Elk Network Built a 5* Rated App and Hit Over 20,000 Downloads Fast

Chad Carman is the Director of Digital Media for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation – an American non-profit dedicated to ensuring the future of Elk, their habitat and the country’s hunting heritage.

Getting Digital Right

In recent years, the foundation has been working hard to build a strong digital presence. As Chad explained:

“We’ve been putting more effort into our digital marketing and our new media marketing platforms. This included creating a more in-depth blog that we call the Elk Network.”

The Elk Network is unique in its industry, and has become a popular destination for the outdoor, hunting, and conservation community.

It’s not easy to implement a solid digital marketing strategy – the range of constantly shifting channels, platforms and tools can be intimidating. That’s why a major advantage of building native apps is having a channel that you own and control 100%.

“We wanted to really become effective in the digital stream, and as Facebook continues to get more difficult, and the social media platforms in general get more congested, we wanted something that we could control. We thought that having a placeholder on our users’ phones with the app would be our best stance, our best opportunity to make that happen”

Why Build Native Apps?

One of the frustrations for Chad and his team was working out how to engage the younger tech-savvy generation. It can take some effort but comes with rewards.

“The younger demographic is more likely to have apps on their phone, they grew up in this digital realm. The earlier that we can get them into the fold and make them aware of the good that we’re doing, the better chance we have of creating a long term sustainable relationship. We hoped that by creating a mobile app – we’d be able to activate them at a younger age and bring them into the fold 10, 20 years down the road”

A strong native presence is indeed a great way to reach a younger audience and the team at Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation realized that. The problem was – how to build it?

App development can be a costly and time consuming project:

“We looked into a couple of different app developers out there, and apps can range anywhere from 50 to 100k depending on what you want”

Finding MobiLoud

Chad and his team shopped around a little, weighing up their options – then came across MobiLoud.

“We happened to come across the MobiLoud platform that allowed us to take WordPress, which we already worked with, easily implement it, and within a matter of weeks, we had an app that was good for iOS and Android platforms”

One of the advantages of our service is our deep integration with WordPress. Your app will pull content automatically from your site – and there’s no extra work as it’s all managed through your WordPress dashboard.

We built iOS and Android apps for The Elk Network and got them live on the App stores in a matter of weeks.

Here’s what Chad Carman had to say about working with us:

“MobiLoud was extremely affordable compared to the other options….. I would say the investment required for a lifetime or subscription license is so minuscule relative to what you’re trying to achieve for your business that it should be a no-brainer!”

We strive to create personalised, one-on-one relationships with our customers.

Our service includes all ongoing maintenance and any updates that crop up, and we’re always there to help you to make a true success of your app. Chad had this to say about our service:

“We’ve had a very one-on-one relationship….. They answered all our questions in a timely manner and always had a “sure we can do that” attitude. Some of the other developers we tried to reach out to would give us, “well you don’t wanna do it this way”, or “well you don’t wanna do it that way”…… But MobiLoud enabled us to do exactly what we want quickly and efficiently.”

From Concept to Success on the App Stores

Chad and his team have experienced a lot of success with their apps. Their primary goal from the get-go was:

“The number of eyeballs that we could get on our content. We were motivated by brand awareness on this”

They achieved this and more – their new apps caused their traffic to soar:

“Within a week of pushing it through our email lists, we started seeing hundreds of downloads, then thousands of downloads. Now we’re close to 20,000 downloads. We’ve seen our steady source of recurring traffic from this platform…..  We realized that we’d gone with the right solution when we saw our average traffic trending upward more and more, and more, and more, from the day that we implemented it!”

Their readers clearly love the app – they have loads of 5* reviews on the App Stores. Elk Network do a great job of showcasing the apps on their site too!

We’re proud to have partnered with The Elk Network to help them achieve some powerful results for their brand, like hitting five figure downloads and dramatically growing their traffic and audience engagement.

We help publishers to achieve these kinds of results every day, and we can help you too.

We have solutions to turn any site or web app into iOS and Android apps – but if you’re a WordPress-based digital publisher looking to grow through native apps, MobiLoud News is for you.

If your site has a good amount of traffic you can even get native iOS and Android apps at zero upfront cost! Check out our publisher program today.