Let’s look at how in-app messages can help improve CX and reduce friction, as well as keep your users engaged in this new era of consumer privacy.

Benefits of In-App Messages

In-app messaging is a key component of a great omnichannel engagement strategy, complementing other channels like push, email and SMS. However, mobile apps and in-app messaging play a unique role in that mix because of their ability to serve as a focused point of reference and dedicated communication channel between brand and consumer.

In-app messages are also highly effective. Past Airship research found that message center messages outperform push messages by a significant margin. Plus, your app users tend to be some of your most loyal customers. These highly engaged customers are likely to interact and engage with your brand across other channels, becoming super users and maybe even lifelong brand advocates.

Furthermore, in-app messages can make the app more useful to customers, giving them more reasons to hang onto it. That’s important because 77% of daily active users drop off within the first three days after installing an app and 25% of installed apps are never used in the first place.

When to use In-App Messages

When it comes to effectively orchestrating your messages, it’s critical to consider the channels that customers prefer or are active on, and which channels (or mix) provide the best CX.

In-app messaging serves particularly well as a contextual channel, allowing you to reach customers on their mobile devices with easy to find, timely and relevant information, as well as transactional messages. Some of the top in-app use cases include:

• Welcoming and onboard new app users
• Educating customers about new features 
• Using surveys or other forms to gather data on user needs and preferences 
• Driving positive app ratings and NPS scores
• Getting people opted in for push notifications (especially those that opted out initially)

New iOS Privacy Features Elevate the Value of In-App Messaging

In light of Apple’s recent privacy-centered changes to how their devices handle notifications—new “focus” settings and requirements that marketers get permission for marketing messages—it’s more important than ever to send timely and relevant messages on the right channels. You’ll also need to leverage first-party and zero-party data as intelligently as possible and take advantage of opportunities for transactional messaging that streamlines CX. 

The good news about in-app messaging is that once a customer is registered and using the app, they don’t need to opt-in, creating a prime opportunity for personalized and effective communication. Plus, by engaging customers through the app you can fine tune your engagement with in-app behavioral data, preference centers or by sending in-app surveys.

When used as part of an omnichannel engagement strategy, in-app messaging is a powerful tool for staying connected with customers, providing them with valuable information and making their lives easier. Plus, it provides a tried and true means of communicating with today’s mobile consumers, who have more choice than ever when it comes to marketing messages and privacy. 

Are you interested in adding in-app messaging to your channel mix? Or are you not sure which channel is best for your messages? We can help!

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The post How In-App Messages Improve CX and Reduce Friction appeared first on Airship.

Here are just a few ways you can use in-app messaging to reach your retention goals!

Welcome & Onboard New App Customers

First impressions matter, especially to your customers when they first download your app. Use that opportunity to welcome them and guide them to the most important actions that will keep them engaged longer. Message them about setting up their profile or account, setting their preferences, or signing up for the loyalty program. Use the app download to trigger an Airship Journey of welcome messages across channels, starting with an in-app message to grab their attention right away. 

When onboarding with in-app messaging is done right, you can see a 60% expansion in audience like Gasbuddy saw with Airship!

Deliver Relevant, Engaging Promotions

Consumers are more likely to leave your brand if they’re not getting the information they want to receive. In fact, 48% of consumers get so frustrated when they receive irrelevant content from brands, they are likely to switch to another brand. Use customer attributes (such as birth date, zip code, loyalty status or age) to personalize your in-app messages with content that will resonate with your customers. Using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get!) editor will also help make those messages more engaging with bespoke designs and dynamic content.

Make sure that when you’re in a hurry sending out time-sensitive or rinse-and-repeat style messages that you’re not forgetting to personalize those as well. Templates are a great way to get those set up in advance with content blocks and merge fields to make sure all your in-app messages are personalized going forward.

