9 pre-launch mobile app marketing strategies

whatech.com

Pre launch app marketing strategies are necessary these days. It goes without saying that the seeds of a successful app is sown during the development stage. Apart from development efforts it is suggested to follow these steps to ensure there is enough buzz surrounding your app and upon launch it can take off smoothly.

Deploying smart marketing startegies is one of the most important things to do when you are launching an app. Although you may have enaged a top mobile app development company however a good app is not enough. Start thinking on pre-launch process of your mobile app as soon as you can. While a media push can drive hype around your app, the effects aren’t, though, long lasting.

Here we bring to you 9 effective tips for a successful pre-launch app marketing strategy.

Competitive Analysis

Regardless of the type of marketing strategy you have, a thorough competitive analysis is indispensible! It wins half the battle. Reach out to expert opinions, consult with industry specialists and enlist the competitors in your field. Try to gauge the moves taken by your competitors in recent times and analyse how the strategies had worked for them so far.

Defining buyer persona is also an important task to do here. Figure out the common characteristic of buyers interested in your product. Chalk out their buying habits and common interest while shopping for an app. Features most liked by the users will give you an idea about the top USP of any app. You can design your app accordingly and plan out marketing strategies keeping those features as focal points of marketing!

App Release Date

When your app is ready, plan a suitable release date! Do not just throw it in app store hoping for the best. Certain occasions that best suit your app or business model is the best time to pick for release. For example, an app for a business dealing with ladies apparel might choose International Women’s Day as the release date. Or, if you are about to release a gaming app, selecting any of the most anticipated sporting tournaments’ inauguration day as your app release day will be wise enough!

App Store Optimization

ASO – Application Storage Optimization is perhaps the most important part in your promotional strategy. Visitors will turn into customers when ASO is impressive and effective. Start searching for most relevant keywords and make use of them in app name and descriptions. Descriptive icons, high quality videos and impressive screenshots work well in the process.

1. App Name: Create an App Name based on your brand name and the most significant feature of your app.
2. App Description: Describe your app using relevant keywords. It should be readable and intriguing.
3. Keyword Optimization: This is a dynamic process. You need to figure out the relevant keywords time to time and make wise use of them.
4. App Visuals: An interesting icon can intrigue customer interest to download and use your app. Invest in a video that will persuade customer to download the app.

Beta invites

Do not populate your app with all features in the world. Include only the important ones and invite beta users to choose significant ones among those. There are few sites and platforms where you can release your app and ask users to evaluate. For example, Preapps – here you can invite beta testers to test your app. Consequently, you can start building email list and have a worthwhile evaluation.

Content Marketing Strategy

Attract users with rich content and make them a part of your marketing strategy. All you need to do is to create a website, publish a blog and invite users to like and share on Social Media platforms.

1. Build a Website: Website is the best medium to share your information and attract customers from across the borders. Design an attractive website and make it SEO friendly, ensuring all search engines crawls it to the first SERP when relevant keywords are typed. Adding a subscription form in the website helps user to quickly subscribe for your app after getting relevant information they needed.
2. Create a blog: Creating a blog is imperative for all businesses. Blogs help businesses connect with   users through interesting information. It helps businesses keep their visitors updated and keep up their interest level high!
3. Engage audience through various Social Media Platforms: What could be more effective engagement platform other than a Social Media network? Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Quora and Reddit have proved to be the best organic traffic generation since a couple of years. These networks help businesses interact with audience directly and create an enduring bond between each other. Create your community, invite people, share posts and videos and generate a higher engagement ratio. This will definitely increase your product visibility and help generate better and bigger sales.

Email Marketing

Do not ever underestimate the power of Email Marketing. Email is the best way to present your product to the customer in person. It helps increase brand awareness and makes you more familiar with target audience. For effective email marketing, ensure that:

• Your email is short and crisp
• Your email shooting list consists of most potential customers who can spread the word of mouth in future as well.
• Email is personalized and Call To Action button is added in each mail.

Budget Planning

Depending on the size, duration and the resources required for execution of a campaign, one should plan a budget well ahead. One needs to carefully select the resources and organize them well. But one thing needs to be noted here that resources and other details should never be compromised to round up a budget.

