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Get People To Use Your Mobile App
Get People To Use Your Mobile App
In this blog, we will look at why Mobile technology is important to your organisation, and also how to get the most from it.
One of the key concepts to grasp about Mobile technology, is that it extends your customer relationships into new realms.
In a recent study of ten organisations who have successfully applied mobile technology to their business, four major themes evolved.1
These four themes are:
1. User-first design: customer experiences must be viewed holistically
3. Mobile measurement and analytics tools are rapidly becoming more complex
4. Deep-linking has outstanding promise in connecting the mobile ecosystem
Let’s look at these themes in turn.
User interfaces need to be designed for real people. And done in such a way that whatever the medium they use to interact with your organisation, they come first; not the medium.
… there’s no such thing as a smartphone user, tablet user, or web user. Rather, it’s the same user who hops between the different experiences.
Source: Meghan Anderson, Head of Product Launches at HubSpot.
In short, when you’re designing a mobile experience for your customers, keep in mind that it’s just one piece of the collective user experience. There will always be new channels, but there will only be one user moving between them.1
With Smartphone technology, people are already online, and they seldom switch off their smartphone.
This means you can contact them, and they can interact with you at any time of night or day. So, it is important to recognise this fact, and to educate your audience of this service.
If you are using desk-top based thinking, you would not send users an instant ‘buy-now’ offer, as they would probably miss it. However, with Mobile App technology, you can send instant offers with a very short expiry time (e.g. a matter of hours) whenever you want to.
In addition to these ‘flash sales’, if your member community has their own wish-list, you can link this to special offers. So your customers realise that you are sending them offers which are relevant to them.
This process of sending messages relevant to your audience, deepens your relationship with them.
3. Measuring Mobile Performance
As with any other form of marketing, you ideally need to measure how effective it is.
Mobile analytics tools are maturing across four main categories: user acquisition attribution, app store optimization, in-app a/b testing and deep-linked re-engagement.1
For instance, Mobile App Tracking can reveal the both the initial cost of getting someone to download your mobile app, which acquisition method works best and also, perhaps even more importantly, indicate the life-time value of that mobile customer.
4. Deep-Linking Engagement
Deeplinking is the process of creating a URL scheme that links to specific screens in-app. It works in a very similar way to the normal internet website, where users can be directed to specific pages within the site.
This approach is another way of developing a user’s experience, and hence building a greater engagement with your audience.
It is a method which can be used with in-app advertising, as well as other customer touch points, such as, email marketing.
So, for example, if you send out a push notification which makes a specific offer, then the link in the push notification needs to take the user who clicks on it to a relevant page in your app. This reinforces the meaning of the offer. It should not take them to the app’s home page.
Multi-Marketing Channel Opportunities
What an engagement with mobile oriented technology, such as Mobile Apps, illustrates is that customers can come into contact with your organisation from several directions.
In the jargon of digital marketing, these multiple sources or directions are known as customer ‘touch points’.
This means that a simple Sales Funnel marketing concept no longer exists in many cases, and that having a multi-channel campaign awareness is of great importance.
The challenge for organisations, is to not only measure the relative performance of a given marketing channel, such as Social Media or Direct Mail. An organisation has also to understand a customer’s relationship between channels.
For instance, how does the information contained on a company’s website support buying decisions which may be executed via their mobile app?
And by understanding how customers behave in this richer marketing environment and what journeys they take to reach a buy or no-buy decision, will allow organisations to serve their customer community more effectively.
This view is supported by Adobe research which shows that only 12% of in-company businesses take an integrated approach to all campaigns across all channels. Furthermore, few companies regard themselves as ‘capable’ when it comes to related areas such as having a single customer view (26%), customer journey analysis (19%) and data-driven marketing decisions in real time (14%).2
The Challenge of User Engagement on Mobile Apps
There are numerous facts which support the need for organisations to have a mobile presence, and in particular a Mobile App.
For instance, Mobile Apps account for in the region of 80% of the time that people spend on the internet, from their mobile devices.
However, this doesn’t mean that meaningful user engagement is easy, as other statistics reveal:3
19% of Mobile Apps are used only once
90% of people’s time is spent on <10% of apps
People often have over 100 apps on their smartphones
So how does an organisation get its' audience to love “Their Mobile App” ?
Mobile Life Cycle Management3
This is where the concept of a life cycle for Mobile Apps comes in useful.
Mobile Life Cycle – Copyright Swrv – All Rights Reserved
New: They have downloaded your mobile app
Activated: They have started using your app
Engaged: They are interacting with your organisation via your app
Converting: They have done something, e.g. bought a product, made an appointment etc. via your app
Dormant: They have stopped using your app
Your organisation will need to define for themselves exactly what some of these states mean to you.
When you break it down in this way, your aim then becomes how to move people through these different states. And to do this, you need statistics on what’s happening within your Mobile App.
And when you measure what’s happening, you’re informed as to what needs to be addressed and can plan what to do about it.
Here are some points to consider.
1. Your Mobile Marketing Campaigns
Build meaningful and focused marketing campaigns.
2. Three Key Questions To Ask Yourself
Your on-boarding process needs to cover:
1. Do people understand what this mobile app can do for them?
2. Do they understand why that matters to them?
2. Do they know how to use your mobile app?
3. Define Your Customer’s “Aha!” Moment
This is a little hard to be specific about, as it varies from organisation to organisation, but observe, measure and give some thought as to how your app’s users behave. As there will be a point where they ‘get it’.
This ‘get it’ moment is what converts them into engaged users, who stick around and continue to have a relationship with you.
Armed with this understanding, you can then drive and encourage this behaviour.
4. Getting To The Converted Stage
This is the same logic as reaching the “Aha!” moment.
5. Re-Engaging with Dormant Users
This is very similar again. However, bear in mind that most users will become dormant at some time, and there can be several different reasons why a user becomes dormant. So don’t treat them all in the same way.
6. Test Everything
Measure what it is practical for you to measure, and be guided by the resulting data.
For instance, test and measure the effects of the apps native content, in-app messages and push notifications.
7. An On-Going Process
Given the dynamic nature of the general user environment and of mobile technology, this optimising and personalising process in an on-going job. This approach allows you to keep converted users converted.
And an understanding of their personal behaviour will allow you to identify sub-segments of your member market, whom you can target with specific campaigns.
That is, a Mobile App is much more like a conventional website than a product.
Many thanks to the following:
1 2014 Mobile Commerce Best Practices, by Kiip, Editor Andrew Macnider.
2 QDIB 2014 Channels in Concert Trends, Adobe, © Econsultancy.com Ltd.
3 Managing The Mobile Lifecycle webinar (04/09/2014), by Swrv.
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