MMA CASE STUDY
SparkNotes
App
Campaign Summary
SparkNotes offers students today’s most popular study guides for literature, poetry, philosophy, drama, and short stories.
Previously, users could only access a limited number of SparkNotes’ study guides via a smartphone by paying for the
No Fear Shakespeare app. To better serve its target audience, SparkNotes developed a mobile app that provided onand offline access to all its study guides. The app was available for iOS and Android devices.
Strategy and Execution
SparkNotes felt it was missing out on reaching a large portion of its target demographic of high school students and
college underclassmen because its hundreds of study guides were not all available on mobile devices. The publisher
decided to build the “SparkNotes App,” an integrated solution that provided students with a convenient way to access
its study guides, meet other SparkNotes users, and form study groups. Because the app featured in-app advertising,
SparkNotes was offered to students for free.
The SparkNotes App’s many features included:
• Access to 50 guides pre-installed in the app library. These guides could be viewed offline, which is a key feature to
improve usability and accessibility for students whose devices may be Internet-enabled only part of the time (e.g.,
the iPod Touch).
• Hundreds of study guides available for viewing online.
• Options to download more than 600 SparkNotes study guides to mobile devices for offline use.
• Social element that allowed students to share a study group location by checking in with a customized post to Facebook.
In addition to the app’s main features, it also utilized Facebook’s Graph API to let users check in when meeting others for a
study group. The app also integrated analytics-tracking software to capture interactions and incorporate them into updates.
SparkNotes decided to include an ad-serving software development kit from a selected ad-serving network where ads
were displayed in specifically designed pages based on user-experience studies. Through the implementation of these
strategically placed ads, the app could be downloaded and used by users for free, while remaining streamlined and
user-friendly.
Results
Since March 2012, the SparkNotes App has been downloaded more than 415,000 times on iOS and Android platforms
combined. It enjoyed a four-star rating on the iTunes App Store, based on 117 ratings, and a 4.7-star rating on AndroidZoom, based on 321 ratings.
The app generated a total of 387,692 unique users over a 110-day time period, or more than 3,524 unique user per day.
From March 27 to July 15, 2012, the app received an average increase in weekly users of 24 percent. The iOS and
Android app received a combined total of six million sessions.
Most importantly, the SparkNotes App demonstrated SparkNotes’ commitment to community and helped keep the
publisher top of mind with its target demographic.
Source
“SparkNotes App.” 2012 Smarties Submission Mobile App. Brand: SparkNotes. Lead Agency: Triad Retail Media.
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SparkNotes App