Think Ahead

Start thinking ahead for resource allocation! Who should review your app, who should post your blogs, update your website or interact with customers. Pre-launching activity definitely needs a power thinking ahead, without which everything might just scramble apart!

Organize task

Avoid messing up things. Scribble on your plans in detail. Make lists of activities to be done and allocate resources for each. Pre-marketing plan helps regulate and enhance promotional process.

Conclusion

It is inevitable to start marketing your app long before its launch. Engage with customers well ahead and keep them informed on your app launch. Produce teasers and attract visitors. If you’re marketing strategies work well and your app delivers what it had promised to its customers, your app will soon become the best seller in the category.

How to Integrate Apps into Your Marketing Strategy

business2community.com

The concept of the mobile app as a marketing tool is no longer new. There are written and unwritten rules, and there is also statistical data to see how consumers perceive this role of a mobile app.

First and foremost, the mobile app is your constant presence close to your potential customers. People take their mobile phones everywhere, even when they go out for lunch. And the role of smartphones is evolving: for individuals into entertainment and media centers, for professionals in portable computers for work in transit or from a remote location.

Thus, through their dedicated apps, companies can now reach potential customers through a device which they are already using for business, shopping, and communication with their favorite brands.

So, what can you do to integrate your mobile app into your marketing strategy?

1. Push Notifications – Send Them at the Right Moment

A study conducted by Leanplum – a mobile marketing automation platform – on 671 million push notifications sent in 2015 revealed a worrying trend: over 63% of companies send their messages at the wrong time.

The number one problem identified in the study was, surprisingly, not taking time zones into account. The second: not sending the notifications in the time interval when users are most likely to interact with them.

It is easy to avoid these mistakes and make the most of push notifications – which are proven to be more effective than emails or browser notifications. Use the analytics data you have available and discover the time frames when your target audience engages with your app. In this way, you can deliver your push notifications at the right moment to maximize their potential of being opened and read.

2. Make Your App Discoverable

Your mobile app is a valuable digital property, just like your website. Since you are working hard to promote your website and make it visible through SEO, social media and AdWords, why would you not include your app in these efforts?

For that matter, did you know that 25% of users discover apps through searches? This means that, without proper promotion, you may be losing 1 in 4 potential new users. A proper mobile app promotion strategy includes:

• Pre-launch campaign on social media through special landing pages, and even by inviting your existing email subscribers to test the beta version and give feedback;
• Launching date: live social media events, polls, inviting your followers to share videos of using the app and post their impression;
• App stores optimization: search for relevant keywords to include in your app description, as well as for a short and memorable app name;
• Post-launch campaign: continue to promote your app through your website and social media channels (Facebook offers a customizable call to action button which can land users on the app download page).

3. Use App Updates to Promote Your Business

When you release major app updates, you can use this opportunity to tell your customers about special discounts coming up, new product releases or new sections of your app which were included to better serve them.

Large app updates should always revolve around adding new functionalities, either in response to your users’ feedback or as a way of increasing the value of your app. Just like the launch of the app, major updates should be promoted through an integrated email-website-social media campaign. You can also attract new users to the app by offering discount coupons for new installs of the updated app.

4. Integrate Your App in Other Marketing Efforts

Since the smartphone has become the number one device for browsing the internet, it has never been easier to integrate your mobile app into your online marketing strategy. For instance, you should always include links to the app stores in your email newsletter headers and even in the email signatures of all your employees.

The mobile app can also be used to send reminders for sales campaigns, online contests, events you are hosting, and also as a simple tool for confirming participation in these contests or events.

5. Track and Make Use Of Mobile Traffic Analytics

There is a lot to be learned from the data concerning how and when your customers interact with your app. It helps your organization understand how they prefer to communicate with you, to do their shopping. In addition, when using in pair with website analytics, app data can help you identify stagnant customers, as well as new customers with the potential of becoming loyal brand ambassadors.

The information you collect from your mobile app will determine how to shape your marketing and remarketing strategies, by targeting the right users at the right moment and on the right device. In this way, you will maximize your customers’ lifetime value, fine tuning the calculations of your customer acquisition cost and segment your clients in a more efficient manner.

