This post is part of a series for our customers on easy ways to promote your app.

Searching for ways to promote your app? La Salle University recently used a wonderfully creative “scavenger hunt” to help promote their “crib sheet” app.

The goal

Get La Salle young alumni to download and explore the app.

The idea

Offer a drawing to win an iPad 2 to La Salle 2011 grads. To enter, they needed to download the app and fill out a “scavenger hunt” form (on questions about our life skills topic content) prior to graduation.

How they did it

La Salle promoted the scavenger hunt with e-mail blasts, flyers around campus and advertising at Senior events. Students were instructed to download the app and look for the “Scavenger Hunt” feedback form in their news feed.

Via the Dashboard, they added this Feature:

When users tapped on this Feature, they are taken to the feedback form they created for the scavenger hunt:

This form asked users to read through various topics to find answers (and hopefully learn a bit on credit, home buying, and more along the way).

Result

La Salle had over 50 feedback form responses, but more importantly their downloads grew to roughly the size of their graduating class.

Takeaway

Use events like graduation and homecoming to rally your alumni/members around a creative incentive to get and use your app.

If you don’t have the funds for a large prize, consider using smaller gift cards for local restaurants or tickets to an upcoming campus event.

Keep your feedback form to 3-5 questions, so the incentive matches the work required.

And most of all, like La Salle, keep those creative juices flowing on how to get the word out about your app!

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Mobile 101: This post is part of our educational series on mobile technology. If you are new to the smart phone/app arena, this series is a good place to start.

Last week I received this email:

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but I responded. Victor called me the next day.

He explained to me how his daughters “made him” get a smartphone. He figured out how to download apps and got excited when he found our “crib sheet” app from his alma mater.

Victor hadn’t been in contact with his school since he graduated in 1970, but reconnected with his frat house earlier that morning via the app. I call this “discovery”.

If you follow our blog, you’ve read my lovely wife’s series on best practices for promoting our app. When you promote, you get downloads from connections that already exist.

But what about the “Victors” of the world? When your app is in app stores, alumni find you. That’s powerful stuff.

How Discovery Happens

How do people get apps? In most cases, they search an app store:

Each type of phone has their own app store, but they work in much the same way. Search for a term and download an app.

When I first got my iPhone, the first thing I did was go into the App Store and search for “Duke,” because I’m a Dukie.

Based on feedback and statistics, “discovery” happens. Alumni are reconnecting by searching an app store for their alma mater.

In short, your alumni are out there looking for you.

And, as the case of “Victor” proves, they are not always the ones you’d expect.

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