Make Sure You’re Not Over Messaging Within the App

Many of us have had the experience of receiving a promotion for an item after we’ve already purchased it – it’s annoying to be sure, especially for new customers. Using cancellation events to stop an in-app automation can ensure you’re not over-messaging your customers and sending them the most up-to-date and relevant messages. For example, use a purchase event to cancel a promotional message so your customer won’t receive any additional messages about making their first in-app purchase, or cancel messages about the loyalty program as soon as a customer signs up.

Airship’s In-App Messages are Easier & More Engaging than Ever Before

In-App messaging allows you to make the most of every moment you’ve got with customers while they’re actively using your app. We made our powerful, easy-to-use In-App Messaging solution better than ever with new features that help you create personal, relevant messages that will improve retention for your app users. If you want to learn more about how our In-App Messaging & Automation solutions can help you meet your app engagement and retention goals, contact us today!

The post In-App Messaging Tips & Tricks to Improve App User Retention appeared first on Airship.

Apple’s iOS 14.5 update offers more choice when it comes to users’ privacy. But it means big changes for advertisers, brands and their mobile apps. That’s because until now, they relied on Apple’s Identifier for Advertiser (IDFA) to track iOS users’ cross-app activity to better target and re-target digital ad campaigns, and attribute conversion events to ad spend. However, with its latest update, the world’s second most popular OS requires apps to explicitly ask user permission to track their activity across other companies’ apps and websites, allowing people to opt out at the app level or through settings at the device level.

It’s a major shift that reflects changing consumer preferences around data privacy. When Apple announced these changes, experts were unsure just how big of an impact this might have on advertisers. However, after the update rolled out, one analysis found that only 6% of U.S. users have opted-in. Even if this figure creeps up over time, it’s clear that brands must adapt their approach to mobile app acquisition, leaning much more heavily on engagement and retention to learn about and effectively serve their iOS customers. 

Here are four key areas to focus on as you adapt your mobile strategy for iOS 14.5.

Product Teams Must Put on their UA Hats

Previously, app User Acquisition (UA) teams relied on the IDFA to zero in on a highly targeted audience to drive to their mobile apps via ad networks like Facebook. Now, without the benefit of the IDFA, UA teams will bring a higher volume of less targeted users into the app. In response, app product teams will need to do more of the work that UA teams used to do. That means redoubling efforts to build a great User Experience (UX). It also means leveraging technology within the app to understand, segment and target your audience with the right messages and customer journeys to effectively monetize the app.

Optimize Onboarding and In-App Marketing

A great app onboarding experience was already essential to a positive UX. Now it’s even more valuable, serving as a crucial touchpoint for identifying customer preferences and behaviors (zero-party and first-party data) in-app. That customer understanding is fundamental to segmenting the most valuable users into the right journeys—guiding them both inside and outside of the app.

The key is to strike a balance between providing value for customers and collecting data that empowers you to create more precisely targeted and relevant experiences. For example, by:

• Educating users about the app and the benefits of opting-in for push notifications, which drives 3X higher 90-day retention rates on average
• Leveraging the app to opt users in to email for re-engagement
• Making it easy for users to tell you their preferences and information about themselves

Those customer insights allow you to follow on with targeted and personalized email, SMS and push notifications that are more likely to deliver results.

And it’s not just about onboarding. Your product teams should also leverage in-app engagement at each stage of the customer lifecycle to better understand customer needs, segment, and reach them with relevant, personalized and engaging messages.

Prioritize In-App Experimentation 

Robust experimentation and testing within the app is exponentially more important in this new environment. Brands will need to use ongoing testing (A/B, multivariate, and programmatic testing) to help optimize essential touchpoints like onboarding and checkout flows, as well as recommendation algorithms, ensuring a great experience for users that also drives toward your business goals. 

Our Apptimize experimentation platform can help, allowing marketers and product teams to run powerful tests within Airship. With robust segmentation and A/B testing, you can identify and reach the best users to monetize through in-app purchases or even purchases of physical goods through the app.

