Mobile apps matter, even when they aren't a company's major channel to their users. Mobile apps' functionality is increasing. They are taking on a greater importance in the connection between many businesses and their target audiences.
To maximize the investment in mobile apps, app marketers need to proactively implement marketing-related features that can impact their app's performance.
In this post, I will discuss 5 must-have marketing features for any marketer and the common tricks that make them work even better (I've been researching these as part of my job at insert.io). I can't promise each and every one will change the app's use or value, but I do believe these are features that must be experimented with. Features work differently for different apps, but there are some commonalities and best practices we can all learn from. The features below are just examples of many such creative ideas. They may be proven useful on your app's specific audience, as well, but you'll know that only through experimentation. There is no way around experimenting. The upside is that there is a huge reward to finding the winning formula.
App Store Rating
How do you ensure a continuously high rating in Apple's App Store and Google Play?
You need to find a way to identify your "good" users, the ones who will provide a high rating. You then need to ask them to rate the app after they've had a sense of achievement in the app.
It all sounds pretty obvious till you realize that finding the good users and the right timing to pop the app rating question is a challenge, and will require some playing around.
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One way is to target only your top performing or heavy users and ask them for a review, ignoring the others, on the assumption that they like the app best.
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Alternatively, you can ask all users for feedback, but route only those who've provided a high score to the store. For example: "Please take a moment to help us improve... how would you rate our app from 1 to 5?". If a user rated the app '5', you can display another message "Thank you for your feedback, would you mind sharing it with others by rating us in the store?". For users that gave the app a low score (1-3), it would be wise to display another question asking what caused the low rating, with several answers covering different aspects of your app. This way you benefit twice - high store rating, and invaluable feedback.
Optimized Permission Request (iOS)
In many apps, having the right permissions is crucial to the user experience (for example, providing a video mashup app with access to the camera or photo library). In other apps, permissions aren't crucial to the user, but are crucial to the marketer for user retention (for example, enabling the marketer to send push messages to dormant users inviting them to re-engage with the app).
In iOS, you have only one chance to get the user's consent for permission access. If the user refused the permission access, most chances are that she'll never bother changing these settings later on. To deal with this, some best practices have emerged:
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The first rule of permission handling is to do it at the time when the app really needs the permission to work, and not earlier. For example, if the app needs access to your contacts to share a creation of yours, ask the user for permission at the time she taps on the 'Share' button.
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The second rule is to ask the user for permissions when she's happy. At this point in time, the user understands the app's benefit, and is more likely to agree to the permission request.
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But this is not enough. What if you caught the user at the wrong moment and she doesn't want to make the decision at this time? You want to leave the door open so the user can grant permission later. This is where the third rule comes in, using a 2-step flow: first ask the user if it's a good time for her to provide the permission, and explain the benefit. If she agrees, you open the OS's permission dialog. If she selects "Not now", you can try your luck later with the same permission request.
Up until now permission handling was an iOS only issue. When installing an Android app, the user is notified of all permissions the app is about to grant itself, but has no control over granting a specific permission. However this policy is said to be changed when Android M launches: an app will have to ask the user for individual permissions at the first time it needs a resource. As opposed to iOS, the permissions dialog can appear twice and only on the second time the user can mark "Never ask again". This makes the future Android permission flow a bit more friendly to app owners, but it will still require similar optimizations as in iOS.
Increase Monetization
You want to find creative ways to push users down the funnel and make them complete a transaction, be it a purchase, adding to cart, sharing the app or anything else which serves your monetization goals. On the other hand, you don't want to annoy users. What is the right balance? Here are some suggestions:
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Aside from the obvious coupons and promotions, it can be very useful to think about how to identify a purchase intent: users who repeatedly return to the same product page, or search for the same category, but do not go forward with the purchase flow.
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Then, establish heuristics, and test them. Remind the user they can get free shipping, a discount, or any other benefit which exists in your app at that time. Display a message asking the user if he needs help or have a support person call her. Testing these messages and their timing is key for finding the best way, which would usually be different for different user types (users who already made a purchase, users who never made a purchase etc).
Onboarding
Everyone knows that a good first experience in the app is a must for future app usage. But what is the right way to introduce your app features? Using onboarding wizard-like screens is common, but some users don't read these introductory screens and some are actually annoyed by them.
A nice contextual onboarding option is to add tooltips to the first app screen (or any other screen), highlighting the main options. The tooltips can be timed so that first you highlight the most important call-to-action, and then move to the second one, etc. The number, timing, visualization, and content of the tooltips can all be experimented with to find the best results.
Introducing a New (or "Starved") App Functionality
What is the best way to have users try out new functionality in your app, or a "starved" functionality which is rarely used? How can you tell whether the fact that the feature isn't used is due to low user awareness, or simply due to the fact that the feature isn't an attractive one?
What I suggest is targeting app users who use the app regularly, but have never reached the specific screen or used the specific feature. These users will get a personalized message which describes the functionality and enables them to jump directly to the relevant app screen. The message can include an image or video to visualize the functionality, so that even if the user decides not to jump there at that moment, she already got most of the info.
The message should appear at app launch, or at an end of a flow, so as not to disturb the user with their initial intent.
With these types of features, you can educate your users about their options in the app, motivate them to finish an important transaction, have them provide high store ratings & agree to permission requests. A/B testing the content, frequency, placement and timing of each of the features and experimenting among the different features will help you find the best configuration for your users, while keeping them happy.