Tips for Driving App Engagement and Brand Loyalty

Shivkumar M 20+ yrs shaping technology Product & GTM strategy. Fintech, healthcare & retail industry expertise. Leads product launches, adoption & GTM as Director, Product Marketing.

Published on January 22, 2016
Reading time 5 min read
Views 7k

In the deep ocean, that is the app store of today, millions of apps are constantly battling it out to rise to the surface. With competition thick in nearly every industry, becoming a popular app can seem like a daunting task. Apple is taking steps to improve the discoverability of well-crafted apps, but this alone is not enough. A strong, targeted marketing strategy is necessary to keep your users plugged in. Here are some tips on how to drive mobile app engagement and keep your users coming back for more.
Notify
After the launch of your app it is important to maintain a robust marketing effort to keep the word of mouth flowing, new downloads steady and current users are coming back for more. Push notifications are a great way to stay on the minds of your users and guide them back into your app but also consider many of your app users may have notifications turned off. Certain app models encourage users to keep notifications turned on. Take Snapchat for example. A highly downloaded and super engaging social media app. Content flows in regularly on user’s stories whether they have sent a direct snap to another user or not and users stories continuously update leaving old snaps to disappear into the past never to be recovered. There is a built in “fear of missing out” if notifications are left off, encouraging users to keep notifications on and keeping snap chatter’s constantly reminded and highly addicted.
Analyze and Personalize
If you are serious about keeping your users engaged, then it’s time to get personal. As I just mentioned, notifications are crucial. With a robust app engagement and analytics platform like CleverTap you can push personalized notifications to users in a matter of minutes. Whether you want to call them by name or target them through other data you have collected and stored, getting personal gives you the edge on the competition that is so crucial in this crowded industry.
Analyzing user behavior in your app is another tactic that is beneficial to find your strengths and weaknesses. This allows you to fix the areas that may not perform so well and build on the ones that do. Finding out where your users tend to drop out or where they spend the most time is essential information when crafting you next app update. This type of software and data can also help you track uninstalls and gain insights on why it’s happening. Your users may not be giving you direct feedback, but that doesn’t mean you can’t listen. Monitoring user behavior will help you shape your app into exactly what your customers wanted without them having to ask for it.
Social Media
Promoting your app in the social marketplace is essential to gain traction and drive traffic to the app store. Facebook targeting today is almost scary how accurate it can be. The more niche your app, the more success you can expect from a targeted social media promotion.
Facebook is the obvious first pick for any app that wants to target potential users. Facebook’s app promotions allow you to target users based on age, location, device, gender, and a wide swath of interests. Take advantage of these strategic targeting tools and allow yourself some wiggle room after you start the campaign. Typical Facebook ad campaigns are approved in minutes and can be changed as many times as you want. If your campaign seems to have flat-lined, dive back into the targeting and revamp your demographics and interests. With unlimited adjustments, there is plenty of room for error and growing as you learn more about the response to your ad. It’s important to keep an open mind going into this. You may discover a whole new category of people that love you and you may not have initially targeted. You can then use this data to further your marketing strategy on a more macro scale.
Twitter is an amazing resource for customer service. App-savvy tech enthusiasts love to hop on a company’s Twitter page with their questions, comments and concerns. Make sure whoever is at the wheel of your Twitter page is always ready to help and troubleshoot with your customers. Instagram is a customer service engine as well, but it is best to pull concerns into an email conversation from this engine due to long comment threads that may not be so easy for communication.
Instagram is a great new way to advertise, and once you are working in the back end of Facebook you will manage any Instagram ads there as well. While Facebook has become a total pay-for-play engine, Instagram is still a relatively free market platform (aside from paid ads). This presents opportunity for loads of organic impressions and potential app downloads. My one word of advice on this one: use your one clickable link WISLEY. The link should head straight to your site providing information about your app and links to download.
These helpful mobile marketing tips can not only help drive brand loyalty but retention for your app. Sign up for a free CleverTap demo account and discover new ways to drive mobile app engagement and personalization for your brand.