You are pretty happy with the successful launch of your app and the number of downloads it has witnessed in the initial phase. However, are app-development and user-acquisition all you think would last the success of your app to eternity? Unfortunately, the answer is NO. According to the latest study, even top apps lose 80% of users over the period of 90 days, whereas average apps lose 77% users within the three days after installation.Customers provide app ratings and reviews on the App Store to give feedback on their experience with an app and help others decide which apps they’d like to try.
The Takeaway: Without a good retention strategy, your mobile app user base will become highly likely to shrink, leaving you scratching your head whilst trying to figure out what went wrong. So, the next big step after you app starts generating downloads is to retain the users, be it a gaming app, business app or project management app.
Let’s discuss top seven strategies app developers should deploy to increase user-retention rate:
Focus on Lifetime Value (LTV):
LTV in simple words means the value of a user over time. Using the right metrics, you can measure the time users spend on your app. The ones who are profitable, in terms of revenue generation via in-app purchases etc., must be put in a different segment since you would want to reward them for their loyalty. Offering rewards, like providing free access to premium features for three months, to high LTV users not only retains them, but also helps spread the word of mouth, which encourages new users to download your app.
In-app messages and push notifications:
Sending in-app messages and push notification helps a great deal in improving user engagement and increasing customer retention rate. Via in-app messages you can easily communicate with your app users and offer them personalized services, which in turn paves the way for high user engagement and much better customer retention. However, it’s important to send the right message at the right time. Push notifications are also the important part of customer retention strategy since they keep customers abreast of new app updates and helps them stay connected.
However, it’s important to understand that push messages must not annoy a user. Instead, they should offer useful and interesting information to your app users to give rise to improved engagement. Facilitation of in-app messages and push notifications result into 3 times higher user retention than the apps without them.
Offer tailor made solutions to users:
App users keep coming back to apps that offer them personalized experiences. So, it becomes paramount that your app interacts with users based on their individual preferences. App users don’t tell what they like, but they certainly show via in-app behavior and other actions they take on your app. In order to retain your existing and new app users, you must pay heed to individual-specific preferences and offer them what they exactly want.
User in-app behavior also lets you know the ones who are likely to quit your app, thus you can send them targeted messages and offer them goodies to re-engage them. Click here to gain insight into as to how you can personalize your app and improve customer user retention rate by many folds.
Build a loyal community:
A customer community goes a long way to improve brand value. By using a social site like Facebook, which currently has more than a billion users, you can offer your app users a great communication channel where they can interact with like-minded people and gain knowledge on things that matter to them. Below are some points about how a loyal community plays a big role in making your user-retention strategy successful:
- Let’s your valuable users know about new offers
- Provides a customer service channel
- Helps increase engagement by building on customer feedback, meaning improved UI, UX & design.
- Improves brand value
- You can share interesting content with your app users to enhance engagement
Email marketing:
Sending emails are one of the best ways to stay connected with your app users and retain them. Via emails, you can tell them about new updates in your app, new features, exciting offers etc. Email marketing campaign helps a great deal in re-engaging users whose engagement level has dropped in the recent times. Emails also allow you to send personalized messages to specific groups of users, friendly reminders, gifts and messages on special occasions. You can also ask for user feedback via emails and take swift actions to give the users what they want.
Use mobile analytical tool to monitor customer engagement:
There are many mobile app analytics tools, like Appsee, available in the tech market to keep a track on user engagement. Such an effort helps you deduce which CTAs app users are clicking on, which push notifications and in-app messages have generated interest in app users to increase engagement, which features have contributed the most in revenue generation, etc. Users like apps that entices them for high in-app activity and take conversion actions.
Based on the results, you can devise an effective remarketing campaign not only to increase user-retention rate, but monetize them and offer personalized experiences as well.
Provide users an intuitive and integrated feedback channel:
When you provide users a voice to convey their feedback on your app, they feel they are valued and keep coming back to your app. An in-app feedback channel ensures that customers don’t always have to reach out to social media, write and email or make a phone call just to discuss what they like and dislike about your app. Easy feedback sharing also helps in making improvements where needed and raise the bars of customer satisfaction, which ultimately results in high user-retention rate.
Success of a mobile app has a heavy reliance on how effective your user-retention strategy is. If you want to add on to what other actions an app developer can take to ensure high user-retention, please share it in the comment box below.