Your mobile app can be more valuable to your business than you could have imagined. By combining the right promotion and app development strategies, it can complement your website in terms of lead generation and conversion.

What will good mobile apps look like in the post-app era?

marketingmag.com.au

Having an ‘app for that’ won’t cut the mustard as we enter a post-app era, says Kate Duckworth, but if your app can do UX better than anyone else it will be a market leading product.

New Gartner research from the US, UK and China claims we have reached ‘peak-app’, with users spending more time on their smartphones to access and use fewer apps. Like most other trends, we can expect this to hit our shores in the near future, adding to the already existing environment of time-poor consumers growing less forgiving of app loading times, bugs, and usability.

But let’s hold off writing the obituary, just for now.

Yes, we are entering ‘the beginning of the post-app era’. And yes, certain apps like social media and ‘youtility’ might as well be dead on arrival (no one needs another Facebook). But you’d be stupid to ignore the data staring you in the face.

74% of Australians rely as much on their phones as they do on their desktops when searching for information, ideas and advice.

Not having a mobile presence is signing your own death sentence and will be detrimental to business growth and brand loyalty.

So what do mobile apps look like in the post-app era?

Consumer expectations are changing exponentially, with customers expecting personalised experiences and instant, intuitive mobile solutions in those integral ‘micro-moments’. It’s now more pertinent than ever for businesses to adopt mobility as a core strategy, and reevaluate how they can ensure their app stays on the customer’s phone.

As more organisations make the move to the cloud, access to consumer analytics is changing the way marketers are finding opportunities to interact with their customers. The biggest trend we are seeing in the Australian market is brands are integrating IoT and AR into their service offerings.

Take L’Oreal’s latest Smart Hairbrush as the latest example. This hairbrush is giving beauty obsessed consumers insights into the health of their hair using sound sensors to detect brittle hair and conductivity sensors to measure how wet their hair is with the information delivered via a mobile app.

It’s not another social network, or another same-same but different way to take notes, but an app that complements a brand new, innovative and exciting service offering that differentiates L’Oreal from their competitors.

The user engagement debacle

It’s well known that 80% of enterprise apps fail to engage their users; the biggest issue being a failure to analyse and optimise user engagement using tools such as A/B split testing, deep analytics and heat mapping tools.

Recognising that even one extra click required of a user could be a trigger for them to completely click out of your app and never return is an important step towards offering a greater user experience (UX) for consumers.

The number one driver of app adoption is providing a solution that is undeniably relevant and advantageous to the user. Functionality paired with seamless integration with other platforms and technologies to promote a holistic and enhanced UX will be the winning formula for regular and long-term app use.

Get your priorities straight: functionality

Flawless and functional app performance is a minimum expectation from customers, and can you really blame them? With so many apps now on the market, users can easily find the same basic services offered by an unintuitive app from somewhere else; and they’ve usually got more than a few to choose from.

Gaining a competitive edge in app design is all about creating meaningful ‘micro-moments’ that delight the user. These interactions are tiny, contained moments within a tech product that usually revolve around a single task. The ability to delete emails in the Gmail app with a single swipe without needing to open them first, is just one example.

It’s a simple intuitive function we often take for granted, but is highly effective.

There’s no time or space to waste with ‘nice to have’ information and graphics that don’t contribute to the user completing that task. Users are on an app for a reason, and want to complete that function as efficiently as possible.

Streamlining with integration

When looking to build or enhance any app, the user needs to be at the heart of every design, development, and investment decision – this has to include recognition and planning around consumers actually wanting to use less apps, but still leverage the latest technologies like a AI and AR.

Customers now expect offline and online experiences with brands to be seamlessly integrated. And integrations with other customer-focused platforms show a commitment to delivering ongoing value to the user. Having an ‘app for that’ won’t cut the mustard this year and definitely not five years from now, unless ‘that’ covers multiple aspects of someone’s everyday activities.

According to Gartner, enhancing the way users access apps is directly correlated with increasing features that are rich and engaging. But these features don’t need to be brand new or innovative ideas that are yet to be developed.

