Is a Story. About Mobile Product Thinking.
Everyone’s talking about this now — being #mobileFirst. It’s a new strategy startups are adopting. Products are being tweaked considering 80% of users are thumb driven. This is a good thing, but the problem is, mobile strategies haven’t gone past “having a mobile app”. They haven’t completely embraced the mobile ecosystem.
App communications
Relying on email for communication between the app user and developer is old school. Creating a text messaging/iMessage like channel that is in-app for the customers to engage with the app developer is more natural to the mobile experience. Consider having a two way in-app chat. Vinted is a great example. They’ve integrated a direct, native, mobile communication channel in their app to communicate and upsell/cross-sell their products. Very effective!
When users leave your app, push notifications are a great way to bring them back. Crafting PN’s that have the ability to be clicked through is a test. Here are two push notifications:
PN1: Flash sale- Get 10% off on all hotel bookings
PN2: Hi Dave, we have 10% of on all hotel bookings. Book your Goa tickets for 2000 less now!
PN1 is a direct message. PN2 is designed to be personal and take advantage of a recent event — the user had tried to book a hotel in Goa. PN2 is more likely to be clicked and increase sales. Say bye-bye to robotic PN’s.
In-app banner notification is an excellent way to move users through your marketing/purchase funnels. These notifications slide from the top or bottom and when clicked, take the user to a particular screen within the app. For eg, the recently launched Facebook Paper made use of this in-app banner notifications to educate the customers about various interactions and features in their app.
Intelligent mobile campaigns:
Remember those beautiful email campaigns you used to create in Mailchimp/Marketo and target a certain segment of your customers? What if, there is a product that can help you create native in app campaigns(in app modal prompts instead of email) based on the data you collect and segment of users? You could do campaigns like — Tell about the pro version of my game to all myAndroid users in Japan that have IAP more than 83$.
I haven’t come across any product that can help with doing this beautiful in-app campaigns. But developers have tried different hard-coded ways to do this campaigns(not very effective though!). Ratings & Find friends are two of these commonly developed campaigns. Rating prompts are very helpful to drive users to the App stores for a rating & review. Positive ratings/reviews boost app rankings and can lead to being featured in the app in the store. Find friends is a great to increase app engagement.
The problem with these campaigns is, they are hard-coded either to be shown after a certain number of app sessions or when a certain event occurs. These rules, make the campaigns to occur regularly when the event happens or when the user crosses a certain number of app sessions. This is very irritating and abrupts the user experience. Additionally, changing this trigger rules will require additional development effort + time for the update to be reflected in the app store. Wouldn’t it be great to do these campaigns on the fly? (Is somebody working on this?)
Embrace 3rd party integrations.
Using native communication channels and creating intelligent mobile campaigns will help retain customers, increase CLV and in app purchases. Effectively using 3rd party integrations can help with app retargeting and acquiring new users. For eg, say you are an e-commerce mobile app. You can use
1. Twitter card integration: Many customers share product links in Twitter. Its possible to increase sales if we do a simple Twitter card integration with a CTA in the card that says “Buy now”. When users click this button, take them directly to the checkout page in the browser (or the checkout section in the mobile app, if it is installed). Chances are this will bring users back to your app and increase app installs.
2. Passbook integration: Imagine you have a Pass(with order status) created for every purchase order in Passbook. This will allow users to easily check the latest status of their order. Also, this Pass can be designed to show similar/featured products to retarget the customers. Chances are the user might click on these products and make a new purchase.
Users can disable push notifications for your app. In such a scenario, mobile ad retargeting techniques & 3rd party integrations can bring users back to the app. Once they are in, show a modal asking to enable PN’s for your app.
The end. Lets build better mobile products!
