Press Releases Archive | Airship

Retailers Struggle to Capture Long-Term Value from Their Peak App Acquisition Gains

Luke Cowdin — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 14:36:47 +0000

Airship’s analysis shows lower activation and engagement of app customers acquired at the peak of holiday shopping, when new installs spike 40%-100% over October averages

Airship’s insights, best practices and lifecycle benchmarks can help retailers drive customers through the app lifecycle to increase engagement, gain loyalty and accumulate value

PORTLAND, Ore., April 3, 2024 — For brands that experience a flood of new installs during peak shopping days like Black Friday, the secret to capturing the value of that effort is what happens next. Airship, the mobile app experience company, today shared findings that indicate peak installers are not all they’re cracked up to be.

For apps, peak install periods are the most significant value creation opportunities — and also the most costly due to more paid install competition. To quantify the opportunity and bring greater urgency to value-capture efforts, Airship analyzed mobile app lifecycle and retention data aggregated across more than 60 million new shopping apps first installed between Oct. 1 and Nov. 27 (Cyber Monday), 2023. Key app install findings include:

Peak Day: Going on a decade, Black Friday is the top day of the year for customers to install a shopping app — double the daily average rate for October.
Peak Week: Six of the top seven peak shopping app install days were Nov. 19-25, which is much more tightly grouped than prior years. This peak week saw 40% more app installs than October’s weekly average.
Pre-Holiday: Five of the seven lowest daily app install days were Oct. 1-7, providing a one-week pre-holiday cohort to compare against peak-week customers.

“When acquisition costs are high, customer lifespans need a long enough runway to amortize those costs and generate returns. In other words, brands must hold on to newly acquired customers for dear life,” (Forrester Research, Inc., “Unlock Your Revenue Growth Potential,” June 4, 2023).

Wake Up, Retailers!

The core finding of Airship’s retention analysis should be a wake-up call to retailers everywhere: by Week 3 after install, any advantage gained in this merriest time of year is wiped out as peak-week customers go on to average 18% lower weekly retention rates than customers acquired pre-holiday. By Week 15, peak-week retention rates plummet further.

Airship’s aggregate analysis shows that customers adding shopping apps at the height of the holiday frenzy see lower weekly retention rates than pre-holiday customers by Week 4.

A three percentage point difference at Week 15 — +27% greater than peak week’s rate — can equate to massive future value. Research done by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company found a 5% increase in retained customers yields 25-95% more profit. More recently, Google/Ipsos found that 74% of retail decision-makers say investing in mobile apps is key to driving profitability and important for long-term success (85%).

Despite the peak growth opportunity and overall importance of apps, the two cohorts exhibit a similar retention pattern, suggesting retailers don’t treat peak-week app customers any differently from pre-holiday customers — despite the holiday frenzy’s urgent, transactional focus. Essentially, retailers allow peak-week customers to remain transactionally focused, which is reflected in lower retention rates before Christmas has even arrived. In addition, both cohorts see 38% of new users only open the app once within the analysis time frame (Week 0), helping to account for the Week 1 retention rate.

Capturing Value Requires Advancing Customers Through the App Lifecycle

Rather than focusing on rear-view retention rates, Airship recommends that retailers focus on advancing customers through the mobile app lifecycle — from acquisition to activation, engagement and loyalty. To help, Airship compared the peak-week and pre-holiday cohorts with a subset of metrics used to gauge and optimize progress through the activation and engagement lifecycle stages.

During activation (Day 1-30 after download), the most successful apps focus on understanding customers’ preferences and interests while gaining ways to communicate with them. Identified User Coverage, which is the number of devices with a unique customer ID divided by total devices, is a key metric as it allows brands to link customer data from prior interactions and across channels to better personalize and orchestrate future interactions. Customers gained during pre-holiday have 3% higher Identified User Coverage rates than peak-week adopters. Perhaps due to seasonality and promotions or rewards requiring registration, both cohorts come in above the February shopping category averages: 10% higher for pre-holiday customers and 7% higher for peak week.

Metric comparisons for the engagement lifecycle stage included Average Sessions Per Active User, Average Session Length (in minutes per month) and Airship’s Engagement Score, which indicates how many monthly active users return on a daily basis.

Pre-holiday customers’ February 2024 Engagement Scores are 8% higher than the shopping category average and 14% higher than peak-week customers’, further illustrating the transitory, transactional nature of the latter cohort.
Pre-holiday customers also lead in Average Sessions Per Active User, with February 2024 totals 17% higher than peak-week customers and 9% higher than the shopping category average.
The only engagement metric where peak-week customers outperformed pre-holiday customers was Average Session Length, with .006 more monthly minutes in February 2024 (+.4%). Both cohorts are 9% below the February shopping category average for session duration.