Start by exploring services such as social media platform integration, user-generated videos, ChatBoxes, and e-commerce possibilities.

Experimental technology

Thinking of dabbling in some AI or AR? Don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Applying AI technology to a mobile app can personalise and streamline the user’s experience at a level unachievable by a ‘one size fits all’ interface. It can also be used to predict user behaviour, show preferential content, and make strategic recommendations to your user base.

AR is another technology being broadly discussed, and is not as futuristic as it sounds. Industries like retail, health and real estate are already using simple forms of AR to deliver virtual experiences to customers. Particularly for apps that use native camera functions, augmented reality can be a powerful way to deliver more value throughout app usage.

Following best practices for UX will significantly increase conversions and in-app engagement, but the most effective way to engage users is to simply solve the problem the app was built for.

Don’t get caught up in the chaos.

When an app can do UX better than anyone else it will be a market leading product, even in a ‘post-app’ world.

What Creativity in Marketing Looks Like Today

hbr.org

What makes marketing creative? Is it more imagination or innovation?  Is a creative marketer more artist or entrepreneur? Historically, the term “marketing creative” has been associated with the words and pictures that go into ad campaigns. But marketing, like other corporate functions, has become more complex and rigorous. Marketers need to master data analytics, customer experience, and product design. Do these changing roles require a new way of thinking about creativity in marketing?

To explore this question, we interviewed senior marketing executives across dozens of top brands. We asked them for examples of creativity in marketing that go beyond ad campaigns and deliver tangible value to the business. Their stories — and the five wider trends they reflect — help illustrate what it means to be a creative marketer today.

1. Create with the customer, not just for the customer

Everyone likes to talk about being “customer-centric.” But too often this means taking better aim with targeted campaigns.  Customers today are not just consumers; they are also creators, developing content and ideas — and encountering challenges — right along with you. Creativity in marketing requires working with customers right from the start to weave their experiences with your efforts to expand your company’s reach.

For example, Intuit’s marketing team spends time with self-employed people in their homes and offices to immerse themselves in the customer’s world. Through this research, they identified a pain point of tracking vehicle gas mileage. Based on these marketing insights, Intuit created a new feature within its app that combines location data, Google maps, and the user’s calendar to automatically track mileage and simplify year-end tax planning.

Brocade, a data and network solutions provider, created a “customer first” program by identifying their top 200 customers, who account for 80% of their sales. They worked with these customers to understand their sources of satisfaction and identify areas of strengths and weakness. Brocade then worked with sales teams to create and deliver customized packages outlining what Brocade heard is working or not working, and what they would do about those findings. Later, Brocade followed up with these customers to report on progress against these objectives. The results? Brocade’s Net Promoter Score went from 50 (already a best in class score) to 62 (one of the highest B2B scores on record) within 18 months.

2. Invest in the end-to-end experience 

Every marketer believes the customer experience is important. But most marketers only focus on the parts of that experience under their direct control. Creative marketers take a broader view and pay attention to the entire customer experience from end to end. This includes the product, the buying process, the ability to provide support, and customer relationships over time. That takes time and resources – and it also requires bringing creative thinking to unfamiliar problems.

Kaiser Permanente believes that as health care becomes more consumer-oriented, the digital experience becomes a key differentiator. The marketing team instituted a welcome program to help improve the experience for new plan members. Members are guided on how to register for an online member portal, which provides access to email your doctor, refill prescriptions, make appointments, and more. The welcome program required coordination with many areas of the business. As a result of this program, about 60% of new members register within the first six months. These members are 2.6 times more likely to stay with Kaiser Permanente two years later.

Like many retailers, Macy’s has traditionally spent 85% of its marketing budget on driving sales. Each outbound communication is measured individually for immediate ROI. However, recently they began to take a more holistic approach, focusing on lifetime value and their most profitable segment, the “fashionable spender.” This group looks across the business to gather behind-the-scenes information on the runway, newest clothing lines, and aspirational fashion content. The metrics also changed. Macy’s started evaluating engagement per customer across time and platform instead of per marketing message per day. The results? In the last year, customers in the top decile segment increased digital engagement by 15%, cross shopping by 11% and sales by 8%.

