussing pricing. “You can probably sell it for a 3-5x multiplier on annual profit, but we’ve seen offers go up to 7-8x multipliers. But, you need something very unique and a strong focus for 5-10 years to achieve that.”
Aim for high “profit margins, customer acquisition cost, organic keyword rankings, growth trajectory, unique features or technology,” says Evelin. As we’ll see, these are all things most essential apps with strong retention strategies excel at.
Revenue Layers: In-App Advertising (IAA)
According to our expert Evelin, the adoption of in-app advertising (IAA) into hybrid revenue strategies could be improved by lifestyle and essential apps.
“I barely see apps utilizing in-app advertising efficiently,” Evelin reveals. “There’s a lack of education. Some founders making six figures in MRR aren’t aware that they can monetize with in-app advertising too.”
“For context, gaming apps with strong retention metrics have mastered hybrid monetization, often generating 40-60% of revenue from ads while maintaining IAP revenue.”
Six figure MRR app with stellar user retention, and founders have yet to discover hybrid monetization, an untapped opportunity.
“It’s usually only Android, or iOS apps targeting Tier 3 geos where users don’t tend to subscribe,” she continues.
The implication should be clear. There’s a massive white space opportunity for lifestyle apps to layer in ad monetization without cannibalizing subscription revenue. The gaming industry has spent years optimizing the IAA and IAP balance and their expertise could be leveraged when applied to other types of apps.
Mobile App Retention Strategies: Organic Moat
When we asked Evelin about differences in mobile app retention strategies, the sustainable advantage of non-gaming apps became even clearer.
Unlike mobile games that typically launch with paid UA from day one, the most successful apps tend to build a massive organic moat first. Here’s the evidence:
“We even run studies on ‘What happens if we stop all paid UA efforts right now?'” Evelin shares. “For apps, calculating only App Store organic traffic, conversion rates, and subscriber retention, the numbers are usually extremely good.”
For games? “Unless they’re getting really good organic traffic, the game will be dead in 10 months max, even with an excellent D30 5% retention rate.”
The asymmetry is stark. Even with elite 5% D30 retention metrics, games can’t survive on their own. Many apps are designed to survive and even thrive on organic users alone. In contrast, games need constant UA spend, paid fuel to keep the engine running.
Organic-first approach apps are pioneering and represent best practices for long-term app LTV optimization. “They’re already profitable with cash reserves before spending on paid UA,” Evelin notes. “They already know which creatives and messaging works from going viral organically.”
Operational Efficiency
One of the most striking revelations from our conversation about mobile app retention strategies honed in on operational efficiency. “We see profit margins of 55-70% for apps, which is crazy,” Evelin notes.
These days, “you can run a six-figure MRR app business with just five people on payroll,” emphasizes Evelin.
Five people. Six figures in monthly recurring revenue. Stellar user retention metrics.
“For games, you can run with low headcount too, but only after 10 years of business for evergreen titles. To launch a game, you definitely need more resources.”
The resource intensity of game development creates a structural disadvantage. You need artists, animators, level designers, QA testers, community managers, live ops specialists all working to maintain retention metrics. The headcount scales with ambition.
Other apps? A great developer, a solid designer, maybe a customer success person focused on retention metrics, and a founder who wears multiple hats. That’s often enough to build a million-dollar business with an exceptional app LTV.
In terms of app economics, this means more profit and revenue made instead of it going to cover business expenses.
User Retention Metrics: A Sticky Blueprint
The Life360 example that Evelin shared isn’t an outlier. It’s actually a blueprint for what makes some apps more sticky than others.
Most games would kill for 12 months of sustained engagement from the same user. However, this is scant compared to twelve years of user retention as a likely scenario.
The main difference between games and apps is the same as entertainment and utility. For entertainment you might play a puzzle game on your commute, reach your stop, and move on. But an app that is designed to solve a problem or serves as a companion app? The latter is what gets integrated into the modern life infrastructure.
Meditation apps. Fitness and health trackers. Navigation apps. Budgeting tools. Language learning platforms. Finance apps. These aren’t fleeting experiences, but rather companion tools that support your habits and larger lifestyle. With the right algorithm, they have the potential to influence a large part of your identity.
Best Practices: Optimize Long-Term LTV
From our discussion with Evelin, we can already see the blurring of the lines and the need for different categories of apps to learn from each other. The most popular games in the next five years are already asking themselves how to build more sustainable, long-term relationships with their users. So, consider designing for longer-retention rates rather than focusing on a 60 day sprint and churn.
In summary, here’s our tips to optimize for long-term LTV:
- Think with purpose, not just for entertainment. What problem are you trying to solve and how long do they persist? Can you make it more interesting?
Games and apps that develop daily habits have a staying power that single-player narratives don’t.
- Learn about and explore hybrid monetization models, or starting a subscription-based one. How much opportunity are you missing by not testing IAA, IAP, or subscription models or a combination of them?
- Aim for the organic flywheel. The apps scaling to six figure MRR on organic UGC before starting UA spend are not paid dependent. Can you find your organic growth machine?
- Apply gamification in apps thoughtfully. Instead of entertainment for it’s own sake, use game mechanics to drive habit formation in utility-focused products.
Want to understand how your app’s retention metrics stack up? Tenjin’s attribution and analytics platform helps you track, measure, and optimize user retention metrics across your entire user lifecycle. Learn more about our products here.
