Promoting Your iOS App by Sharing Deep Links to Promo Codes

So you’ve just finished creating your iOS app and it has been approved by Apple.  Congratulations - this is very exciting!

One of the next steps in successfully promoting your app is sending Promo Codes to  journalists and app bloggers so they can review the app to help generate some buzz.

First you need to login to your iTunes Connect account and visit the Promo Codes page to generate the codes that you will send to the bloggers and reviewers.  When you complete the promo codes process you will get a simple text file with a list of unique promo codes that you can use.

iTunes Connect Promo Code Request Page

Now, this is all well and good but think of the user experience for the person that you would like to review your app.  It goes something like this:

  1. First you send the reviewer the promo code
  2. Next the reviewer opens the iTunes app
  3. Then they may have to enter their password to login to iTunes
  4. Next they find the difficult to locate Redeem link and click it
  5. Now they enter the promo code and hope they typed it in correctly
  6. Finally your app will start to download on the reviewer’s device

At a time when you are relying on the reviewer to download your app to help generate traffic for you this process is error prone and very frustrating.

Well, luckily there is a better way to share your Promo Codes that is not very widely publicized by Apple.  You can actually provide a link with the Promo Code included so that all the reviewer needs to do is click on your link to start downloading your app.

Simply provide a link such as this to make it much easier to share your Promo Codes:

http://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/redeemLandingPage?code=PROMO_CODE  

Just replace the PROMO_CODE value in the link with your unique Promo Code and send that to the app reviewer.  This link will let them download your app quickly and easily.

Now you’ve taken a six step process down to a one step process and increased the chances that the app reviewer will be able to download your app.

The more links, press, and reviews that you can get for your app the more successful your app venture will be.

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