3. Turn everyone into an advocate

In a fragmented media and social landscape, marketers can no longer reach their goals for awareness and reputation just through paid media and PR. People are the new channel. The way to amplify impact is by inspiring creativity in others. Treat everyone as an extension of your marketing team: employees, partners, and even customers.

Plum Organics gives each employee business cards with coupons attached. While shopping, all employees are encouraged to observe consumers shopping the baby category. When appropriate, they ask a few questions about shoppers’ baby food preferences and share business cards with coupons for free products as a gesture of appreciation.

For Equinix, surveys revealed that a third of employees were not confident explaining its company story. The company introduced an internal ambassador program for its more than 6,000 employees. This program gives employees across all disciplines and levels tools to educate them on the company, its culture, products and services, and how they solve its customer’s needs. More than 20% of employees took the training online or in workshops in the first few months of the program, and employee submissions to its sales lead and job candidate referral programs were up 43% and 19% respectively.

Old Navy has traditionally dedicated their media budget to TV, particularly around back to school. However, over the past few years, they’ve focused on digital content to engage kids around positive life experiences and giving back. Through this approach, the 2016 #MySquadContest led to 32,000 kids sharing their “squads” of friends for a chance to win an epic day with their favorite influencer, creating 3 million video views, a 60% increase in social conversation about @OldNavy, and a 600% increased likelihood of recommending Old Navy to a friend (versus those that viewed TV ads only). In addition, the program led to record breaking donations for their partner, The Boys & Girls Club.

4. Bring creativity to measurement 

The measurability of digital engagement means we can now know exactly what’s working and not working. This gives marketing an opportunity to measure and manage itself in new ways. In the past, marketing measured success by sticking to budgets and winning creative awards. Today, the ability to measure data and adjust strategies in real-time enables marketing to prove its value to the business in entirely new ways.

Cisco has created a real-time, online dashboard where the entire marketing organization can look at performance. The leadership team conducts a weekly evaluation to assess, “Is what we’re doing working?” This analysis can be done across different digital initiatives, geographies, channels, or even individual pieces of content. The result is an ability to quickly adjust and re-allocate resources.

Zscaler, a cloud-based security platform for businesses, created a Value Management Office. The Office helps each client define, quantify, and track their unique business goals associated with Zscaler implementation. Zscaler and their clients hold each other accountable to specific, measurable, time-based results.

OpenTable recently launched a companion app just for restaurants to make better use of the data they’ve been collecting through their reservation system. Restauranteurs can now get a handle on their business right from their smartphone, allowing them to easily answer questions like “How did your last shift perform?” The app can tell them if they are running light on bookings, and soon they’ll be able to activate marketing campaigns to increase same day reservations. More than 50% of restaurant customers on OpenTable’s cloud-based service are already using the app, visiting an average of 9 times a day, 7 days a week.

5. Think like a startup

In the past, marketers needed to be effective managers, setting goals well in advance and then working within budget to achieve those goals. Today, creative marketers need to operate more like entrepreneurs, continuously adjusting to sustain “product/market fit.”

The start-up Checkr represents a trend we are seeing more of in the Bay Area in particular. Marketers are adopting the business practices of entrepreneurs such as lean startup and agile development. For its background check solution, Checkr wasn’t getting the results it wanted from traditional sales and marketing tactics as it expanded into new market segments. They realized they had to think beyond marketing as promoting an existing product. Adopting an agile method of customer testing and rapid iteration, they worked with engineering to rethink the product and bring a “minimum viable product” to market for these new buyers. As a result of this integrated, agile approach, the company easily hit some early 2017 revenue targets with conversion rates that are four times what is traditionally seen in the industry.

The changes happening in consumer behavior, technology, and media are redefining the nature of creativity in marketing. The measure of marketing success isn’t the input, whether that’s the quality of a piece of content or a campaign, but rather the value of the output, whether that’s revenue, loyalty, or advocacy. Marketers of the past thought like artists, managers, and promoters. Today’s marketers need to push themselves to think more like innovators and entrepreneurs — creating enterprise value by engaging the whole organization, looking out for the entire customer experience, using data to make decisions, and measuring effectiveness based on business results.

