Drive loyalty through app engagement

imediaconnection.com

As a mobile app marketer, you're probably not surprised that there are now more mobile devices on the planet than people. Think about that. Smartphones themselves have reached a monumental level of market saturation. Right now, 80 percent of U.S. online adults have a smartphone. This is comparable to the number of people who reportedly hate their jobs! 

Kidding aside, the future for smartphones is even rosier. Forrester predicts that there will be 3.5 billion smartphone subscribers by 2019, up from nearly 2 billion today.

Smartphones connect people to the world
Smartphone users check their phones 60 times per day. That's once every 17 minutes -- assuming one gets seven hours of sleep in 24 hours. As newer and better services come online, and the smartphone takes a more central part in all of our lives, there is a huge opportunity for mobile app marketers to succeed in driving app engagement, loyalty, and LTV (lifetime value) for their businesses with smart campaigns.

One of the biggest ways to drive usage, loyalty, and LTV are push notifications sent by installed apps (not to be confused with SMS, which is a text message tied to a user's direct phone number). A push notification not only alerts people when there is useful information, but it also stays on the home screen, so that it shows up when people check their phones to do other things, too. Remember that 60 times per day stat? This is great real estate to engage with your customer.

Push notifications look different depending on where they appear. Taking iOS as an example: push notifications to the iOS lock screen are maximum 110 characters, and same for the notification center. But be careful, because a banner alert shows only 62 characters, while a pop-up alert can fit in 235 characters. The length of push notifications on Android and Windows vary by device.

Push notifications that deliver value have the highest opt-in rates
Push notifications have to drive value for your customer. It can't be a notification just to push them to use the app again. The push notifications that work the best have useful information in them. The general cross-vertical opt-in rate is an impressive 62 percent.

In the travel industry, the push notification opt-in rates jump to 80 percent. This is because push notifications often provide actionable information -- flight status updates, low fare alerts, etc. -- which trigger the customer to do something else, maybe even unrelated to the app itself. That's extremely useful.

Generally-speaking, push notifications that are time-sensitive create an urgency for the user to come to the app again. An example is keeping a daily streak alive for a game or learning app. Another way to make push notifications relevant and interesting is to have them triggered by location. This is already present in Apple's reminder app, which will push a reminder to you when your phone detects that you've arrived at your home or office.

The problem is you might not know what is the most useful or interesting push notification for your customer. You might not even know exactly what the best value would be for that particular customer. Even if you do confidently know these two things, it means nothing if you don't know the absolute best way to communicate your messages to your customer. The only way to know if you're maximizing your push notification strategy is to measure it.

Measuring enables you to test out different calls-to-action and app messaging critical to understanding your audience. You might be offering them the best possible service on the market, but they don't think of you that way because the messaging has been confusing, too vague, or worse, perceived as spam.

Timing is everything
Sending a push notification a month after someone has downloaded your app will likely be seen as abrasive and might result in the deletion of the app (or the disabling of push notifications). Sending someone a push notification that vibrates their phone at 3 a.m. is obviously the last thing you'll want to do. So pay attention to the local time!

It's important to develop a positive cadence of push notifications that deliver value to your customer at the right time. For example: a retailer that sends a push on a one-day sale that's happening the next day, or a restaurant review app that sends a message with a link to an article titled "The most romantic dinners you can imagine" three days before Valentine's Day. Just make sure you expire messages once they are no longer relevant.

Another factor to consider is time of day: for the standard working class, commuting hours and lunch breaks could prove to be the best time to engage. Weekends and evenings are also an option.

The more data you have on your users, the better you can optimize a perfect schedule to yield maximum engagement.

How much is too much?
Pinpointing the right messaging frequency for your app is not an easy task, as numbers vary greatly among categories and even within apps in the same category.

Generally speaking, social apps can send push notifications more frequently, since people want to know what their friends are up to. Travel apps can also increase the frequency of messages a day before a flight, or if the push includes crucial information (like a last-minute gate change). The same goes for messages from utility apps that include very relevant information (like immediate notifications of a job or apartment listing a user may be interested in, or a notification of the shipping status of a package a user is eagerly awaiting).

The best thing to do is to start low -- no more than two push messages a week -- and then gradually increase the frequency for those who engage and decrease for those who do not. You'll have to test, test, and then test again to find the perfect balance for your app.

Divide and conquer
As you develop segments of your audience, you will divide them between frequent, casual, and dormant users. You will also divide them between time zones and maybe even continents and languages. Again, measuring the efficacy of push notifications against things like frequency and time of day will help you to understand how effective your push notifications are and how frequently you should send them.

You will judge the success of your push notification testing according to certain fundamental metrics: how many people opt in to receive them, how many people view them, and how many opened them. Most important is the ability to measure what a user does in-app after he opens the push message. That's where the gold is, as you can understand if the user did exactly what you wanted him to do: redeem a coupon, buy a shirt, take a survey, sign up for a loyalty card, etc.

Like all sectors of marketing, nothing happens in a vacuum. A value-driven push notification strategy will boost overall metrics as well, such as app retention and LTV. According to Kahuna research, "the average short- and long-term retention rates for users who have opted in to push notifications are more than twice as high [as] rates for users who have not opted in. For opted-in users, the average 30-day audience retention rate is increased by 125 percent, the average 60-day retention rate is increased by 150 percent, and the average 90-day retention rate is increased by 180 percent."

Ensuring a non-disruptive user experience
Unlike the web, the mobile ecosystem is highly fragmented with different operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows etc.) different environments (mobile web, in-app) and different identifiers (IDFA, Advertising ID, etc.) that replace the cookie. As a result, broken user experiences are all too common, especially because of, well, dumb links. These links are unable to connect mobile environments or direct users to specific app pages like the web's URL.

To solve this, make sure to use smart deep-linking technology which connects mobile environments and tells an app to open a specific app page. That means marketers can run specific push campaigns and take users directly to relevant landing pages, and not the app's home screen. A continuity of experience is critical for positive experiences and delivering value.

The bottom line
In today's highly competitive space, push notifications can play a key role in helping apps retain users. To make the most of the opportunity, it's important to follow best practices, measure tirelessly, and compare your push campaigns with your other owned and even paid campaigns. This will help to give you a benchmark and a much clearer overall picture as to how to grow the impact of your mobile marketing strategy.