Keep Users Engaged with Event-Triggered Journeys

Once you’ve identified and segmented those high-value cohorts, you need to keep them coming back to the app and lead them toward your goals. In-app events and milestones like an opt-in or a first purchase provide a perfect launching point for contextual, personalized messages that mean more to customers. In fact, customers are up to 5X more likely to respond to event-triggered messages!  

Airship’s next generation solutions provide the tools you need to keep customers engaged with highly targeted, event-triggered customer journeys. With Airship, you can segment customers based on tags, lists, attributes, and custom events in the app, and trigger intelligent Airship Journeys across your customers’ preferred channels. 

For example, if they don’t complete a specific onboarding screen in the app, you can automatically orchestrate an email and SMS journey that drives them back to the app and toward the next milestone. You can also use features like Airship’s predictive AI to trigger messaging that re-engages customers who are likely to churn. That’s a win for customers, who demand a truly personalized experience. It’s also a win for brands working to adapt to iOS 14.5.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that Apple’s new OS changes the mobile engagement equation for brands, who must adapt their mobile strategy for iOS 14.5, and their app product teams, who must take on more of the work previously led by UA. However, the good news is that even in a post-IDFA world, you can still build great experiences that provide value for your customers and empower your brand to effectively monetize your app. 

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The post How to Adapt your Mobile Strategy for iOS 14.5 appeared first on Airship.

Order Confirmation

Personalized SMS and email messages are no-brainers for order confirmations and pickup details. But if you want to build a next level experience, try delivering personalized Mobile Wallet passes via email or SMS. Wallet passes make it easier for customers to keep track of their orders. And they tend to hang onto those passes, giving you another way to stay engaged! You’ll also want to encourage app downloads and opt-ins so that customers can take advantage of BOPIS 2.0 features like arrival detection and live in-app chat.

Pre-Pickup

Next, leverage location to create a more seamless pickup experience for customers and staff with Airship’s integration with Radar. Radar’s trip tracking functionality lets you track an order and a trip to a store for order-ahead and send events to Airship when a customer is on the way, approaching and arriving. With Airship, those events can be used in real-time to trigger personalized messages that provide incredible value to both customers and brands. 

For example, when a customer is close to a store, send an automated push notification with pickup information. Or launch a Live Chat opportunity with an agent who can help answer questions and provide details about the order or pickup process. Plus, these events are surfaced in existing in-store systems or a turnkey Radar dashboard, enabling staff to start prepping the order at the right time, cutting down on wait times and improving CX. 

On-premise

Once a customer arrives, whether they’re collecting a BOPIS order or just browsing, use geofencing to drive on-premise Mobile App and Mobile Wallet engagement. Send a personalized SMS message to encourage them to download your app or sign up for your loyalty program. Target push notifications with special offers, loyalty features and information that drives more app opens. Or use purchase history to upsell or add on products during order fulfillment.

Post-Pickup

The post-pickup period offers a wealth of often underutilized opportunities to engage and upsell. Improve CX through helpful follow up messaging with assembly instructions or prep details. Use in-app, SMS and email driven surveys to understand customer sentiment. Create a lasting connection by updating Mobile Wallet passes with coupons and offers after orders are picked up. And drive continuous engagement by orchestrating personalized post-purchase Airship Journeys to upsell, cross sell and drive repeat purchases. 

With Airship’s customer engagement platform and Radar’s location solutions, you can create seamless end-to-end experiences that customers love, driving store traffic, building long-term relationships and more. To learn more about how Airship can help power a winning BOPIS experience for your brand, contact us today!

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The post How to Build Better BOPIS Experiences with Airship + Radar appeared first on Airship.

Belk has primarily used three strategies to reimagine their mobile experience: behavioral targeting, loyalty program personalization, and an in-app message center. Here’s how they executed each.

Behavioral Targeting

Belk realized that sending one-size-fits-all notifications wasn’t working. Customers who shop for men’s clothing don’t want notifications about dresses and people buying fragrances don’t want notifications about boots. So, Belk switched to a behavioral targeting strategy. 