For best practices, additional metrics and benchmarks to compare activation and engagement performance across app store categories, please download Airship’s reports: Mobile Lifecycle Benchmark: Activation and Mobile Lifecycle Benchmark: Engagement. Registration is now open for Airship’s April 11 webinar, Capture Customer Attention: 3 Strategies in 30 Days.

“Customers clearly flock to shopping apps to get the best deals, earn rewards and gain exclusive access, but it’s up to retailers to turn installs and first transactions into ongoing use where real value accumulates,” said Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Airship. “Brands should continually optimize onboarding experiences and reinforce value throughout the lifecycle and across channels for different types of customers. Above all, they need to capture customers’ attention in moments that matter — which calls for in-app experiences tailored to the individual, so brands can continually grow customer understanding, drive engagement and build loyalty over time.”

Methodology

Airship analyzed aggregate data from shopping apps with at least 100,000 monthly active users that also saw new installs and at least 1,000 device sessions within both the peak-week and pre-holiday cohorts. Analysis included 63 million new app users gained between October 1 and November 27, 2023. One-week pre-holiday and peak-week cohorts were established to track and compare monthly activation and engagement metrics through February 2024 and weekly retention rates through Week 15 following Week 0 installation.

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

From the beginning of apps, Airship powered the first commercial messages and then expanded its data-led approach to all re-engagement channels (mobile wallet, SMS, email), app UX experimentation, no-code native app experience creation and App Store Optimization (ASO).

Having powered trillions of mobile app interactions for thousands of global brands, Airship’s technology and deep industry expertise have enabled apps to become the digital center of customer experience, brand loyalty and monetization.

With the Airship App Experience Platform and Gummicube’s ASO technology and expertise, brands now have a complete set of solutions to optimize the entire mobile app customer journey – from the point of discovery to loyalty – driving greater value for everyone involved.

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post Retailers Struggle to Capture Long-Term Value from Their Peak App Acquisition Gains appeared first on Airship.

SXSW Engages Airship to Power Essential Guest Experiences in its Official 2024 SXSW GO Mobile App

Luke Cowdin — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Airship messaging, mobile wallet passes and no-code native app experiences will help attendees optimize their time at SXSW, including skipping lines at select events

For more than a decade, Airship and partner Eventbase have allowed SXSW to deliver innovative mobile app experiences that blend digital-physical experiences for attendees

PORTLAND, Ore., March 8, 2024 — Airship, the mobile app experience company, today announced that South by Southwest® Conference and Festivals (SXSW®) is using the Airship App Experience Platform to power lifecycle messaging and native app experiences in the official SXSW GO mobile app presented by Paramount+. Unified experiences inside and outside the app will optimize app onboarding, opt-in permissions and feature adoption, while guiding and informing attendees throughout the conference and festivals.

New to 2024, SXSW has increased the number of daily SXXpress Passes, giving in-person attendees more opportunities to request to skip the line at any event for which they have primary access. Airship Mobile Wallet dynamically generates the personalized digital express pass and distributes it via email, Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Registered attendees will be able to request a limited number of SXXpress Passes in the SXSW GO mobile app or SXSW Schedule starting at 9 a.m. the day before the events to which they want priority access.

The SXSW GO mobile app allows attendees to navigate the event with ease, build a personalized schedule, network with other attendees, find nearby events and much more. SXSW attendees can explore the SXSW GO mobile app here, including download links for iOS and Android.

The SXSW GO mobile app, powered by Airship and Eventbase, serves as a digital companion to help attendees optimize their time at the conference and festivals.

“Working with Airship and our other partners has allowed SXSW to introduce entirely new mobile experiences to guests over the years, from industry-first implementations to today’s no-code experiences and innovative mobile wallet VIP experiences that allow us to further unify the guest experience and go far beyond messaging alone,” said Michael Brown, Vice President of Innovation, SXSW. “It takes a village to unlock the magic of SXSW, and I’m proud to say that the SXSW GO app is the best way for people to get the most from the conference and festivals, whether they’re here in-person or joining from home.”

“SXSW is dedicated to helping brands unleash their creativity,” said Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Airship. “We’re proud to be a long-standing partner of SXSW. Our technology makes life better for SXSW attendees by delivering just what they need — on the ground, on their app, and everywhere in between.”

For more than 10 years, SXSW has worked with Airship and partner Eventbase to deliver innovative mobile app experiences that allow conference and festival attendees to get the most out of SXSW. The time-tested, battle-proven partnership between Airship and event app platform Eventbase powers mobile app experiences for many of the world’s largest events, including CES, Cisco Live, Salesforce Dreamforce, Sundance Film Festival, Adobe Summit and VMware Explore.

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post SXSW Engages Airship to Power Essential Guest Experiences in its Official 2024 SXSW GO Mobile App appeared first on Airship.

