Mackenzie Quinn on Getting App Teams to Speak the Same Language

Most app teams look for growth in a new channel, a new tool or, increasingly, a new AI workflow. Mackenzie Quinn, founder of Quinn Strategic Consulting, argues the bigger unlock is far less glamorous: getting engineering, product, UA and retention to work from the same picture of the customer.

Quinn spent years on the brand side, leading mobile app initiatives before founding her consultancy. That vantage point shaped what she now calls her “customer growth architecture”: a way of mapping the user journey end to end and getting every team to understand the transformation the user actually wants.

“I like to say that I learned how to speak the language of engineering or product or marketing,” she says. “I help teams evolve to do the same.”

It sounds simple. In practice, she argues, it is where most apps leave growth on the table.

Two roadmaps that should be one conversation

We asked Mackenzie what problem she sees most often and she doesn’t name a metric. She names a meeting that never happens.

“It’s very frequently where your retention priorities and your roadmaps are completely different than your paid acquisition roadmaps,” she says. “But actually, those roadmaps should be informing each other.”

The logic is hard to argue with. Retention teams sit on the clearest signal an app has about who its best users are. UA teams spend the budget deciding who arrives next. When the two plan separately, acquisition optimises for volume and cost while retention inherits whoever turns up.

Quinn’s alternative is to let the loyal core define the target. “We should be looking to acquire users that represent or are similar-minded to our strongest users within the app today: our loyalists, our top engagers.”

For most teams, the first win isn’t a new campaign. It’s putting the people who understand retention in the room where acquisition gets planned.

Diagnose before you prescribe

Quinn’s first move with a new client isn’t an audit of channels or creatives. It’s a set of questions to the people doing the work:

• If you had more time in your day, what would you do first?

• How much do you trust your data, your tech stack and your architecture?

• Do you feel you know your customer today?

• Are you confident in the numbers you’re reporting?

  
  

The answers tell her where to start: personalisation, onboarding, retention or paid UA. The point is to read the whole journey before picking a lever, rather than defaulting to whichever team shouts loudest.

Her example is a familiar one. An app with a strong onboarding flow and healthy conversion, but users who don’t stick. “To me, the flashing light is: let’s go look at retention and find ways to really personalise and retain these users.”

The underrated question on that list is trust. If teams don’t believe their own numbers, every downstream decision, from bids to lifecycle messaging, is built on sand.

AI is the accelerant, not the strategy

“The future of app marketing is AI” has become a LinkedIn staple. Quinn admits some of those posts have raised her eyebrows.

Her view is more measured. AI lets experienced operators build systems faster and scale them across more brands. What it doesn’t replace is the judgement that designs those systems in the first place. “It’s a matter of knowing how to work with AI,” she says, “and not necessarily only using AI to inform your company decisions.”

She describes her relationship with the AI conversation as “a bit of a love-hate”. The speed is real. But so is the risk of optimising numbers while losing sight of why the app exists. “We want to drive strong results. But we also want to drive the meaning of the brand home with these users. That’s something that’s very human-driven.”

She draws a parallel with the creator economy. A few years ago, attention concentrated around a small set of big influencers. Now there are countless creators serving specific audiences. Apps have gone the same way: indie apps are solving needs enterprise apps never noticed. In a market that crowded, the human reason behind a product is what makes it stand out.

The takeaway: growth is an organisational problem first

Strip Quinn’s approach back and it comes down to one idea. The apps that scale meaningfully are the ones whose teams share a single view of the customer, connect their data and technology, and let what they learn in retention shape who they acquire.

That’s not a tooling decision. It’s a leadership one. And as AI makes execution cheaper, the advantage shifts further towards teams that know which questions to ask, and who to ask them with.

Watch the full interview below: