The Missing Piece in App Engagement — and How to Solve It
Mary Meeker’s highly anticipated Internet Trends 2017 report, which was released in May, made it abundantly clear that the world is going mobile — and fast. In fact, US adults now spend 5.6 hours per day on their mobile devices, with the lion’s share of those hours spent in apps.
Given that consumers have millions of apps to choose from, it’s no surprise that engagement is like oxygen for apps — they need it to survive. In the past few years, a lot of emphasis has been put on automation as the future of app engagement, but while automation has introduced efficiencies and scale for apps, it would be a mistake to think of it as the silver bullet for engaging and retaining audiences.
That’s because automation doesn’t allow apps to take advantage of real-time events that simply can’t be predicted by machine learning.
Mavin believes there are three keys to app engagement: automation, long-lead events and dynamic engagement. Up until today, the last piece has been missing, something that in our fast-paced world, is critical as apps need to move at the speed that social media does. That’s why apps need to leverage dynamic engagement in order to attract and retain audiences. Here’s why.
Automation Can’t Solve Everything
Machine learning and automation have changed the mobile landscape — enabling apps to understand consumers better than ever thanks to the wealth of online data available. As a result, apps have been able to offer personalized messages alongside push notifications, in-app messages and alerts. These have become the tried and true methods for apps to reach their audiences at consistent intervals.
This has excelled particularly with retail apps, who have been able to use push notifications to remind consumers of items in their shopping carts, or even suggest items based on past purchases. But while this approach has gained widespread practice, it has its own set of limitations.
First, push notifications and messages are predominantly based on past online activity, which may not be a good indicator of future purchases or interests (as these shift rapidly). Second, and more importantly, automated alerts and messages often take several weeks to build, preventing apps from capitalizing on real-time events and trends that impact the message or format of the alert.
Automation no doubt makes app publishers’ lives easier, by eliminating some of the heavy-lifting involved in building campaigns, but it can’t solve everything. Engagement will always require a human touch and personalized elements that so far machine learning can’t replicate.
Long-Lead Events Slow Your Roll
Given how fast the world moves, and how quickly the Internet can create trends and stories, apps cannot solely deploy “set it and forget it” engagement campaigns based on pre-determined events and seasonal activities.
Take Cyber Monday. Retailers are all doing the same push around Cyber Monday, or similar seasonal events — and typically these pushes are similar to the years prior: “Visit XX store for amazing Cyber Monday deals.”
As a result, consumers quickly become disinterested and less likely to actually shop at those stores because they’ve been saturated with competing messages. They aren’t engaging with the brand per say, just taking advantage of something they’ve come to expect.
Furthermore, if something goes wrong, or a new topical trend arises, retailers and the like don’t have the ability to pause and tweak their campaign to adjust. Whatever you set forth six months prior, is essentially what you have to operate with.
Long-lead events like Black Friday, and seasonal events like the arrival of summer, are definitely important for apps, but as more traditional forms of engaging with consumers, they are too static for how quickly things change, and how fickle consumers are today.
Delivering Dynamic Engagement Today’s Consumers Have Come to Crave
Social media has made it easier than ever to connect with customers; whether it’s a tweet, post, comment, a brand can instantly engage and often in reaction to events that spike public response.
Consider how Oreo won the Super Bowl when the infamous blackout occurred and Oreo deployed a Twitter campaign that went viral in a matter of hours. The same dynamic engagement is so far what’s been missing in mobile app engagement today.
In other words, apps need to be compatible with real-time, instant gratification that mobile consumers have come to expect in social, but personalized to their interests.
At Mavin, we’ve identified this as opportunity to apply the best parts of social media (dynamic engagement) combined with traditional automation platforms to create Mavin Motion: the only end-to-end platform enabling companies to create “on the fly” campaign management in a matter of hours.
Mavin Motion is essentially a fast, plug-and-play way for apps to do this without dedicating engineering talent. The platform saves apps weeks of time/energy spent engineering three different elements of full lifecycle (promos, mobile wallet, fulfillment). In a matter of hours, apps can get up and running on a campaign that is in response to something that happened hours before.
Think of a fitness app that looks ahead to the weekend forecast and sees that the weather is going to be warm. Before the weekend hits, the app could put together a campaign that incentivizes users with a smoothie coupon to get outside and take a long run.
Real-time incentives, rewards, and promotions that capture the moment are the missing elements that turn one-time behaviors into habits, and ultimately loyal customers. Think of it as incremental, but authentic engagement as opposed to automated or pre-planned.
What do you think has been missing in app engagement? Let me know in the comments below!