The premise is simple: Serve customers notifications that fit their shopping preferences. If they spend lots of time browsing a beauty page, they might get an in-app notification offering a fragrance promotion. This strategy helps customers feel like their app experience is tailored to them–which, in turn, can boost conversion and average order value (AOV).

Insight: Generic notifications can create a bad experience for the customer. Use straightforward behavioral targeting to boost conversion rate and make your customers feel more at home.

Loyalty Program Personalization

Belk doesn’t stop with straightforward behavioral targeting. They also have a credit card-based loyalty program, which they use to tailor notifications to individual customers. 

Here’s how it works: Belk has three different credit card loyalty tiers. As customers progress up each tier, the incentives improve and points accumulate faster. By doing this, Belk encourages customers to get increasingly involved with their rewards program. This is how Belk approaches loyalty-based notifications:

• Credit card holders and loyalty customers get personalized push notifications. These will remind customers that they have points to redeem and rewards to claim.
• These push notifications are automated. At first, Belk did things manually. But, using Airship’s attributes system, they automated the process.
• These notifications are segmented as much as possible. By hyper-targeting users, Belk was able to increase total opens by 48%.

Insight: Better segmentation, whether in-app or via push notifications, leads to more opens and more sales. Try incentivizing your customers with tiered rewards programs or targeted promos.

In-App Message Center

Belk’s new in-app message center has been invaluable. It reaches customers who haven’t opted into push notifications, and can boost overall engagement and conversions. In-app message centers are flexible, too: Belk is able to show multiple product categories within one message, complete with a “See All” button to encourage customers to explore the app.

Like with the loyalty program, using attributes has been a key to Belk’s success. Notifications with an attribute tag saw a 123% increase in direct response rate. It’s a good example of a strong channel–an in-app message center– coupled with quality targeting methods–Airship’s attributes functionality).

Insight: Get creative with how you reach customers. A message center works for Belk in part because they can reach customers who aren’t opted in with push notifications. And don’t take your message center for granted–optimize with personalization and segmentation to increase response rate.

What’s Next?

Despite seeing some impressive gains, Belk isn’t done optimizing the customer experience. In the future, Belk plans to:

• Improve rewards notifications. Belk will let customers know when promos are expiring, how close they are to reaching their next reward, and more.
• Focus on CRO messaging. Abandoned cart notifications are an area that Belk plans to expand upon in the future.

The Bottom Line

A good, mobile-centric strategy will look different for every brand. Belk’s Katie Kazukynas recommends first focusing on the most impactful changes for your customers. And remember, you don’t need to do everything at once: Belk had generic messaging to start, but it was a springboard for the successful campaigns that followed.

Belk uses Airship’s mobile platform to execute their strategies. If you’d like to chat about how Airship can help your brand, hit the button below.

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The post 3 Strategies Retailer Belk Used to Improve Their Mobile Experience appeared first on Airship.

Laura Whitworth, Sonos’ Senior Director of Global DTC, and Rachel Dudley, Director of Global CRM, shared the strategies and insights that they’re using to drive customer engagement at Airship’s latest Elevate event. Let’s break them down.

Focus Effort on Channels That Work

Sonos is unique: They favor in-app messaging over push notifications and SMS.

Because their app is a necessary part of the customer experience, Sonos doesn’t waste energy trying to reach customers where they’re not. Instead, they focus on the channel where they know they’ll be able to deliver a quality experience for customers.

And Sonos isn’t flying blind: Since the pandemic, they’ve improved their segmentation of users. Much of this process can be automated, which saves both time and money. Segmenting and thoroughly researching their customers allows Sonos to more effectively run in-app messaging campaigns.

Insight: Don’t get caught trying to exhaust every channel. Find what works for your brand, and hone your effort there. Utilize segmentation as best you can.

Put the Customer Experience First

It’s tempting to use in-app messaging like email campaigns, with endless promos and aggressive sales. But, Sonos’ Rachel Dudley cautions against this. Your app is one of the most personal ways to reach customers. Drowning them with promotions can backfire, and might leave your customers feeling frustrated with the experience.

