See how we helped Mirror scale paid registrations 100% on lower spend (-11%) due to CVR improvements (+38%).
Driving 148K Paid Installs on $608K Spend in 13 Months for Journaling App Mirror
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Driving 148K Paid Installs on $608K Spend in 13 Months for Journaling App Mirror
11%
PoP decrease in ad spend
100%
PoP increase in paid registrations
38%
PoP increase in CVR
Overview
Founded by CMI (Child Mind Institute), Mirror is a venture-backed mental health app designed to make therapy and emotional support accessible to everyone, especially young people who need it most.
While traditional mental health care has been limited by cost and stigma, Mirror created a digital-first platform built on clinical expertise that brings guided journaling, self-reflection tools, and emotional wellness resources directly to users. Through the app, users can track their mental health, process emotions, and build healthy habits at their own pace. This made meaningful, clinically-informed mental health support available to anyone, anywhere.
The Challenge
Mirror operates in a crowded mental health app market where user acquisition costs are rising and differentiation is increasingly difficult without strong brand recognition.
Onboarded without any Organic or Paid presence; we had to build the marketing program from zero to one.
Scaling paid spend efficiently required continuous creative refresh, but production capacity constraints limited testing velocity, particularly on TikTok where asset fatigue sets in faster than other platforms.
Mental health as a category requires nuanced messaging that avoids feeling preachy or clinical, creating a constant creative tension between brand authenticity and direct-response performance.
Services
Growth Strategy
Paid Search
Paid Social
Organic Community Management
Performance Creative
Strategy
How We Did It
Conducted competitive analysis, persona mapping, and account audits to build comprehensive growth strategy. Identified Curious Journalers as the most broad audience to target and hypothesized we would see significant success with those users.
Due to outsized funding from the government of California, we segmented our strategy to ensure we were giving significant focus and budget to users in that state. This drove up our auctions costs (~40% vs rest of U.S.) but we were able to fulfill our California-specific install goal.
Mirror developed a new feature that used AI to show users a fresh perspective on their entries. They needed our support to get the word out via Organic and feature in our ads. The feature was a success with 92% of users finding it valuable.
After we had fulfilled our commitment to California, we shifted our strategy to target the U.S. as a holistic entity, not California and the rest of the U.S. This dramatically improved our auction costs. We also decided to pivot from Installs to Registrations as our major focus to prioritize users who were actually using the app.
During this period we doubled down even harder on registrations and did everything we could to maximize volume. Although spend was down -12%, we increased registrations by 63% due to cheaper auctions costs (-48% CPM) and stronger audience resonance (+33% CVR).
During this period we had to pull back spend as CMI was working to secure additional funding. We spent -19% vs previous period, but only drove -5% less registrations. This was because we shifted up investment in our top performing channel (Google UAC) and had TikTok live to drive incremental volume.
Results
Over the past year, Mirror spent $574K across paid channels and drove 94K registrations at a $6.1 blended CPR, a strong foundation for a program built from scratch.
- Google was the backbone, delivering ~60K registrations at just $4.7 CPR with cheap, high-intent clicks at $0.7 CPC.
- Meta complemented it well, adding another 23K registrations at $7.1 CPR and massive reach at a $11 CPM.
- Apple Search Ads drove strong CVR (nearly 30%) but at an elevated $68 CPM and $9.97 CPR, it’s the most expensive channel in the mix which is why we turned it off and pivoted to TikTok.
- TikTok is just getting started: only $17K spent, but a $3.9 CPM and early registration volume signal there’s real upside if we invest in the creative.
11%
PoP decrease in ad spend
100%
PoP increase in paid registrations
38%
PoP increase in CVR
Performance Visualized
100%
Increase in paid registrations
38%
Increase in CVR
Top Creative Performers
Squad
Theano Dimitrakis
Sr. Strategist
Kristen Montana
Strategist
Seif El-Banhawy
Paid GMM
Berkley Moates
Community GMM
Helena Yang
Designer
Nic Li
CRO GMM