Airship Unifies Experimentation and Optimization to Improve Every Mobile Customer Experience

Luke Cowdin — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 14:00:00 +0000

New capabilities give everyone a way to prove and improve performance

World-leading brands that are already achieving significant gains will be recognized and celebrated tonight at Mobile Leaders Forum London

PORTLAND, Ore., November 16, 2023 — As organizations rush to adopt AI, a data-driven focus is foundational — not only to fuel better AI, but to avoid sacrificing long-term customer value for short-term gains. Nowhere is this more important than in mobile app experience, where value creation opportunities are 3-4X greater than anywhere else.

Today, mobile app experience company Airship introduced a host of enhancements to make continuous experimentation and optimization even easier.

From optimizing the performance of cross-channel customer journeys to refining messages, campaigns and no-code native app experiences, to testing app user experience and features themselves, all Airship experiments are now centralized in an Experimentation Hub. It’s a dashboard that anyone can use to create, launch and evaluate experiments and obtain a common understanding of the end-to-end experimentation and optimization strategy.

Holdout Experiments take A/B testing and control groups to a new level, allowing marketers to measure their impact on business goals by comparing audiences that receive marketing-led experiences versus those that don’t. Feature Flags enable teams to turn functionality on and off, run tests with control groups, activate short-term campaigns and make iterative experience enhancements before rolling them out to full audiences — all without the need for new code deployment or app store updates.

Airship has also centralized its visual reporting environment, providing real-time insights from all active experiments, as well as customer, channel and campaign data, into one place. A new App Health Reporting dashboard provides at-a-glance KPIs to help marketers and product owners understand app performance across the mobile app lifecycle.

Register to join two leading brand experts as they explore how continuous experimentation and optimization drives better results for businesses in a December 5 webinar.

Since the introduction of Airship’s no-code native App Experience Editor, businesses around the world have enabled non-technical teams to easily create, automate and adapt native app experiences for continuous onboarding and first-party and zero-party data collection. Numerous nominations for Airship’s annual customer awards program — The Altitude Awards — have documented their successes with agile creation and experimentation, including:

“Experimentation is fully integrated into Burger King France’s strategy, as we strive to deliver personalized, innovative experiences across all channels, from campaigns to product testing and new services,” said Valentin Pereira, CRM Project Manager. “Airship’s no-code native app experiences make it easy to go beyond messaging to optimize critical multiscreen app flows as well as important customer journeys and multi-channel campaigns. Results of initial app experience tests will have us repeating Airship Stories and videos at key moments in the customer journey — from welcoming new app users to launching major sales promotions.”

“Olio is fighting climate change by connecting people everywhere to give away rather than throw away, and share rather than shop, which makes our mobile app and notification opt-ins critical to facilitating rapid sharing and exchanges,” said Gareth Main, Chief Customer Officer at Olio. “Airship’s no-code native app experiences have enabled our entire team to quickly take action and experiment to improve users’ experiences, including recent tests that grew our notification opt-in rate by 24% while identifying a new approach we’ll take for future campaigns.”

“With more than 10 apps in total, we measure customer satisfaction daily. Previously, we used an HTML webview to deliver surveys to app users, which proved to be a distracting experience, resulting in low response rates,” said Laurent Claramonte, head of data analytics for Products and Mobile Apps, Orange France. “Since moving to Airship’s no-code native app experiences to quickly deploy, test and adapt onboarding flows, surveys and more, we now get as many customer survey responses in a day as we used to receive in a month.”

Winners of Airship’s Altitude Awards will be announced at Mobile Leaders Forum London later today.

“Customers’ first experiences with brands have an outsized impact on future value, especially when it comes to mobile app experiences where more than half decide whether to delete a new app in the first two uses,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president, Airship. “Brands need to recognize the limited window they have to make a compelling case for app customers to stick around. With Airship’s solution approach we are streamlining creation, experimentation and optimization, giving brands the keys to unlock agile optimization and more quickly achieve their business goals.”

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.

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Airship Finds Most Consumers Actively Seek To Minimize Mobile Distractions

Luke Cowdin — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Global survey reveals the majority have adopted Apple’s Focus feature, while more are aware of Live Activities

PORTLAND, Ore., Sept. 6, 2023 — Ahead of Apple’s fall event and the release of iOS 17, Airship, the mobile app experience company, today detailed survey findings that show digital well-being is of increasing importance to global consumers. One in four consumers say they are using apps to either limit their screen time or avoid distracting interruptions. However, even more are adopting Apple’s Focus and Live Activities, which limit distractions and interruptions, while keeping them tuned in to the information and apps that matter most in different moments of their day.

Since its introduction in September 2021, 56% of iPhone users say they have used Apple’s Focus feature to designate which apps, people and notifications can reach them at different moments in their day. Of those who have not used Focus, 42% say they are not aware of the feature, while 29% say they “don’t experience enough interruptions” to warrant its use.