Staying focused on customer experience isn’t always as easy as it sounds. This is especially true when you’ve got multiple teams, each with different goals, trying to work together. Sonos saw big improvements by dedicating a team to managing digital presence on apps. 

Insight: In-app messaging (and, to an extent, SMS) is more intimate than a channel like email. Focus on the customer experience above all else – and be gentle, not aggressive.

Encourage Teams to Collaborate on Strategy

The digital team at Sonos collaborates with their product team on strategy. They come up with a joint roadmap and shared KPIs, so that everyone is in alignment with goals. By doing this, teams have more clarity on strategy – and can surface new insights for in-app messaging.

Different teams will have different goals. Collaborating and aligning can surface new ideas for growth. It’s been a win-win for Sonos.

Insight: Don’t create your messaging strategy in a silo. Collaborate with other teams to define joint KPIs. What goals do you want to hit, and how can you work together to get there?

About Airship’s In-App Messaging Solution

Sonos works their magic with Airship’s in-app messaging solution. It’s built to help your brand send the right messages to the right people. Click the blue button below to contact us today.

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The post How Sonos Uses In-App Messaging to Personalize the Customer Experience appeared first on Airship.

Let’s look at how three brands are using Airship’s platform to meet those challenges with highly effective cross-channel campaigns.

Redhawk Casino Goes Omnichannel

Red Hawk Casino leverages Airship Orchestration to ensure they’re using the right channel and the best timing for each message. A cross-channel welcome series helps onboard customers and educate them about key features. Dynamic emails keep them informed of the week’s sales and promotions. SMS reminders go out right before an event, promotion, or last minute COVID-19-related schedule change. And Redhawk uses push messages for day-of communications and time-sensitive offers. 

Redhawk Digital Marketing Specialist Matthew Borja explains that “during COVID, having the ability to reach our customers through multiple channels allowed us to build up and grow our brand affinity, when so many brands are struggling to get customer attention. We were able to save over 30% by switching to Airship and using it for multiple channels, helping us reach more customers at lower cost.”

Betbull Keeps Customers Engaged with Airship Journeys

Sports betting brand Betbull uses Airship Journeys to automate and orchestrate messages across SMS and email to keep customers engaged in the Betbull mobile app and informed about promotions and bonus offers. Betbull credits Airship with making it easier to build customer journeys that reach customers on the right channels and generate some of their best engagement to-date.

“It’s taken a huge operational workload off of the team,” said John Ibanez, CRM manager with Betbull. “Airship has been a game changer for us through COVID-19 for our customer retention and engagement efforts. We’ve seen our biggest engagement numbers ever.”

Getplus Prevents Dropoff with Email + App Personalization

Indonesia’s GetPlus helps its members obtain discounts and offers from a variety of retailers when purchasing within the app. GetPlus’ strategy during COVID-19 is all about personalization. They use Airship to trigger seamless, personalized welcome journeys and voucher reminders via email, in-app messaging and push notifications that prevent drop-off after signup and keep customers active in the app.

Plus, Airship helped GetPlus rapidly integrate their existing engagement platforms and start handling all of their customer engagement from one place. According to Co-Founder Adrian Hoon, “With Airship’s support, we were able to quickly onboard and start executing campaigns. It gave us an ability to get going much faster.” 

As these brands have shown, email+app are a dynamic duo in your channel mix that can keep customers engaged and build a lifetime of loyalty and value. To learn more about how Airship can help elevate your customer engagement strategy, get in touch!

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The post How Three Brands Used Email + App to Increase Engagement During COVID-19 appeared first on Airship.

To help, we put together a list of our favorite strategies to use as you’re putting together (and carrying out) a marketing plan for your app. If you want to see a couple of these strategies in action, check out our list of 15 tips to market your app better.

Our Favorite App Marketing Strategies

Adopt a growth marketing approach.

