iOS Growth: Personalizing the Full Funnel

Discover how to scale your iOS app in 2025 by aligning every step of the funnel, from user acquisition to ASO, onboarding, and monetization.

Growth is multi–channel, multimodal, and deeply fragmented. A few years ago, you’d set up an ad campaign, monitor, optimize, and scale. But now, growth on iOS is different. It’s no longer linear, especially since SKAdNetwork. It got messy. We lost visibility, granularity, and targeting. 

So here we are, having to juggle all of this and keep reaching our ROAS goals without precious data. 

But it means having to focus on creating better experiences. We must align data, innovation, creativity, and engagement. We must align UA, ASO, product, and monetization. We now have to look at the entire user journey, from the first ad impression until the user completes their first purchase or subscription.

In the highly competitive iOS landscape, where privacy rules and performance loops are shorter than ever, growth only happens when everything is aligned. In this piece, we’ll break down the iOS growth funnel step by step and explore how to unlock scale by aligning your strategy.

The Upper Funnel: Creating Awareness and Finding Users

It all starts with an ad. The first impression. Your chance to set the tone and grab attention. Whether you’re a Photo & Video app, a Fintech app, or a Game, two things really matter:

• Where your ad is shown: while playing another game, scrolling mindlessly on social media, watching a YouTube video, getting rewards through an offerwall, or actively looking for an app in the App Store?
• What creative is used: is it storytelling, showing gameplay or features, being funny or dramatic, using influencers…?

This, of course, depends on your overall user acquisition strategy and resources. But while UA managers focus mainly on this part of the funnel, optimizing campaigns, bids, budgets, and creatives, there’s often a disconnect with the rest: from ASO to onboarding and monetization. When CPI and ROAS were the key KPIs, the flow was simpler. Now, we’re looking at many metrics, such as IPM, retention, engagement, churn…

That’s what this era of performance marketing is about: reconnecting and aligning the full funnel, with collaboration between teams to get the most out of iOS.

The Mid-Funnel: Aligning the Ad With the App Store Product Page

You won the auction, the ad was delivered, and you reached the user. If the ad is relevant, users may have clicked, which brings them to the mid-funnel. Conversion isn’t done yet, but the user is now on your App Store page.

You have just a few assets to convince them to download: title, subtitle, screenshots, and description. Reviews and ratings also play a big part, though they’re not entirely under your control (even if they can be influenced… that’s another topic). 

This is where ad-to-ASO alignment becomes crucial. When users click on your ad, they expect to see what originally caught their attention. And let’s be honest: most App Store pages are treated as static assets, only updated with version releases. Only a few developers take the time to update their app icon, screenshots and to align with seasonality for example. 

But your product page is one of the most high-leverage points in the funnel. Whether traffic is paid or organic, users pause here to decide whether they trust your app. 

Especially on iOS, where users tend to be higher-value, they expect:

• Visual consistency with the ads they saw
• A clear value proposition in the title/subtitle
• Continuity between keywords in title / subtitle and screenshots
• Cohesive design between the app icon and screenshots

This is where Custom Product Pages (CPPs) come into play.

Your app likely has several strong features, and it’s impossible to highlight them all in one default page. With CPPs, you can create multiple versions of your App Store product page, each one showcasing a specific feature or piece of content, with a unique shareable link.

With over 109 million downloads to date on both iOS & Android, and 5 million monthly active users as of March 2025 (AppMagic), Revolut remains one of the top-performing Fintech apps on the market. The app offers a wide range of features, from international money transfers and joint accounts to crypto investing and stock trading.

Using Custom Product Pages on iOS, Revolut (or any Fintech app with multiple use cases) could create four tailored product pages, each focused on a specific feature:

• International Money Transfer
• Joint Accounts
• Invest in Crypto
• Invest in Stocks

When an ad promotes a specific feature to a specific audience, you can direct them to the most relevant product page, increasing relevance, and therefore, the likelihood of converting.

💡 Tip: Measure your funnel in several parts: Tap-to-Store vs Store-to-Install, and see where the drop off happens.

*The data in this section was gathered using the premium version of the AppMagic tool.

The Lower Funnel: From Install to Onboarding & Monetization

So here we are: the user has finally installed your app and opens it. But an install isn’t a win, it’s only the beginning. The user now goes through onboarding, and getting it right is crucial to keep them engaged. Some key questions to ask:

• Does the user flow deliver on the promise made in the ad?
• How many steps are there between install and the first rewarding experience?
• Are you tracking early signals of success, such as completing a tutorial, quiz, or personalization setup?
• And most importantly: does the journey feel cohesive from start to finish?

To achieve alignment and cohesion across the funnel, you have to make it happen. From install to onboarding, Deep Linking (combined with CPPs) is one of the most underrated growth tools. Deep Links reduce friction, allow better personalization, and boost retention.

They can direct users to specific parts of the app instead of dropping them on the home screen. You can create tailored onboarding experiences, different tutorials or content based on ad source, and preserve user intent.

Let’s return to our Revolut example. According to AppMagic data from April 2024 to April 2025, Revolut’s Day 1 retention rate is 32.6%. In comparison, two of its main competitors perform better: PayPal at 41.1% and Klarna at 35.3%. By Day 30, the gap becomes even more significant: PayPal retains 11% of users, Klarna drops to 4.8%, and Revolut follows closely at 4.5%.

This lower retention rate directly impacts Revolut’s long-term revenue. No matter how strong your acquisition is, growth without retention is just churn.

By customizing the user journey to match user’s intent, we can improve retention and encourage users to engage longer with the app. Here’s how each Custom Product Page (CPP) could be linked to a relevant deep-linked onboarding flow:

• International transfers → tutorial showing how to exchange and send money abroad
• Joint accounts → walkthrough for opening a joint account
• Invest in crypto → quiz on crypto investment goals
• Invest in stocks → quiz on investment style and interests

By personalizing onboarding to what the user saw in the ad, you increase your chances of conversion, while staying relevant from impression to activation. Of course, monetization must align with the user journey too. Test different monetization models like ads, IAPs, and weekly vs monthly vs annual subscriptions. Once again, testing and tailoring to intent is the way forward.

💡 Tip: Measure your funnel in several parts again: Download-to-Trial vs Trial-to-Paid, and see where the drop off is.

Aligning the Full Funnel

In 2025, UA is no longer just about spend and campaign optimization. It’s about alignment and strategic cohesion.

Here’s what a high-performing iOS funnel looks like:

1. The ad attracts the right user and tells a clear story
2. The App Store page matches the ad’s tone and visuals
3. Onboarding delivers on the promise and feels tailored
4. Monetization is aligned with user expectations and behaviors

This requires close collaboration between UA, ASO, product, and monetization teams.And while we’re still struggling to properly attribute installs, what we can do is design better & more cohesive journeys.

For strong iOS growth, teams must look beyond bids and creatives. They must think in funnels, align across each step, and obsess over the small details. So if you’re looking to scale on iOS in 2025: zoom out, and look at the full funnel.