Mobile App Marketing: Is there a method to this madness

Mobile apps have become an integral part of our life. Mobile is already the most preferred device for communication and apps are emerging as the key touch points. Most marketers are cognizant of the fact and in last few years have put significant portion of their budget and effort for app promotions.

Just in US, mobile app ad dollars will continue to gain steam, increasing 42.6% to nearly $30 billion in 2016, or 73.2% of all US mobile ad spending (source e-marketer) and most of other international markets showing similar trends.

App is definitely a superior channel to keep customers engaged as it is lighter to access (needs low internet bandwidth), better UX (richer experience than web), more personalized and customized customer communication. However, if typical app life on mobile is less than few days then the above features hardly matter.

Unfortunately many of marketers have gone overboard with app marketing without any consideration of customer preference or ROI. Nearly 80% of the apps gets uninstalled in seven days and around 50% in first day itself (image below). Most of the apps falls into next 5000th or 10000th app bucket (refer image below) and hence chances of getting uninstalled is even higher.

Importance of app for any online business is firmly established but, the million dollar question which many marketers (including me) are grappling is how to make the app part of customer convenience and not part of short term business goals.

If we ask ourselves what is great in my app which will make customers choose it over zillions of other apps fighting to sneak into limited mobile space.

This follow up question may help get a better answer: “are you resolving any key problem with respect to consumer’s day to day life?”, if you struggle to answer this then you will keep on draining marketing dollars to make people retain your app.

Few apps will always find preference owing to the value they add to users' life. Apps like Whats App, snap-chat, Gmail and Facebook address the communication need. Apps like Uber address conveyance and comfort need. Apps like candy crush, YouTube etc. fill in the recreational void. So, remaining apps have to compete fiercely for the limited space available on mobile.

Few small steps can help to minimize the app uninstall mayhem (The views here are mostly related on online commerce apps):

1. Create app only moments:
   • This can be in form of app only sections (content, categories, features, daily offer zone on app etc.)
   • May be think out of box and do things like offer priority delivery to all orders made via app. Companies have to be smart and innovative and give compelling reasons to users to prefer their app over others.
2. App re-engagement and retention program: With more than half of apps getting uninstalled in first 24-48 hours and 80% of users never come back after seven days of installation. So, an app marketing program has to move away from traditional install campaigns to a more overarching install plus engagement to give apps best chance to engage and stay on installers’ mobile.
3. Personalization in true sense: Unlike erstwhile email campaigns app communication is real time with each message life on mobile having shelf life of few seconds. So, app communications should be well thought off integrating as much of user personal and behavioral data to have higher response rate. Quality of communication matters and not quantity. Frequent irrelevant messages will trigger further uninstalls.
4. App should adhere to best practices (more of hygiene which is now commonly followed)
   • Keep app file size low (5-10)MB preferable
   • Avoid frequent version updates
   • Minimal user permission needed to be asked while installing and personal details of users in app shouldn’t be asked unless absolutely necessary.

As a closing remark, I would like to mention that one shouldn’t resort to driving app installs by running incentives and offers only campaigns. Users are smart enough to install -> Use Offer -> Uninstall -> Never come back.

App campaigns needs to be driven more smartly with company’s core proposition as the central theme. This combined with targeted campaigns will give quality installs and higher life time ROI. Offer driven campaigns does help in initial visibility and improving app rankings in play store but, not a sustainable means of marketing. Hence a fine balance has to be maintained between core app campaigns and incentive driven campaigns.

The bottom line is target right, get installs, engage, re-engage and continue the communication journey with customers.

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Ranjit (www.abof.com)