Mobile Apps: What’s A Good Retention Rate?

info.localytics.com

Let’s face it, as mobile app marketers, we’re going through some growing pains. The rapid evolution of the mobile industry has led to some missteps in communicating with our users, and as a result, we’re losing them. In fact, we’re in the middle of a mobile engagement crisis.

Consequently, on its path to becoming our knight in shining armor, mobile must break the mold of being a fling, and it’s up to us marketers to champion this change. How do we do this? By turning our focus to retention (more so than acquisition) and earning loyal (not one-time) users.

Shifting the Focus Away From Acquisition to Retention

If you’ve been in the app space for a few years, you know that acquisition was once considered the most important mobile metric. Mobile app marketers focused on attracting as many new users to the app as possible, touting number of users as the strongest pillar of success. However, what people didn’t take into account is the fickleness of these users, with 25% of them only using an app once. It’s now apparent that we must move beyond just measuring app installs and focus on in-app behavior to promote engagement and retention. But despite this revelation, too many brands have yet to shift their focus away from acquisition towards retention.

As we make this shift towards retention, you may be wondering, “What is a good retention rate? What are my peers and competitors seeing across their industry and throughout mobile as a whole?” We’ve outlined where retention rates stand today so that you know where you stack up and can benchmark against industry trends to improve.

Retention Rate Benchmarks: Where Do You Stand?

Before we dig into the data, let’s go over a few things. For starters, here’s how we define retention:

Retention: Returning to the app at least 1x within 30 days

Another thing to note is that we talk about retention over the span of 90 days or one quarter. This is the industry standard for measuring retention because it takes the app user lifecycle into account. By the way, this 90 day time period is also what our very own data experts at Localytics use when they analyze benchmarks.

Now that we have context, here is the answer to, “What’s a good retention rate?”. At the beginning of 2017, we dug through our 2016 data and found that across all industries, the average mobile app retention rate was 20% after 90 days.

Note: The below graph is based off of a 6 month analysis

Yes, you read that correctly. Across all industries, 80% of all app users churn within 90 days. If we take a deeper dive and look at retention averages by industry, it doesn’t get much better. In fact, over the past quarter, it actually got worse. The graph below showcases the average retention rate by industry after 30, 60, and 90 days respectively. As you can see, the average retention rate varies by industry. Currently, Media & Entertainment apps retain the most users on average, with a 24% retention rate post 90 days.

"80% of app users churn within 90 days."

Note: The below graph is based off 12 months worth of data during 2016:

What does this mean for the future of app retention? We still have a lot of work to do. With the release of Rich Push on iOS 10 and location-based marketing capabilities improving, mobile app marketers have a slew of engaging tools at their finger tips. So why aren't more using them?  

8 Ways to Improve Your Mobile App Retention Rate:

The above data speaks for itself; while a marginal numbers of apps are focusing on retention, the rest are falling short. Even though mobile is how consumers wish to interact with brands, brands aren’t delivering on experience and thus, consumers are churning. So how do we fix this? Take advantage of the below tactics that have been proven to positively impact retention:

1.) App Onboarding: If users don't clearly understand the value of your app and how to use it, their odds of churning drastically increase. We've seen app user retention rates increase by 50% after implementing a solid onboarding. What does good app onboarding look like?Check this out. 

2. )In-App Messaging: In-app messages are received while a user is within your app, and is usually based off of some action taken. Because of this, they're highly relevant to the end user and also make it easier for them to move through your app experience. Plus, they've been known to drive retention up over 3x. If you're looking for in-app messaging inspiration,here you go. 

2.) Push Notifications - Rich Push & Geopush: Push notifications are crucial to engaging with users outside of you app. But because they're sent right to a user's homescreen, the stakes are high to do it right. That means having compelling messaging that is personalized to the user, and combining that with the latest and greatest in push notification technology:Rich Push & Geopush. 