Many successful app launches rely on a growth marketing strategy, one that can adapt quickly and experiment to figure out what users are wanting. Apps from Facebook to Flappy Bird (R.I.P.) have seen success from growth marketing strategies, and so can you. A good growth marketing campaign will:

• Utilize cross-channel, cross-funnel, and cross-department marketing. A good growth campaign leverages multiple channels and funnels, experimenting and re-allocating budget along the way until something clicks.

• A/B testing and experimentation. Test, test, test. It’s key to good growth marketing and can help you unlock new tactics you may not have thought of before.

Focus on more than just acquisition.

Seeing your user numbers skyrocket is fun. But, it’s not what will generate revenue for your business. As you’re creating a marketing strategy for your app, consider more than just user acquisition.

Does your app need to be improved? Is the UI set up for conversions? Do you have a centralized platform for push notifications in place? (We can help with that one.) 

Closely examine what your plan is once you’ve got users. Figure out how you plan to retain, activate, and engage those users once they’ve pressed download.

Do your (audience) research.

If you’re going to find, acquire and retain new users, you’ll need to know where they’re hanging out and what they want. This is easier if you’re already an established brand with users and data about those users.

Brands just starting out will need to define things like demographics, age, gender, interests and more. Once you’ve got users, use a platform like Airship to learn more about how your users are behaving – and how you can capitalize.

Without an in-depth understanding of your audience, you’re standing at the plate without a bat. Have a clear idea of who your audience is before you go diving into campaigns.

Consider exclusivity as a selling point.

People are going to need a reason to download your app. One strategy that works well for brands is creating an aura of exclusivity around the app.

As a notable example, Spotify did this at launch with an invite-only beta. For your app, it could mean anything from an exclusive referral program to mobile-only insights and features for users.

An exclusivity strategy doesn’t need to sound spammy or pretentious. Simply create a good reason for people to download your app, and you’re set.

Make onboarding easy.

Some app onboarding sequences are longer than your kids’ birthday wish lists, and that’s not a good thing. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t launched yet or you’re knee-deep in app marketing: Users will drop if you’re presenting them with a tedious onboarding sequence. 

Make it easy and intuitive for users to sign up and get acquainted with your app. If there’s more information you need to communicate, you can do that along the way as users explore.

Listen to and act on user feedback.

Listening to your users is a key step towards crafting a better experience – and better marketing campaigns.

Offer user feedback options throughout your app, and incorporate that feedback into app updates and promotional strategies. This will help improve the user experience and show customers that you’re listening.

Keep the conversation going. 

Once you’ve got users checking out your mobile app, you’ll need to make sure they stick around – and engage with your products. To do that, you’ll want to use mobile channels to communicate with them – including push notifications, in-app messages and Message Center. We happen to believe that Airship’s Push Notification platform is the one to use. 

The Airship Push Notification platform allows you to:

• Create hyper-personalized messages. Nobody likes an app that feels generic, which is why our platform allows you to create and send hyper-personalized messages to your customers.
• Build trust and loyalty. With a platform that’s built for you, customers will be happier than ever – building brand trust and loyalty.
• Meet your customers where it matters. We’ve built our platform to allow notifications based on different customer attributes – like name, loyalty, location status, and more. 

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We can help you with your app marketing strategy

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The post 7 Effective App Marketing Strategies appeared first on Airship.

When you want to deepen relationships with your app users, don't miss the chance to connect with them through In-App Messaging. This high-context engagement channel enjoys up to 8x (!) the direct response rates of push notifications, but many brands still haven't taken full advantage.

With Urban Airship’s In-App Automation engine, it is possible to deliver targeted in-app messages in real-time through customizable creative formats and behavioral triggers. In-App Automation can change the way brands welcome, cross-sell, engage and drive on-going loyalty with full-screen, interactive in-app messages.

12 Days of Deals Campaign

You don’t have to be confined to the traditional holiday season to a “12 Days of Deals” campaign. That’s nearly two weeks of your users regularly —  and eagerly —engaging with your app. This type of In-App Messaging campaign aims to gamify your app so users look forward to opening it daily in order to reveal their special offer.