Apple launched Live Activities in October 2022, about a year after Focus, offering a new way for users to pin dynamically updated information to their lock screens rather than receiving multiple notifications from the same app. Already, 41% of respondents say they have used Live Activities with their apps, while 35% have not and only 24% are unaware of this new capability. What’s more, global consumers are happy with Live Activities: 62% of those who have used it rated their experience as “Good” or “Exceptional,” while only 6% rated it as “Poor” or “Bad.”

Considering its recency, Live Activities is seeing rapid uptake and more awareness due to high-profile activations like the World Cup and more brands increasingly offering it to their app customers. In contrast, Focus relies on iPhone users setting up the capability on their own. Live Activities is likely to get another boost with the public release of iOS 17, which allows brands to add buttons and toggles to Live Activities bringing core functionality, not just information, to customers’ lock screens.

“It’s no surprise that Apple is looking to double down on the success of Live Activities with new updates that will transform the lock screen into something that closely resembles a remote control for your life,” said Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Airship. “Now more than ever, brands can gain front-and-center visibility by simplifying customers’ lives and saving them time — rather than commanding or demanding their attention. That’s key to unlocking a valuable new era of customer experience.”

Methodology

The survey was completed in partnership with Sapio Research among more than 11,000 consumers, age 18 and older in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, South Africa, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil. Overall results are accurate to ±0.9% at a 95% confidence level.

The full report, “The Mobile Consumer 2023,” is available for download with regional and generational insights across numerous topics.

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post Airship Finds Most Consumers Actively Seek To Minimize Mobile Distractions appeared first on Airship.

Airship Names Joe Russell Chief Financial Officer

Luke Cowdin — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:00:00 +0000

SaaS CFO to scale and manage growth as the company unlocks new ways for brands to capture more customer value inside and outside the app

PORTLAND, Ore., Aug., 2, 2023 — Airship, the mobile app experience company, today announced Joe Russell has joined its executive leadership team as Chief Financial Officer. In this role, Russell will oversee Airship’s finance and business operations and report directly to CEO and president Brett Caine.

Russell is a seasoned executive leader with deep expertise in enterprise SaaS. He has led new financial and operational management strategies that accelerated growth while balancing profitability. Russell previously served as CFO of Netbase Quid, an enterprise SaaS provider for data analytics. Prior to that, he held CFO roles at BrightEdge and TalentWave. Russell also worked at Piston Cloud Computing (acquired by Cisco), where he was VP of Finance and Business Operations. Earlier in his career, he led product and sales operations with VMware and Yahoo, and worked as an investment banker at GCA Savvian and Credit Suisse First Boston.

“Joe brings an incredible set of skills and expertise in helping SaaS companies improve operational efficiency, accelerate growth and fuel innovation — making him the perfect match to help execute the next stages of Airship’s expansion,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president, Airship. “For well over a decade, Airship has been first to support game-changing, annual mobile app innovations from Apple and Android, and now we’re redefining what’s possible every day by freeing marketers and product owners to enhance native app experiences without developer support. The no-code era’s impact on value creation, and Airship’s opportunity to unlock it, are massive, and I’m thrilled to have Joe join our team at the helm.”

“Airship has a long history of driving mobile-first innovations that have transformed customer engagement models across industries and redefined how brands create value today,” said Joe Russell, CFO, Airship. “The future is even more exciting. Brands everywhere know the impact mobile apps have on growth and loyalty and their customers do too, but both are often left wanting more. Airship’s unique focus on optimizing the entire mobile app customer lifecycle and empowering a brand’s entire team, are well timed for today’s most pressing needs. I look forward to seizing the opportunity with the team.”

Russell holds an MBA from The Wharton School, an MSc in Accounting and Finance from The London School of Economics and Political Science, and he graduated with a BS in Economics from the University of Washington.

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post Airship Names Joe Russell Chief Financial Officer appeared first on Airship.

Airship Research Reveals More Consumers Will Share All Types of Personal Information With Brands This Year

Luke Cowdin — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 11:00:00 +0000

Findings show consumers want control over brand interactions and will provide information to get app-enabled conveniences and personalized experiences that simplify their lives

PORTLAND, Ore., June 22, 2023 — Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, inflation, rising customer acquisition costs and growing data regulations, Airship, the mobile app experience company, today at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity announced a new global report, “The Mobile Consumer 2023.” The research helps brands better understand evolving consumer preferences, behaviors and expectations in order to accelerate value creation.

Based on a survey of more than 11,000 consumers across ten countries, global consumers are more willing to share all types of information with brands in exchange for personalized interactions and special incentives. Of the 15 different types of information Airship tracked year-over-year, email addresses are the most freely shared at 86% of respondents. This year, “interests relevant to a brand” (78%) displaced “name” as the second most shared information.

