Customer Retention Strategies for Your Mobile App
If you’re successfully building a customer base online, the next step is focusing on customer retention strategies to maintain revenue.
When it comes to mobile apps, customer retention strategies determine success.
According to Statista, the average cost of mobile app users is 3.52 dollars as of August 2019. It is for the users who have registered with an app or created an account. If you look at the average cost of acquiring an Android user for in-app purchases, it is approximately 77 USD, and for iOS, it is 87 USD. It shows there’s a vast difference between the cost of getting users to register for the app and making them convinced for in-app purchases.
It shows that you must make most out of the customer acquisition cost. It can be achieved with the help of customer retention. These days, app stores are flooded with millions of applications both in play and app stores, so are the users engaged with those applications? More number of apps available means there’s more room for a user to use other available options and leave with the one with a disappointing experience.
Customer Retention Overview
Customer retention is the measure of how successful you are with keeping up your existing customers. Is your application making sure that your existing customer wants and fulfills the current demands with the user experience? If your company or a mobile app is successful in gaining the engagement and interest from existing customers and the new users, you are most likely to decrease your expense on user acquisition cost and the possibility of mouth-to-mouth publicity. If your mobile app has an excellent customer retention rate, it is most likely to establish a trusted image over the audience quickly and gain a good number of new users with that brand image.
With the existing competition of mobile apps and advanced features, you need to be clear with your approach to retaining the customers / mobile app users. Though you may have plans, marketing campaigns, and strategies, you must keep up with what is trending and how to excel in retaining your existing mobile app users.
I have listed below five strategies for customer retention. You may like it and want to execute it in your existing or an upcoming mobile app project. Here you go!
Cohort analysis & Iteration
Cohort analysis translates users’ actions into a predictive approach of a mobile app. It is a part of behavior analytics through which you can segment the users and get to know what segment of users demand particular requirements, and at what point do they abandon the engagement. It includes heatmap generation tools like Hotjar, Firebase, realtime in-app visual analytics and more. It churns out the users’ actual feedback on how you need to improve on certain features, or the app lacks any specific features.
Once you regularly cohort your users based on their behavior, it is easy to divide the priorities and work on them. It leads you to the constant iteration that your app needs. Putting personalized experience in your mobile app makes it more likable to the users. Regardless of the product type, whether it is fully-featured or minimum viable, it is essential to update these digital solutions regularly in terms of features, new optimizations, and effortless navigation. It not only surprises existing users but also revitalizes their interest in interacting with the apps. Continuously providing value to the app users is the real key to not skyrocket the uninstall rate but keep them connected obsessed with the ease your app offers.
Two- way communication
Customers always need to be heard. They feel that it should be a personal connection to the brand they are approaching. Whether it is a mobile app or a professional service, it must be customer-centric and at least communicate with their users or customers. It is mandated for a mobile app to talk and listen to their users before they post a negative review about the app and skyrocket the number of uninstalls.
Understanding what users want or addressing the issues they report is the most welcoming gesture for your app users. They feel heard and extremely personal when you respond to their comments and work for it. This gesture encourages users to last the relationship, spread positive reviews, and boosts engagement. If you want to make sure the increased retention rate of your mobile app, consider this aspect most important.
Onboarding & Personalized User Experience
According to one study, 1 in 4 people abandon mobile after single use and 17 percent only use after in-app messages. The other factors include asking for minimal information. Let users explore the app, let them enjoy the onboarding experience.
Each aspect of customer retention is essential. But personalized user experience and onboarding are two most critical among them. Onboarding is the first impression a user will experience the app. Personalization is the second most experience due to which a user decides to stay permanent with the app.
Let’s take a look at the example of Healthify me App.
Healthify me onboarding experience (Simple & intelligible user interface)
The onboarding process of this app is educational and straightforward. It tells users that the app is worth downloading in the first experience, by asking proper and direct questions about health priority and body measures. Simultaneously, a user experiences something quite known to the app when he revisits it. It remembers the user’s patterns of diet by providing a fast track of eating. Reminds about the goal weight, water intake, and easy to enter all the required measures.
Set a Minimalistic Approach
Take the example of a salesperson. Who would you recommend, one with the minimal calling and straightforward information or the irritative sales rep calling you without any prior knowledge of your profile or demands?
The mobile app works on the same principle. Your application should take the user straight to the requirement. Extra unnecessary options irritate users; they end up not using the application anymore. For example, a cab booking app Uber has the most minimalistic approach for its users. It directly takes users to find a cab, choosing a location, and showing nearby drivers. It takes only the confirmation button to book a taxi. If the application doesn’t use this approach, no user will be interested in booking a cab with Uber since it is an urgency to use the app, and it should serve the purpose.
A CRM Approach (Implementing Customer Relationship Management)
Implementing customer relationship management in retaining the mobile app users play a critical role. It includes using CRM software, utilizing customer/app user analytics in decision making, and instilling customer relationship management in each segment of the organization. It helps in delivering a consistent customer experience by collecting and centralizing users’ data. CRM software also helps in generating marketing strategies and loyalty programs for customer engagement.
Analyzing customer data always helps in building a long-term relationship that interests users to become a loyal customer base. Generating marketing strategies based on customer data is a part of the customer retention strategy. It helps in employing customer relationships by sending timely updates about the offers, programs, or new features and privileges.
For example, mobile apps in the eCommerce segment require more of a marketing campaign that involves customer outreach and inbound marketing. It can be achieved with the help of detailed customer analytics and customer relationship management approach in the company and using its software.
I hope you liked and understand the need for executing these strategies for retaining mobile app users. These days, technologies are evolving every day to keep up with growing the business and provide a classic customer experience to any segment of the business. In mobile app development, there’s an immense need to engage the right audience and give them a long-lasting good customer experience. The above-listed strategies have a wide range of domains in finding software related to it, and you can use them to your existing mobile app projects.