3. ) Individualization: App users crave individualization.They want their interactions to be tailored to their preferences, location, and in-app behavior. In fact, a recent study our data team did found that individualized push & in-app messages performed much better than broadcast. Here are 5 easy ways to individualize your mobile messaging. 

4.) Predictive Insights: Understanding which users are at risk of churning gives you the opportunity to save them. Using predictive app marketing, you can design highly personalized messaging campaigns to re-engage these users before it’s too late. 

5.) Remarketing: 50% of all app users opt-out of push messaging, making it increasingly hard to draw users back into your app. The solution? Remarketing. Sending a compelling reminder about your app to lapsed users outside of the app is an effective way to re-engage them. You can do this through email, social, and search advertisements. Be sure to tap into data insights about your lapsed app users’ behaviors, interests, and preferences to ensure your remarketing ad is relevant and thus, effective. 

6.) A/B Testing: The only true way to know which marketing strategies are working  and which are falling flat is through A/B testing. A/B testing makes you smarter and more efficient when it comes to your campaigns, and helps you to pinpoint the messaging and features driving engagement and conversion.  For example, you should A/B test CTAs to see which entice users to move through your key app funnels as well as different push and in-app offers to see which are drive higher conversion rates. The more in-app activity and conversion actions a user has, the more sticky your app becomes to them. Looking to get started with A/B testing? Here are 5 easy A/B tests all mobile app marketers need to run. 

7.) Omni-channel Experience: One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is not integrating their app into their overall marketing channels. Too often, apps are siloed from the rest of the marketing strategy, resulting in a disconnected brand experience for the user. Instead, promote and infuse your app across all other channels to create a seamless experience for users. This seamless experience will translate into having a very sticky app, boosting your retention. Here’s everything you need to do to accomplish this and achieve an integrated app marketing strategy.

8.) Use Data to Guide You: As with any channel, in order to truly win at mobile you need to lead with data. That means having a mobile engagement platform that grants you the insights you need to understand how well you are retaining users, and how impactful your app marketing campaigns are in moving that needle. Having the right data insights will allow you to strengthen your interactions with users, ultimately resulting in a positive uptick in retention.

Redefining Mobile Retention

With the mobile takeover already in effect, it’s time for marketers to step up if you want to succeed. This means making retention a key performance indicator of a successful app, alongside acquisition and engagement. Now that you have a good benchmark for app user retention, it’s time to make a plan to improve. Consider making one of your 2017 mobile goals all about improving retention and reducing churn. You can achieve this by using the above tactics to carry out smart marketing campaigns.

Chatbots To Usher In A New Era in Personal Advertising

cxotoday.com

Intelligent technology and machine learning, along with an innundation of data, has given rise to new generation of advertising. Bots and Chatbots are being integrated to different technologies and function of the Ad world taking personal advertising to an altogether new level.

According to Gartner, the term “bots” is relatively new, but the technology has been around for quite a while. A bot is a small piece of code or an app that does one thing really well. It’s possible to create bigger, more complex apps by combining multiple bots and building them up as you would with lines of code. AI and bots give technology a voice, and the ability to converse with bots transforms the customer experience. Bots will use AI to manage unstructured data and complex tasks. Then we would see chatbots coming in and will further change the very language of advertising.

Chatbots, a specific type of bot tailored to human interaction, use AI to process language. A chatbot can speak and understand speech and will parse what humans say and attempt to understand a request. Chatbots then communicate with other machines to task them with the question and return the answer to the human. This technology offers a new human interface, which is particularly interesting since much of the current human interaction with technology is through a screen, a very old-fashioned approach. Interacting with chatbots won’t require any particular setup; the technology will simply understand and do as the human asks.

Chatbots are already doing some incredible things like operating helplines of various market verticals such as medical, banking, food and hospitality etc. In April last year, Facebook announced its widely expected Messenger Platform to help businesses build intelligent chatbots to let companies and users communicate in Messenger. And in September last year Facebook added in-app purchase functionality to its messenger platform wherein bots allow complete purchases for users entirely within the platform.