Rounding out the top five types of information consumers will share the most are “their communication preferences” and “what they’ve browsed on a brand’s app or website,” highlighting the importance of a customer-centric approach to brand interactions. In fact, the information seeing the biggest year-over-year gains in consumer willingness to share is “what they value socially (environmental, moral, political or religious).”

While email addresses are most commonly shared with brands, it’s worth noting that 79% of consumers ignore or delete marketing emails from brands they love at least half the time or more (up 1% year-over-year). Younger generations, led by Gen Z, are less likely than Gen X and boomers to pursue traditional methods of avoiding commercial email — by unsubscribing or deleting emails by scanning sender or subject lines. Instead, they are much more likely to say they don’t often check their email, use a secondary email account they rarely check and use both anonymous email addresses (e.g., via Sign In with Apple) or fake ones.

Globally, the top three types of personalization consumers find to be most useful are “recommendations and offers based on past behavior or purchases” (41%), “interests and preferences supplied to the brand” (40%), and “content and offers targeted to their current location” (34%). Interestingly, “predictive suggestions based on everything the brand knows about them” ranked lowest among all types of personalization for all countries other than Singapore. These findings indicate that consumers want experiences personalized to them, but basic information doesn’t go far enough and advanced methods walk a fine line between being helpful and creepy.

When asked about how often they like to receive specific types of app-based messaging from brands, more consumers indicated “immediately, and as often as it happens” as their preferred frequency for five of eight different types of messaging. For seven types of messages where there is year-over-year data, findings show a decline in respondents saying they “don’t want these types of messages” and an increase in those that want messages “only as they’re using the specific app.” While consumers may have varied preferences for the frequencies of app-based messaging, these findings illustrate why it’s important for brands to give customers control over the types of messages they receive, as well as where and how often they get them.

“Growing data privacy regulations and advancements from Apple and Android are speeding brands towards a customer-first future, where transparency and control make it easier than ever for customers to shut down brands that aren’t meeting their needs,” said Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Airship. “This is a seismic shift for many, compounded by both constantly upleveling customer experience expectations and the impending demise of third-party data. To gain the level of customer understanding necessary to succeed, brands must lean into mobile app experiences that offer always-on utility, convenience and individualized control — all of which reach much deeper into the hearts and minds of customers — allowing brands to respect, reward and serve customers better over time.”

Register to receive the full report, “The Mobile Consumer 2023,” with regional and generational insights across topics such as:

Why consumers continue to turn to mobile apps and how they discover them
How apps meld digital and physical experiences, and the top ways consumers use smartphones while shopping in-store
What drives people to opt-in to mobile app push notifications
Why people delete apps and how quickly do they decide to do so
How consumers use apps to improve their overall health and well-being
Adoption of new mobile experiences, such as Apple’s Focus and Live Activities

Methodology

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post Airship Research Reveals More Consumers Will Share All Types of Personal Information With Brands This Year appeared first on Airship.

Airship Finds Most Consumers Turn to Mobile Apps to Simplify Their Lives

Luke Cowdin — Tue, 23 May 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Yet challenges persist: a 10-country survey reveals most consumers use apps only once or twice before deciding whether to delete them, making onboarding experiences crucial

LAS VEGAS, May 23, 2023 — Mobile app experience company Airship today released new global consumer research at MAU Vegas detailing what motivates consumers to continue to use mobile apps, how they discover them and why and when they are likely to delete them.

Consumers today are turning to apps for convenience and efficiency. Overall, the top three reasons 11,000 global respondents use apps from their favorite brands are “ease of use” (35%), followed by “simplifies my life” (31%) and “saves me time” (27%). While the economic climate is challenging, and deals, rewards and targeted offers grew the most as opt-in motivators, the reasons consumers continue to use apps are increasingly about higher-level benefits: ease, speed and simplicity.

Searching and browsing app stores continues to be the top way people discover new apps to download. This holds true across household income levels, generations and the majority of countries. Search engines are the second most common app discovery method, followed by word of mouth (WOM). Personal recommendations are a key driver of app downloads in the U.K., France and Canada where consumers turn to WOM as much or more than the app stores. In the U.S., Germany and Singapore WOM is the second most common method of finding apps.

When asked why they delete apps, “freeing up phone storage” (32%) and “too many in-app ads” (30%) rose to the top. Alarmingly, “never used” (26%) was the third most common reason for deleting apps globally. In Canada, France and Germany, “never used” was the most common reason for app removal, and in the U.S., U.K. and Singapore, it ranked second. This data suggests that brands must quickly and clearly convey the value of the app to customers. Improving mobile app onboarding experiences are crucial to fostering app usage and optimizing retention. Additionally, establishing connections with customers outside of the app, such as through email or SMS, can help drive them back to the app.

First and second impressions are everything for new app customers. Most consumers (57%) only use an app once or twice before deciding to delete it or not. Furthermore, within the first two weeks of downloading a new app, 73% of consumers will decide if they’ll delete it, a behavior consistent across all countries, household income levels and generations.

