How Gardenize got direct ROI from data-driven work

In this episode of Datadrivet, Jenny Rydebrink, founder and CEO of Gardenize, walks through how her team turned data into measurable business results. Gardenize is a digital garden journal that lets gardeners keep everything about their plants in one place, founded in 2016.

Much of the conversation is about app store optimization. Jenny points out how few elements you actually control: the icon, the keywords, the screenshots, the video, and on iOS the subtitle. She makes the case for replying to reviews, which can turn a negative rating around and doubles as a way to show off features to potential users. Not every high-traffic keyword is worth chasing, because traffic and conversion are not the same thing. Tools like App Radar help the team keep an eye on store activity and featured placements, and having a dedicated growth marketer is what keeps the optimization consistent rather than occasional.

The product side is where the ROI shows up. Gardenize set up event tracking in Firebase, but the early data was unclear and hard to trust. After a cleanup and standardizing the naming across platforms, the numbers became usable. One finding stood out: the upgrade screen was appearing too rarely. By adding an upgrade prompt during onboarding, roughly twice as many users upgraded. That single change made it profitable to advertise even during the slow seasons. Jenny also flags localization, since people prefer a leisure app in their own language, and notes that the product owner runs customer support so the team stays close to real feedback.

Her summary is three words: test, test, test. Steady experimentation is what reveals which changes actually move the business, rather than which ones sound good in a meeting.

If you want to know whether your own activation and upgrade rates are normal for your model, that is what the benchmark tool is for: https://benchmark.scilla.studio

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet for the detail on how Gardenize cleaned up its data and found the change that paid for itself.