With the likes of companies as Facebook playing in this category, chatbots will become even more every day. Chatbots will show up more prominence in 2017 says experts as they are increasingly gaining popularity and have attracted marketers’ attention. They have been useful in addressing the pain points of customers such as smooth customer service during the entire purchasing process.

Not just that, chatbots are now found to be emotionally smarter as well with companies using them for sales and services. With the ongoing progress made in technologies chatbots are resembling humans more and more. According to a Tech World report, machine-learning based programs such as Affectiva’s first computer uses a camera or webcam to identify parts of human faces (eyebrows, the corners of eyes, etc), classify expressions and map them onto emotions like joy, disgust, surprise, anger, and so on, in real time.

Noted technology author and analyst Matt Schlicht mentioned in his blog post that Bots must provide Business Intelligence by performing Sentiment Analysis on customer interactions. In China there is a bot called Xiaoice, built by Microsoft, that over 20 million people talk to. Similarly there are News bot that tell you whenever something interesting happens.  (click here to read more)

Advertisements will now have a human touch to it by having a human conversation and will not just be in the form of banners and videos. The new era of advertising will embrace personal selling to an extent never imagined before.

Mobile User Habits Have Evolved from Goldfish to Ravens

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Since the start of the mobile revolution, our concentration spans have decreased from 12 to 8 seconds – scientists link this change to the rise of mobile phones and their proliferation in daily life. That’s not only shorter than any previous generation but, as we all know, it’s also shorter than a goldfish’s attention span.  However, responding to consumers’ need for immediate gratification, and their short attention spans, seems to be a thing of the past. App developers need to look for a new role model in the animal kingdom; and a study recently conducted by Matomy suggests ravens are the way to go. Gil Klein (pictured below), EVP Media, Matomy, explains why app-users are akin this bird and will delay gratification for a reward of higher quality.

A survey recently conducted by Matomy with over 1,000 app developers unveiled several surprising results that challenge industry assumptions of the app monetisation process. Last year, a study argued that 80.5% of app users who spend money in-app, make that initial purchase in the first 48 hours after installing the app. However, Matomy recently found that users are now taking longer to make in-app purchases: 26% of app developers said it takes between 48 hours and one week to spend money in-app; while 47% said it might take up to one week, or even longer. While these results contradict the industry assumption that an app has just a few hours, or a day, to convince a user to spend money, they are not surprising.

Apps are an integral part of our daily lives and are no longer only a source of entertainment but, in fact, they often provide services. For example, before anyone will spend money on a personal trainer app they want to explore all that will be offered. This due diligence takes time, but indicates an interest to commit to the service provided by the app. This lengthier process, whereby users are more willing to spend money in-app, but spend longer deciding to do so, showcases that users are now accustomed to the instant gratification that is generated by apps, but are now more concerned with the choice of how and from where. They are in pursuit of greater value and longer-term satisfaction; in other words, they are transitioning from ‘now’ to ‘need’.

Gil Klein, EVP Media, Matomy

The survey also challenges industry assumptions about in-app advertising. In addition to monetising apps through in-app purchases, mobile app developers turn to advertising to maximise app profitability. Recently, app developers and the marketing industry in general were quick to pronounce that the in-app banner ad is no longer effective. But, in fact, the banner is still king: 38% of app developers chose banners as the best performing ad format. This does not mean video is not effective – it has grown in popularity by 55% since just last year, an amazing trajectory. Banners were extremely successful on desktop, and their move to mobile caused a few concerns – the banners were too small on mobile devices, the text barely legible, and they interrupted user experience. But mobile banners have improved since they were first introduced, and consumers may be more accustomed to seeing them on their mobile devices. More importantly, e-commerce is on the rise on mobile and the convenience that comes with a targeted banner that’s just a click away from a purchase seems to continue to trump the disruption they might cause.

The mobile revolution is the norm and digital devices have infiltrated every part of daily life. Just as consumers have gone through a maturation process that has affected their behavior on their phones, it is important for app developers and industry players to be aware of these continuous changes and respond accordingly. Shorter attention spans are no longer the key factor driving consumer behavior. It’s time to move on from the goldfish and onto the – and ensure that the apps being developed withstand careful consideration and bring longer-term satisfaction.