What is the first thing you do in the morning? Even before your first coffee? You’ll most likely check your emails, any updates on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or you may check for any promotions and/or special offers on your favourite retail apps.

What is Customer Engagement?

‘Mobile apps are the face of new systems of engagement’ (Schadler and McCarthy, 2012 pg. 4). Great download figures are meaningless if customers aren’t engaging in the app regularly. 38% of users are likely to download an app when its required to complete an action, but 50% of those will uninstall it right after the action is performed (Neosperience, 2015). The key thing for any business is to keep the customer constantly engaged with the app to prevent that your app simply disappears within the ocean of apps.

TAKE A LOOK AT THE FOLLOWING STATICS ABOUT APPS:

• Users spend an average of 30 hours per month in apps
• The average app user has 36 apps installed on their phones
• Only 26% of installed apps are used daily
• 25% of installed apps are never used
• Only 19% of daily used apps are retail related
• Nearly 90% of users uninstall an app if the brand fail to engage them

(Neosperience, 2015)

SO… WHAT CAN YOU DO AS A BUSINESS TO INCREASE YOUR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT VIA MOBILE APPS?

There are a range of ways for businesses to increase their customer engagement via their branded mobile apps. Below are a few examples:

1 | Create an App Your Customers Will Love

Create an app that is easy for your consumers to use but is also aesthetically pleasing. Offering new features or fresh content will lead to them becoming more engaged with the app. Adding features that no other app has makes you stand out and will intrigued to try out the new feature your offering.

For example; GoPro have specifically created an app to allow users to connect their GoPro to their phones, which no other app can do called Capture. This feature allows GoPro to increase their customer engagement as it’s the only way for their photos and videos to be viewed and saved to their phones.

2 | Use Push Notifications to Maintain Front of Mind

According to Kahuna (2015) the average opt-in rate for iOS devices is 42%, the average Android opt-in rate is 78%. Therefore, companies can you this to increase their customer engagement by bringing their app to the consumers front of mind with push notifications. This can be done via offering special daily/weekly offers and/or offering them a deal when they are near a store using iBeacon. They listen for signals from phones with the brands app from beacons placed in the physical world and sends them local and specific push notifications.

Watch the following YouTube video for more information about iBeacons:

3 | Incorporate Social Hooks

Across all age segments, people spend most of their time on social networking sites/apps. Forrester (2011) found that social networking apps account for 14% of smartphone minutes, that’s more than 25 minutes per day. Adding social elements can improve customer engagement via your app. This will help with your app content to spread on social media and increase the conversations happening about your brand.

FINAL THOUGHTS…

If done right, businesses can increase their customer engagement and usage levels via their branded apps by keeping the apps up-to-date and relevant as well as offering features that is unique to their app and company. However, although these tips have their benefits, businesses need to remember not to activate too many push notifications as this can become annoying to the customers. They must also remember to make it easy to share content onto social media sites.

For more ways to increase your customer engagement via your branded apps, read the following article: Five Tips for Maintaining Branded Mobile App Engagement

References

Forrester Research (2011). North American Technographic Telecom and Devices Online Re-Contact Survey. Q3 2011 (US)

Schadler, T and McCarthy, J. (2012). Mobile is the new face of engagement. Available: http://blog-sap.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/15/files/2012/08/SAP_Mobile_Is_The_New_Face_Of_Engagement.pdf Last Accessed: 4th May 2017