“App user acquisition means almost nothing if brands aren’t able to retain their users and drive repeat usage. Brands today need to deliver value by using every opportunity to make life better for their customers,” said Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Airship. “No one else besides Airship can unify and optimize the entire mobile app customer lifecycle, from app features and discovery to campaigns outside the app and experiences inside the app.”

Methodology

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

You can access the full report here. For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post Airship Finds Most Consumers Turn to Mobile Apps to Simplify Their Lives appeared first on Airship.

Airship Ushers in New Era of Customer Experience, Inside and Outside of Mobile Apps

Corey Gault — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 13:00:00 +0000

World’s first no-code native app experience editor frees marketers and developers to dream, design, deploy and iterate — accelerating value creation from months to minutes

Now brands can unify campaigns, native app experiences and experimentation across the entire customer lifecycle including enterprise-grade email, dynamic coupons and generative AI

PORTLAND, Ore., April 26, 2023 — Earnings reports and industry research show mobile apps are the digital center of customer experience, generating more than three times greater revenue from app customers than non-app customers. Despite this value creation opportunity, many brands haven’t improved app retention rates in years. App teams remain too reliant on precious development resources to make improvements that would change this dynamic. It’s a big problem:

Every week nearly three-quarters of marketers and mobile product owners think about enhancements to better onboard, activate and understand app users, but 48 out of 50 rely on developers to make improvements happen.
Nearly 40% of enterprise developers say requests from marketing and product teams take “a month” or “multiple months,” and only 12% of enterprise marketers say all their requests are implemented.
Despite all marketers and mobile product owners agreeing that feature tutorials and opt-in flows significantly impact app user behaviors, nearly 50% of enterprises only improve these critical first experiences quarterly or less often.

To solve this bottleneck and help unleash more value, mobile app experience company Airship today announced major innovations to its App Experience Platform including a new foundational no-code native app editing engine simply called App Experience Editor. Together with Airship’s enhancements in email marketing, cross-channel journey orchestration and intelligent content creation, app teams can quickly design, deploy and iterate native app experiences and campaigns without ongoing developer support or app updates. They can also unify the customer journey inside and outside of the app to seamlessly enhance customer experiences, freeing developers to focus on the next market-differentiating app features.

After a year of brand marketers’ success with Airship’s first no-code native app experiences, the App Experience Editor opens up ever-expanding, flexible creation capabilities with A/B testing and experimentation, full design control, precise previews and dark mode support. Marketers and mobile product owners can now skip making enhancement requests to development, waiting for app updates, or settling for disjointed HTML web views, and instead create and optimize high-value app experiences themselves with full native performance, accessibility and measurement.

Airship is also introducing a new experience called Stories that automatically progresses users through rich, multi-screen walkthroughs, bringing a familiar social media experience to any in-app experience, message or interstitial. Plus, brands can now combine Surveys with Scenes to collect first- and zero-party data while onboarding and activating app customers.

Stories offer a visually rich, dynamic experience that anyone can add to their app without developer support or app updates.

“Airship’s no-code editor made it possible for our entire team to create and optimize several multi-screen app onboarding experiences in minutes not months, without developer resources or app updates, which is absolutely critical for apps like SXSW GO that serve a very defined time period,” said Michael Brown, Vice President of Innovation, SXSW. “Previously, app experiences were locked and loaded months in advance and in-flight changes had to be critical to even be considered. Now, with Airship’s innovation, numerous pre-built layouts, and full design control, it’s very intuitive and flexible to optimize a wide range of engaging use cases. Native support means we can forget about HTML and trust that performance, measurement and accessibility are baked in.”

“Olio is an app that lets people pass on food and household items to others nearby. With over 7 million users and 120k tonnes of CO2 saved so far, it helps avoid waste by encouraging people to share or borrow instead of throwing things away or buying brand new,” said Gareth Main, Director of Growth & Business Intelligence at Olio. “Our mission is to drive behavior change at scale, and for this a deep understanding of users is crucial. Airship’s App Experience Editor has played an important role in allowing us to build that understanding, enabling us to rapidly deploy in-app surveys without the need to involve developers. With consistently high-completion rates, these surveys give us invaluable data at multiple points across the user lifecycle.”

Anyone can quickly create, deploy and optimize multi-screen native app experiences with Airship’s no-code native App Experience Editor.

Airship Journeys provides one place to orchestrate customer journeys across app experiences and campaigns, offering at-a-glance visualizations of performance and easy access to make changes in a few clicks. To scale content testing and optimization, Airship has enabled OpenAI within its message composer to instantly create endless content variations including localized content in different languages. For marketing offers, Airship Email received major enterprise-grade upgrades to support complex segmentation, personalization and testing strategies, as well as deliverability monitoring, suppression management for compliance and email rendering across hundreds of email clients, browsers and devices. Marketers now have full design control utilizing Airship’s no-code, drag-and-drop email editor interface.

