User Retention in Mobile: 7 Ways to Engage and Retain App Users

Let me introduce you to a word. You might know it already. You might be even aware of its importance. But you are here. This means that you want to learn the ways to leverage it. Oh, and the word is “Cross-selling”. In the context of mobile apps, cross-selling refers to generating revenue from your existing app users. To effectively cross-sell you will need to continuously engage and retain your app users and encourage them to share their experience with others to bring more users to your app through word of mouth. Here we will discuss 7 ways in which you can achieve this goal and successfully monetize your app:

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1. Know Your Persona:

To engage and retain your app users you need to first target them effectively. To effectively engage users, focus your marketing efforts towards the group of users for whom your app is the best fit. An effective way to achieve this is by creating user personas. A persona is a summary of personal and professional qualities in a person. For instance, for an action android game a target persona can be something like this:

• Name: Sample Joe
• Gender: Male
• Age: 12 to 18
• Location: America
• Interests: Gaming, Sports, Action Movies
• Mobile Device: Android
• Preferred Digital Medias: Facebook, Instagram

The HubSpot’s persona generator is a terrific way to create effective personas of your users. Once you have these ready you will be able to optimize your app and marketing effectively.

2. Focus on First Time Experience:

The average app loses 77 percent of its users in the initial 3 days. You need to create a seamless user experience from the moment your users download the app. Guided tutorials and screen overlays for first-time users can ensure that the user fully understands the app functionality. This is especially effective in case of mobile games since they involve a lot of complex controls for the players.

You can also to optimize the signup process for the first-time users to reduce your churn rates. Offering signup through social media and Gmail can help users signup in your app without filling long and boring forms. You can also postpone the signup process to a later stage in the app to improvise the initial experience. E-commerce apps often take this approach where they let the users add items to the cart and sign up directly at the time of checkout.

Read More: 10 Key Metrics to Measure User Engagement on Mobile

3. Use Clever Messaging:

Push notifications and messaging are great ways to retain your app users. By offering timely offers and deals you can confirm that the user continues to return to your app. Marketers that implement targeted messaging experience 2 to 3 times higher retention rates compared to those that don't. These messages can include deals, discounts, freebies, activity notifications etc.

While opting for this strategy make sure that you don’t irritate your users with irrelevant content and keep the frequency of interruptions to a minimum. This will ensure that users don’t uninstall the app because of too many interruptions. You should also give your users the choice to turn the notifications on or off based on their preferences.

Read More: 7 Metrics to Gain Insights into the Profitability of Your App

4. Offer Rewards:

Rewards are a fantastic way to entice users to engage with your app and share their experiences. Rewards can be in the form of discounts, freebies and offers. Even loyalty points can be considered as rewards. Freemium games usually offer daily, weekly and monthly incentives to active players to keep them coming back to the game. E-commerce apps also use this technique where they provide points and coupons to users when they share their purchasing experience, bring in a customer through referral or when they make a big purchase.

The Starbucks App is one the best examples of using rewards to engage and retain app users. By centralizing the entire app towards the loyalty points it has made an effective loyalty loop where users keep purchasing more coffees to use their points. The feature of loyalty points is, in fact, the reason for the high market adoption of Starbucks app.

Read More: 10 Essentials for Successful Ecommerce Mobile App Development

5. Deliver Fresh Content:

You might have heard the popular phrase “Content is King”.  Well, it still holds true.  Fresh content like new articles, images, features or levels keep the users engaged with the app. It also encourages them to share your app and leave latest reviews on the app/play store. Your old users don’t get bored with the application while your user community feels that the app owners are engaged in app development giving it a more active impression.

Fresh content can also bring press mentions and help increase the value and relevance of earned media. If your updates are good and timely then your app will be frequently highlighted in news publications, blogs and social media. This increases the scope for both retention and acquisition of users.

6. Leverage Social Media:

Social media is an effective way to acquire, engage and retain app users. You can leverage social media in both paid and organic ways. To upsurge your social media shares you should increase the number of achievements in your app and offer more share buttons. Your presence across a variety of platforms is also an important to engage an enormous number of people.

If you choose to use social media using paid advertising then there are many ways to leverage it. Displaying your ad to non-active app users can help you get them back to your app. By engaging with inactive users, you can reignite their zest to use your app. The targeted campaigns for your user communities like the announcement of new features is also a promising idea. This ensures that your innovations reach to the maximum members of your most profitable user group.

Read More: 10 Steps to Successfully Market Mobile Apps

7. Ensure Great Performance:

Nobody likes a buggy app which shows an exception every time you try using it. What would you do if your mobile wallet loses all your money because of a bug or if you suddenly lose your game progress? Obviously, you will refrain from using such an app or game. It is crucial to test your app rigorously before the launch and after updates. You should also perform a security check to ensure that users don’t end up harming their device because of your app.

You can provide users with self-help guides and FAQs to keep them engaged in case of app issues. You can also provide an alternative way for the users to reach out so that petty issues in functioning don’t adversely affect your ratings and reviews.

Read More: 10 Biggest Security Risks in Mobile Apps

At NewGenApps, we specialize in creating engaging mobile apps that deliver great user experience and value. Since the inception of our company in 2008, we have completed a wide range of projects in mobile and web technologies and have successfully developed our expertise in this domain. Contact us today for a consultation or project.