Evan Carmichael reviews Zoodles, a kids' app that emails parents detailed usage reports, drawings, and interest triggers like book requests. The reports subtly encourage upgrades to the paid tier. Carmichael's advice to app makers: send usage data to decision-makers to boost perceived value and conversions.
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Hey, it's Evan. Today I wanted to share an app that I'm using for my son, and what I love about the app is not just the app itself, but the marketing that they do is genius, and it's something that anybody can leverage and model for their own business. First of all, the app is called Zoodles. It's actually a kids' app, and for those of you who have kids, you should definitely check it out. You're going to love it. Basically what it does is, it's a free app to start with, and it'll lock your phone so that when your child is using your phone, they can't get into any programs that you haven't approved for them. So they can get into whatever you set up that they can see, otherwise they can't get into your email or change your settings or send clients strange pictures. They can't do any of that. A lot of times you get your phone back from your kid and, and everything's been changed around. So I have a 4-year-old son and the only way that he can get access to the programs that are not set up by me is for him to enter in my birth year, which he doesn't know. So it's a great program. The next thing you can do is you enter in a picture of your child and their age, and what it will do is automatically bring in programs and learning tools that are appropriate for them. So my son is 4, he'll see programs that relate to counting and math and early science skills and grammar skills and kind of learning the alphabet, that kind of stuff. They'll show it for him. And if your child is 7 or 10 or 2, you'll see related programs. So I thought that alone was pretty genius. That alone was worth getting the program for. The genius thing they do on, on the marketing side though is I get an update. I don't let my son use my phone that much. I try to limit his screen time, but when he does, I try to— he uses this program and they send me an update. So this is something that Zoodles will send me as an example, and it sends me what he drew. So this is what my son drew on the phone. Again, he's 4 years old, so I can click on that and print that off. And I guess if your child is older and producing something, something nicer, you can send it off to your family too. But it's nice that it sends me an email with all the updates. I didn't know he was doing any of this stuff. It tells me where he's spending his time. So again, as you can see, I don't let him use the phone that much, but cognitive development, life skills, math— you can see how it's broken down. You He's watching videos or playing games. And so it's really cool to see, you know, the apps he's using, characters that are involved in the programs he's learning about. He's learning about responsibility and counting and citizenship and all this stuff. It's great to see this report of what he likes, how he's using it, what he's learning, because I'm not following along all the time when he's on the phone. It's really cool to get this update. So if you're, you know, whatever program you have, you want to make sure you're providing detailed usage of how people are are going and using and benefiting from your product, because this is mind-blowing. This is mind-blowing how much they tell me about what my son is doing with the program. The thing that started to get me to buy was this email before. So this came to my email, uh, my son loves baseball, I love baseball. Hayden requested a book. So this is my son Hayden, and on one of the Zoodle programs are books, and you can either buy a book individually or you can buy the the premium package, which I think is $5 a month or something. And what it does is allow you to read a book and record a video of yourself reading the book to your child. And I thought it was amazing that he clicked on the book and I guess a message popped up to say that he couldn't read the book, but it triggers an email to me, the parent, to say, "Your son is interested in this book." And I thought it was interesting at the start. I said, "Hayden, did you request this book?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah, I clicked on that link." I clicked on the book, I clicked on the book. And it's just amazing how they do the marketing afterwards to hook the parents in on wanting to upgrade and start paying for the product. So even as a free tool, it's a great— if you're a parent, it's a great tool to get into, provide some learning tools for your kids so they're not just playing Angry Birds on the phone all day. But I found the interaction amazing of how they managed to get me to quickly upgrade and give me detailed stats on what my son is doing that makes me want to stay with the program and maybe even buy more and more and more. Are in the app business or you're marketing any kind of product, I would try as much as possible to show these kind of detailed reports to hook people, get them interested in your product, show how people are using it, especially if it's not them using it, it's their people on their team who are using it or people in their family that are using it. You can show their usage, what they're doing. I just thought it was a great way to market it and I wanted to share with you guys. So if you guys like this video, let me know, leave a thumbs up below. If you have a comment about Zoodle specifically or another app, or you have a question for your business, leave it in the comment section below. I'll make a video response. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
