3 Essential Tools For Mobile Retention
How do you keep users hooked and coming back? As a product designer/developer who just released an app (Venn on iOS — it’s like Instagram for recommendations — you can download it here) & a product/technical mentor at AngelHack, I have come to find that retention strategy often gets overshadowed by user acquisition. Here are three essential tools for retention:
1. Email Marketing
Notice all those annoying emails from Twitter, Facebook & other established companies? This is no coincidence. Successful retention strategies include email marketing. This could be a series of welcome emails, emails explaining features or notifications when something happens (like a new follow or post). For Venn, I use Mailchimp’s automation service. It’s a good way to start implementing email retention strategy.
2. Push Notifications
Developing a push strategy within your product at certain trigger points, such as a new post or follower, is vital for retention. Explore ways to implement specific in-app triggers and to send a push notifications at a certain time each day. Developers, designers & marketers should collaborate at early stages of product development with push. While you could use services like Firebase, I suggest going through (the outrageous steps) on iOS and Android and implementing custom push functions. (I use Parse Cloud API with serverside Javascript functions in conjunction with SDK integration & frontend code on iOS for Venn).
3. In App Analytics
Measuring in app usage with existing users is also vitally important. In-app analytics like Twitter’s Fabric (I use this for Venn) provide great tools for measuring things like session time, amount of usage, and other important metrics.
Have any comments or questions on any of the above? Feel free to tweet, Linkedin or email me at e@vennn.io.
About Elon : Elon is a full stack developer, UI/UX designer, data architect, growth hacker, attorney and musician. He is CTO/General Counsel of Venn(iOS, download here), which is like Instagram for recommendations. He also serves as a technical advisor to AngelHack, and has founded several tech companies prior. You can connect with him on Twitter, Linkedin or at e@vennn.io. In high school, Elon’s 10th grade English Teacher admonished him for “soapbox writing.” He proudly remains on his soapbox to this day.