Start your promotion by educating your users about why they should be opening your app on a daily basis.

You can set tags for every user that clicks on the “Show me the deals” interactive button. This tag will allow you to target users who have asked to see your deals for future promotions and follow up.

 

You can then set up a new In-App Automation message to trigger the next message in the series. This will encourage users to log in or open the app each day to view their special offer.

Keep These in Mind When Setting Up In-App Automation

• Make sure you’re setting start and end times for each automation so that your users are only getting the messages that are most relevant.

• Set messages to appear after two app opens, this way your users aren't bombarded by messages as soon as they open your app the first time (after all, that's what you want them to do).

• Know your target audience. Maybe you want to target all users about the upcoming promotion, but only want to target users who viewed that message as part of the actual campaign. Use the audience section to set message eligibility.

Take It to the Next Level with Screen Tracking & Custom Events

If you want to take your In-App Automation strategy to the next level, consider using Screen Tracking and Custom Events.

Screen tracking is a great way to view user activity within your app. When you combine this tracking with In-App Automation, you’re able to trigger messages to display when a user views a specific screen within your app.

Custom Events are another great way to trigger in-app messages. With the use of Custom Events, you’re able to track app or user behavior. For example, when a user completes a purchase or adds an item to their cart you can choose to display an in-app message to each user who has completed the action.

Screen tracking and custom events require minimal development time, as each event or screen requires just a single line of code.

Best Practices

Lastly, here are some tips and best practices to make sure you’re getting the most out of In-App Automation.

• Test! Make sure your message displays when and where you want it to appear.

• Make sure your tags and/or custom events are set up to trigger your messages at the appropriate time and place, for the right audience.

• Consider re-engagement campaigns for users who missed the initial announcement of the campaign.

• Keep your content short and sweet. Long messages may get dismissed before the user has read through all of the content. Captivate them with content that matters right away.

​​​​​​​​​​Have questions? Want a demo? We’re here and happy to help. Contact us today.

 

 

The post How to Create an In-App Messaging Campaign That Gets Customers Excited About Your Brand appeared first on Airship.

Launching a new app can be thrilling! All those months of hard work, resources, time, effort and brainpower spent — and then finally, launch day arrives! You’re over the moon. You go live and then…crickets. And then…panic.

Don’t let this happen to you! In this post, we’ll share how to make a successful app that starts creating value for you and your users on day one — and maximizes the long term value of your app investment.

Setting up some fundamental aspects of your app in the very early app planning stages not only helps set you up for success, it also helps you avoid the cost and effort involved in getting into a new dev cycle to fix something that should have been taken care of well before launch.  

The time to prepare for app success is way, way back during the app conception and development phase. Make sure these ten things are at the top of your checklist to maximize your investment in your app.

1) Understand Your Mobile Value Proposition.

Why would anyone download your app? It’s a fundamental question that too often gets lost as different people with different priorities and goals come to the table with different ideas.

Your mobile value proposition (a unique selling proposition for your app) can help you make sure your team’s goals are aligned — and that the customer stays at the center of your decision-making.

Get on the same page with your team on this, and then make sure every decision you make contributes to fulfilling this promise.

2) Nail Down Three Critical Actions You Want Users to Accomplish.  

Determine what you want users to do, and then build a plan to lead them through those high priority actions.

For example, depending on your goals, you may want to prioritize leading them through registering, providing preferences, opting in to push notifications, upgrade, make a purchase or read your content.

3) Think About Use Cases & Targeting Ahead of Time.

What use cases will provide value to your users and contribute to fulfilling your mobile value proposition? What segmentation or targeting can be used to assure relevance to your user? And what in-app content will you link them to?

Make sure to have deep links set up from day one to ensure a great experience.

For some inspiration on building your content plan, check out our eBook: How to Build a Mobile Engagement Plan

4) Identify Common Content Needs. 

Think about the kinds of messages or interactions you’ll want to have with most of your users.