Airship Coupons now supports individualized promo codes for highly segmented offers delivered to any channel — from persistent in-app message centers and mobile wallets, to ads, emails and inside physical stores. The NBA’s Phoenix Suns are going paperless for special promotions with its official gaming partner FanDuel using multiple unique capabilities of Airship’s no-code App Experience Platform.

“For the entirety of the playoff season, in-stadium fans will receive a $10 bonus bet for FanDuel if the Suns score more than 30 points in the first quarter,” said Tramon Thomas, Vice President, Brand Digital & Social, Phoenix Suns. “With Airship’s platform, we can create and optimize the end-to-end experience without requiring development resources; from onboarding experiences that drive opt-ins, to delivering individualized redemption codes for easy retrieval in our in-app message center or through Google Wallet or Apple Wallet.”

Airship is also proud to extend its market-first support for iOS Live Activities by innovating on Android to ensure consistent and scalable live update experiences across both mobile platforms. Airship Live Updates for Android enables a brand’s customers to pin dynamically updated information to both their lock screen and notification tray. Marketers can now offer all of their mobile customers a similar experience and keep their brands’ real-time updates front-and-center for hours at a time.

Finally, Airship is introducing a Partner Configuration Tool, offering a no-code UI wizard to easily integrate Airship with other solutions, connecting data and customer journeys across digital ecosystems. Between out-of-the-box connectors with third-party solutions, open APIs and composable inbound and outbound integration recipes, brands can get up and running fast and never miss a beat in meeting customers’ real-time expectations.

“Airship is on a mission to make life better with better mobile app experiences. Consumers have high expectations for apps to offer utility and personalized experiences that simplify their lives and save them time, yet many businesses struggle to provide this. Too often half of the app team is reliant on the other, slowing everyone down. As a result, app teams fail to extend relationships from acquisition and activation through to engagement and loyalty, where real value accumulates,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president, Airship. “We’re changing that dynamic with the unveiling of Airship’s no-code native app experience editor. Marketers and product teams can now finally take charge of both app experiences and campaigns to form critical first impressions and substantively grow and sustain value over time. We’re entering a new era of customer experience at the speed of mobile, inside and outside the app^TM.”

To learn more about Airship’s platform enhancements and its new no-code native App Experience Editor, please register for a May 4 webinar, “Dream. Design. Deploy. Done.”

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post Airship Ushers in New Era of Customer Experience, Inside and Outside of Mobile Apps appeared first on Airship.

Global Survey Shows More Consumers Turn to Retailers’ Mobile Apps to Streamline In-Store Shopping Experiences and Score Personalized Offers and Deals

Antoine Diavet — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Airship’s 10-country survey finds 78% of consumers regularly use retailers’ mobile apps

Of all the ways shoppers use smartphones in stores, using the retailer’s app has grown the most

LAS VEGAS, March 28, 2023 — Mobile app experience company Airship today released new global consumer research at Shoptalk to shed light on consumer behaviors and preferences for mobile apps from retailers.

Across 11,000 consumer respondents, 78% are using retailers’ mobile apps either more often or about the same as last year. This preference for retail apps extends across age groups and household income levels. Generationally, 81% of millennials and 79% of Gen X report using retail apps more or about the same as last year, followed by 72% of both Gen Z and boomers. High household incomes lead in regular use of retail apps at 82%, followed by 79% of medium and 75% of low income levels.

When asked about 10 different activities one might use their smartphone to accomplish while shopping in-store, using the retailer’s app grew the most year over year. Globally, 74% of respondents said they are likely to use the brand’s app when shopping at its physical storefronts.

For most countries and generations, the likelihood of using a retailer’s app while shopping in-store is only a few percentage points behind visiting the retailer’s website despite first having to download apps from the App Store or Google Play.

Mobile apps have an inherent advantage to reach people wherever they are at the exact moment it matters most, as notifications are served up on smartphone lock screens. When consumers were asked what motivates them to opt in to receive brand communications on their smartphone, discounts, loyalty rewards and offers personalized to browsing behaviors, past purchases and current location saw the biggest gains over the prior year. The data suggests that inflation and the current economy is driving more deal-motivated behaviors from consumers. It also demonstrates an opportunity for retailers to expand customer understanding as shoppers are more motivated to share personal information in exchange for valuable offers and convenient experiences that better meet their needs.

You can download the full report “The Mobile Consumer 2023” with the survey data and Airship’s recommendations here.

“Today’s consumers are increasingly turning to mobile apps from their favorite retailers to score deals, gain special access and improve their overall customer experience, particularly while shopping at brick-and-mortar stores,” said Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Airship. “As marketing budgets are pinched and consumers face economic pressures, retailers need greater agility to create and optimize valuable app experiences that grow customer understanding and reward them individually, making life easier and better for everyone involved.”

