The WeatherBug-Alchemer Mobile Success Story

Over 12 million people rely on WeatherBug for accurate weather reporting to help plan their day. At this scale, achieving a consistently excellent mobile experience is no small feat. WeatherBug partnered with Alchemer Mobile (formerly Apptentive) to build a mobile feedback engine that was faster, adaptable, and bi-directional.

By translating feedback into action, the WeatherBug team increased app store ratings and reviews, informed and prioritized product improvements, and encouraged their most enthusiastic customers to share—and amplify—their personal WeatherBug stories for use in new marketing campaigns.

INDUSTRY

Lifestyle, Media

Business Size

500K+ Monthly Downloads

BUSINESS TYPE

News & Weather

USE CASES

Product Roadmap, Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention & Loyalty, Brand Reputation, Ratings & Reviews

Alchemer Mobile helped WeatherBug:

10x increase in ratings and reviews

Qualitative feedback to inform and validate roadmap

1400 customer stories received in just 24 hours

Impact on Product Roadmap

A small bug or friction point in a weather app can quickly spiral into a widespread issue—especially for those who rely upon accurate weather forecasts to safely perform their jobs. The WeatherBug team employed sophisticated unidirectional communication tools to reach their customers, but gathering large quantities of meaningful feedback proved more challenging. For example, manually scanning app store reviews identified one issue: slow loading times resulting in low ratings. The WeatherBug team needed to know if this was an isolated incident or an app performance issue that was impacting a larger percentage of their customer base.

Upon integrating Alchemer Mobile and activating the Love Dialog®, WeatherBug saw explosive growth in ratings and reviews volume. Jessica O’Rourke, WeatherBug Senior Product Marketer, noted, “In the span of a few months, we generated the ratings and review volume that would have taken us over three years to achieve organically.”

The increase in quantity and quality of open-ended feedback helped Jessica and the WeatherBug product team identify and prioritize product fixes and new features. With the use of Alchemer Mobile’s in-app mobile surveys, they were able to precisely target customers who expressed negative sentiment and then ask probing questions to understand the root cause of their negative experience—including if slow load times were to blame. “We still track the answers to this specific question on a weekly basis as a key performance indicator, looking for deviations or trends,” says Jessica. “It’s a quick pulse-check to tell us where we’re making improvements, and where we can do more.”

Bonus: Customer Research Fueling a New Marketing Campaign—Fast

The results from this survey program encouraged the team to consider other ways they could leverage Alchemer Mobile. WeatherBug had just re-tooled Spark, a lightning detection service powered by a 1,000-sensor lightning-detection network. Spark provides mobile alerts to notify customers when lightning is nearby, even under clear skies.

Under a tight video production deadline, the WeatherBug marketing team needed to get in touch with real customers who could share their story and describe how they rely on Spark. The goal was to identify the single best customer story and fly out a film crew to record the video. To meet their production schedule, they needed to identify, qualify and confirm this customer in just one week.


To capture powerful customer stories, WeatherBug appealed to their customer base via an Apptentive Note. After receiving more than 1,400 customer stories, WeatherBug partnered with the Cajun Navy to tell this powerful story.

WeatherBug used an Alchemer Mobile Note to carefully target customers who previously expressed positive sentiment and had already used the Spark feature. In only 24 hours, they received 1,400 submissions, which were whittled down to 25 finalists over one weekend. The final result was a powerful story showing how first responders rely on Spark to make their rescue operations safer.

With Alchemer Mobile, we achieved in under 24 hours what can be the most time-consuming part of any video production process: finding the right customer to spotlight,” said Michael Brooks, WeatherBug’s SVP of Revenue & Marketing. Through the process, they also learned more about how their customers use their newest features. “We discovered surprising regional trends in Spark usage. Understanding these geographic nuances helps us not only continue to improve Spark, but the entire WeatherBug product.”

Alchemer Mobile (formerly Apptentive) has been a critical link in helping us get closer to our customers, and to make sure we’re speaking to the right customers. The ability to set up in-app targeting based on events, sentiment, past behavior and feature usage helped us quickly communicate effectively with the WeatherBug audience in a way we couldn’t have dreamt of before Alchemer Mobile.

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