For example, onboarding and welcome messages to increase feature adoption and retain new users. Write and design these messages ahead of time, and automate them as you can to avoid a last-minute scramble.  We have resources that can help: check out our latest engagement strategy webinar: 10 Ways to Win at Customer Engagement in 2019.

5) Plan Ahead for Getting the Opt-in.

When you think about your cost of acquisition for a new app user, wouldn’t you like to be able to reach them?

Then think about your opt-in strategy well ahead of time. This topic is important, and we’ve written a lot about it. See our recent resource roundup of tips to get the opt-in.

6) Build as Many Messaging Channels As You Can.

Not everyone will opt-in to your push notifications. (In fact, our latest data says only about 42% will opt-in.) So what’s your plan for communicating with app users who have opted out?

There are two additional channels you should consider — In-App Messaging and your in-app message center — and ideally you’d include both in your app right from the start.

A message center is essentially an in-box within your app. It allows you to reach all of your app users while they’re in your app. You can also use push notifications to send people to the message center with deep linking (more on deep linking below).

Our In-App Messaging solution allows you to engage the majority of your users with messages they see while they’re using your app.

A third channel to consider is Mobile Wallet. Although it doesn’t live within your app, there are lots of ways to leverage wallet passes in your app – and vice versa. 

7) Put a Deep Linking Strategy in Place.

Deep linking is the ability to send your user to a page in your app other than the home page.

Many people mistakenly assume that app pages have unique “URLs” like web pages do. That’s not the case. And a big part of ensuring relevance is that, when someone taps on a push notification, they’re taken to a page that clearly relates to that notification — rather than being sent to your app’s home page.

There’s no one right way to do deep linking. Urban Airship’s approach is in our Docs; deep linking for iOS is here, and for Android here.   

8) Define Tags to Deliver Personalized, Relevant Messages.

This is a big one. Sending messages that are personalized, relevant and useful (particularly automated, real-time messaging) can enhance the user experience. But they require thoughtful pre-planning.  

To make sure your mobile messaging is as targeted and timely as it could and should be, you’ll need to identify the tags that help define who your user is, before you launch your app. Tags or attributes are things that don’t change much over time — like a user’s gender or favorite sports team.

Why? Because targeting the right user at the right time with personalized messages they’ll care about requires you to be able to quickly understand who they are and what they’re doing in your app.

A tagging structure that helps you learn more about your users more quickly will help you get there. If you don’t have tags in place on launch, you’ll miss chances to be as relevant as you can right out of the gate.  

Below are some examples of tags commonly used by three verticals (you can grab the code for these tags in our Docs).

9) Decide Custom Events to Make Data-driven Decisions.  

Custom events let you track user activities and key conversions.  By pairing a custom event with a tag you can track user activities and tie them back to corresponding push messaging campaigns.

For example, you would track a user registration event by adding a custom event at the point of user registration. Custom events can also capture how many or how much someone does something.

10) Create a Unique Identifier.

We’ve saved the most important item on our list for last. Doing this one simple thing will save you hours of rework down the road — and it will unlock the value of your mobile analytics. Ready? It’s quite simple: set up a unique identifier for each of your app users.

At Urban Airship, we use named user to map mobile devices to a customer’s chosen identifier. Once you have named user deployed, you can synch up your mobile data with data you have in any other business system or CRM to create a single user profile.

The benefits:

• Use other marketing channels like email to retarget named users who have lapsed or churned.

• Understand the customer journey and customer behavior across all of your web and physical properties.

• Analyze the behaviors and events of your unique “power” users by creating a cohort, and then finding similar users on other channels. (Facebook’s retargeting tool, for example.)

Covering these ten essentials as you build your app — or putting them in place post-launch — will help you build long-term value for your app and for your users.

Want help making sure you’re covering the fundamentals that will set you and your app up for success? Schedule a consultation with our experts and make sure you’re on the right track. Get in touch any time; we’re here to help.  

The post How to Make a Successful App: 10 Fundamentals for Maximizing Your Investment appeared first on Airship.