#1 Secret Top-Performing Apps Know About Engagement
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Jennie Lewis Sr Manager, Customer Insights
Getting a mobile app download is the beginning of the customer journey, not the destination. Why? The relationship doesn’t begin until the customer activates their account and reveals their preferences. While customers may see enough potential in the app’s usefulness to activate it, that doesn’t guarantee they’ll return. Airship’s research found that the top reasons customers delete an app include too many interruptive in-app ads (30%), expectations of the app not met (25%), confusing, broken or slow experiences (19%), too many notifications or in-app messages (18%) and replaced with a better app (18%). The antidote for customers abandoning or deleting the app is high-quality engagement and better experiences.
The biggest secret behind top performing apps’ engagement is their ability to instill a habit. That’s what brands must focus on with their mobile app customers — keep them coming back because of the usefulness, convenience and, with any luck, sheer delightfulness of the app experience.
What constitutes a “habit” varies by app monetization type and category — checking your stock portfolio has a different rhythm from ordering fast food — but it comes down to the number and length of visits during a defined period.
Our Engagement Benchmarks report offers performance benchmarks across app store categories so you can understand how your mobile app’s performance stacks up against the competition’s.
To encourage repeat high-value actions, brands must provide continuous value to the customer. Continuous value depends on both the usefulness and convenience provided by the app and the app’s ability to convey that value to each customer personally. Brands must reiterate their value proposition with the right messaging, content and experiences to the right audiences at the right time. That requires targeting. Targeted interactions produce greater value that tends to be both immediate and recurring.
Ready to get your customers to use your app habitually? Read our Engagement Benchmarks report, and learn three strategies for improving your app engagement based on the common best practices of high performers.
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