A solid grasp over the entire journey of a buyer within an app is important for mobile app marketers. The marketing funnel representing this entire flow helps marketers making decisions better. With the marketing funnel in front, you can easily have specific ideas about the methodologies and resources to tap on the most potential segments of your target audience from time to time.
For mobile app developers, this typical funnel marketing people talk about boils down to an engagement loop. The user journey takes centre stage here as well, and instead of a linear decision-making process from ushered from a top, it consists of various connecting points that from time to time shift to address different user contexts.
An engagement loop representing a guided and focused in-app marketing approach consists of four important attributes, namely onboarding, retention, conversion and re-engagement. Each one of them has specific and almost irreplaceable role in engaging users and driving business conversion. Here we are going to explain each of these four pillars of mobile engagement loop.
1. Ensuring a great onboarding
The engagement for most app users is decided as soon as they land on an app for the first time. Whether the users will keep using the app for days and weeks to come or will prefer churning out for another app will depend upon the experience after onboarding an app. Normally, it has been seen that 82% users who return to an app during the second week after downloading have a bigger retention rate than users who do not cling to an app through the second week after downloading.
To ensure making users continuing to use your app you need to make the onboarding experience perfect. Here are some tips to make this happen.
Give them a glimpse of the app experience right away: Users who land on your app without an idea of what it means for them should be given a solid answer for using the app just as soon as they board your ship.
Pitch a clear USP of your app: Offer them a clear and detailed idea about the USP of your app and help them understand how your app stands out from others.
Make onboarding experience brief: Make the whole pitching of USPS and purpose of your app brief and to the point.
Follow up with guiding messages from time to time: Instead of giving them too much information at one gasp, provide additional know-how about using the app with in-app messages from time to time.
2. Focus on user retention
When you have a certain number of users at your command, you need to concentrate on the retention. Only by showcasing and providing value you can prevent your users from removing the app from the device.
- To make users retaining the app, it is important to provide them with both short and long term value. Show them how over time the app can actually benefit them more or come with more fun.
- At this stage, it is important to have a very straightforward, user centric and to the point communication that users find helpful instead of considering it boring.
3. Boost conversion
Finally, an app needs revenue, and so, just a crowd of users without spending a dime won’t mean anything. So, you need to perfect your in-app activities to boost conversion. There are obviously some tested and tried methods that can help you in this respect. Common Conversion Activities (CCA) referring to all the things that most paying customers respond to while using an app is an important consideration.
Now, these conversion activities differ from one app to another. For instance, typically for a Facebook user getting a dozen friends within ten days accompanied with a fully loaded newsfeed, a regular audience for posts and frequent conversation constitute the effective conversion. For a game of pool, at least two weeks of frequent playing coupled up with several social friends joining in game play and frequent in-app ad viewing or few responses to in-app offerings can constitute conversion activities. For a shopping app registering with payment details including bank, information can be a reliable indication of conversion.
Now, how can you really know the ideal conversion activity for your app?
Well, you have to know users actions over a period of time and have to identify the actions translated into business conversion. For new apps which still do not have enough data to go deeper into user activities, you can put use cases and user personas under the scanner to know the result of various possible actions in relation to business conversion.
4. Focus on re engagement by retargeting
Every app has at least some users who no longer feel interested in the app anymore. Many of the customers just lose interest in the app and uninstall it altogether after remaining inactive for quite some time. To prevent them from doing this you need to retarget them to ensure re-engagement.
By retargeting your lost or inactive users, you can not only win some numbers but it can down the line would result in better conversion and bottom line as well. What are the key actions proved fruitful for retargeting your users to re-engage them? Here are some effective tips.
- There are various ways to address inactive users to come back to the app. This includes a gentle reminder message, a notification about some value addition in the app whether it is a new feature or a product range, or it can just be an incentive or lucrative offer.
- You can also retarget them across other channels to motivate them about using the app once again. You can launch an email campaign, a campaign through your business website or a campaign through your offline business outlets.
- Another direct way to retarget lost users and explore chances of winning them back is to ask them about the reasons to leave your app and about the ways to improve the user experience for your app. Users communicating to develop your app on some aspects may feel obliged to return and have a look.
Finally, engagement requires a continuous and comprehensive effort for mobile apps. Besides following the tested and tried principles it can always come out with creative ways to boost retention and conversion.
Juned Ghanchi
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