9 Tools That Can Help Grow Your App Business These products, many of which have free options, allow you to track users and connect with them.

Make stuff people want. This is how Paul Graham or Y-Combinator defines growth hacking.

Brian Halligan of Hubspot elaborates -- to be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products.

Growth hacking, the much talked-about term, is grossly misunderstood and misrepresented by many. Growth hacking can be touted as a subset of marketing that focuses purely on achieving growth.

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Growth alone doesn't come through marketing, but by learning from your mistakes, testing on what works (A/B testing for example), product iteration, intuitive product design and studying and analyzing conversion metrics.

Let's look at some such tools that will help you as an app entrepreneur to build a better app.

1. Intercom (30-day free trial, plans start at $49 a month). If your app requires users to sign up, Intercom is a fantastic product that tells you which of your users are using your product in real time, along with their activity. It also allows you to reach out to your power users or others based on filters, through in-app messaging and email. It's a great tool to engage and retain customers.

2. Taplytics (Free trial available. Plans start at $32 a month). This is an A/B testing tool, but for mobile apps. Taplytics allows you to test different experiences and quickly push out fixes based on your findings. Fixes can range from visual bugs and typos to colors for call-to-actions.

3. Mailchimp (Free up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers/month). One of the most popular email marketing tools out there, it allows you to send targeted emails based on segmented lists. You can also set up automated emailers for new signups.

4. Foster.fm (14-day free trial. Plans start at $19.99 a month). One of the challenges in social-media marketing is finding relevant content to share with your followers. Foster.fm helps you to discover that content and lets you share live or schedule updates for up to a week.

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5. Pop.co (14-day free trial. Plans start at $5 a month). Instantly launch a web presence or a micro-site for your mobile app. Pop.co offers a domain name, an email address (supported by Google Apps), a starter page where you can connect your social-media accounts, capture emails and customize the template.

6. Crittercism (Free for up to 30,000 monthly active users). This tool gives real-time, actionable crash reports for your mobile app. By knowing where users are facing an issue in your app, you can make sure you retain and engage them to deliver a great user experience.

7. Helpshift (30-day free trial. Plans start at $20 at month). The only way to build a loyal following for your app is to offer outstanding customer service. A happy customer will not only stay with you but also brings in many more through word of mouth. Helpshift helps you integrate a customer-service module into your app so you can resolve problems as they happen. App users are typically not forgiving and instantly delete the app or never go back to it if unsatisfied.

8. Mention (14-day free trial. Plans start at about $29 a month). If people are talking about your app on social media or blogs, you've got to know what's being said to be able to interact with and engage them.

9. SensorTower (14-day free trial. Plans start at $79 a month). Use SensorTower for complete app store optimization (ASO). It lets you discover the most valuable keywords, which can impact organic downloads for your app. You can track daily ranking of your keywords as well as that of your competitors. Essentially, a complete app-intelligence platform for ASO.

Which tools do you recommend? Tell us in the comments section below.

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