Methodology

The survey was completed in partnership with Sapio Research in February 2023 among 11,000 consumers, age 18 and older in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, South Africa, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil.

About Airship

No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

The post Global Survey Shows More Consumers Turn to Retailers’ Mobile Apps to Streamline In-Store Shopping Experiences and Score Personalized Offers and Deals appeared first on Airship.

SXSW Taps Airship Again to Power Critical Experiences in its Official 2023 SXSW GO Mobile App

Deidre Wright — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 14:00:00 +0000

Airship messaging, mobile wallet passes and no-code app experiences will help the more than 225,000 expected SXSW attendees make the most of their time at the conference and festivals

Airship and Eventbase enable SXSW to deliver immersive mobile app experiences, amplifying the hybrid digital-physical experience for attendees

PORTLAND, Ore., March 8, 2023 — Mobile app experience company Airship today announced that South by Southwest® Conference and Festivals (SXSW®) is once again using the Airship App Experience Platform to power push notifications and in-app messaging for the official SXSW GO mobile app, presented by Showtime.

New to this year, SXSW will use Airship’s new no-code app experiences for more agile app onboarding to ensure conference and festival attendees are set up to get the most value from the app the moment they arrive. In addition, SXSW has extended its use of Airship Mobile Wallet by digitizing SXXPress credentials to enable attendees to skip the lines at select sessions, showcases, screenings and parties.

The SXSW GO mobile app is the digital key to SXSW. It enables attendees to browse and build their personal schedule, get event navigation information, and discover new music, films and sessions.

“Airship has been a creative technology partner to our team for a decade and counting, working closely with us and our other partners to deliver innovative mobile app experiences that unlock the magic of SXSW,” said Michael Brown, Vice President of Innovation, SXSW. “The SXSW GO app is the best way for people to get the most from the conference and festivals, whether they’re here in-person or joining from home.”

No-Code App Experiences Set the Stage for Success

With Airship’s AXP Scenes, the entire team at SXSW is empowered to create and optimize multi-screen walkthroughs that explain the value of opting in to notification and sharing location permissions, which are critical to digitally enhancing attendees’ experiences. Other Scenes have been created to encourage app users to finalize their profile, share their favorites and fully adopt features like building their personalized schedule. All of this is tightly integrated with lifecycle messaging to guide and inform attendees throughout the conference and festivals. Organizers will also use no-code AXP Surveys to measure satisfaction and sentiment around individual sessions and showcases.

Expanded Use of Mobile Wallet Unlocks VIP-Type Experiences

This year, the SXSW team is using Airship Mobile Wallet to offer the SXXpress Pass. The digital express pass allows registered attendees to save time and skip the line for music festival showcases, film and TV screenings, comedy festival showcases, conference sessions and select parties. Festival goers will be able to request a limited number of SXXpress Passes in the SXSW GO app or SXSW Schedule starting at 9 a.m. the day before the events to which they want priority access.

SXSW began using Airship Mobile Wallet in 2016 to transition from physical guest credentials to digital wallet passes, saving valuable time for attendees and staff. In that first year, they increased credentials issued by 25 percent and reduced costs by 54 percent.

Location-Targeted Messaging Drives Discovery

The city of Austin is bustling with activity during SXSW, and location-targeted messaging can help attendees discover events as they are happening. SXSW has set up geofences around the area to trigger location-targeted push notifications from Airship featuring machine-learning recommendations based on festival goers’ personalized schedules and Agenda Gaps to maximize their time and experience.

“SXSW is dedicated to helping creative people achieve their goals, and for more than 10 years they’ve turned to Airship to bring their mobile app to life with experiences that help conference and festival attendees discover and make the most of SXSW,” said Thomas Butta, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Airship. “Their constant drive to experiment and willingness to push the boundaries of what is possible has made working with SXSW very rewarding.”

SXSW attendees can learn more and download the SXSW GO mobile app here.

For more than a decade, Airship has partnered with event app platform Eventbase to power mobile app experiences for many of the world’s largest events, including SXSW. Airship is exhibiting at SXSW 2023 at the Creative Industries Expo, booth #416 at the Austin Convention Center. SXSW attendees can request a meeting with Airship or schedule a demonstration here.

About Airship
No one knows more, does more, or cares more than Airship when it comes to helping brands master mobile app experience (MAX).

For more information, visit www.airship.com, read our blog or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

About SXSW
SXSW dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals. Founded in 1987 in Austin, Texas, SXSW is best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of tech, film and television, music, education, and culture. An essential destination for global professionals, the annual March event features sessions, music, and comedy showcases, film & TV screenings, exhibitions, professional development, and a variety of networking opportunities. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together. SXSW 2023 will take place March 10 – 19, 2023 in Austin. For more information, please visit sxsw.com. To register for the event, please visit sxsw.com/attend.

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