Popular Sites and Now Mobile Apps – Loyal Interaction

Developing successful mobile applications of all kinds has been the rage for over a year now. Let’s talk for a moment about what happens after you’ve offered that app to all your loyal brand followers and your up-and-coming brand converts!

Website visitor retention is more important than ever every year. There may be millions of users out there who might be potential future customers, but the successful marketer today knows that the one truly smart investment is in keeping already existing customers happy, consistently engaged and hopefully recurring evangelists for your brand…well, in a perfect world

How engaged are your customers? Are they really loyal to your brand? Have you made every possible effort to offer services that are preferred by your customers? …Special services and intriguing upgrade options will keep them coming back for more – what have you offered?

This is a now elemental area of every successful marketing campaign or brand engagement project. Consider how you might wish your customers to utilize your mobile site and app. Do you want them to access your mobile site or app daily to get updates on news, information or maybe to view fresh content offerings? Will you focus on ease of use that will help encourage them to connect with other aspects of your site and product offers? Here are some stats that you should consider in order to optimize customer engagement and loyalty:

• VISITOR FREQUENCY – You must know the ratio of visits to actual users over a period of time. Check this weekly, monthly and quarterly. This statistical metric will assist you to know how frequently your mobile site or apps are being used – and this is essential to begin to understand your overall customer loyalty.
• DEPTH – How deep do your visitors go into your site? Do they bounce or just look at one page and then move on? You must track the number of screens viewed by the average visitor, potential customer really, and then compare this figure to the total number of visits. This will be instrumental in helping you to easily determine the level of engagement your site inspires in your visitors.
• BOUNCE – This statistic can be a hard one to look at, but it is vitally important just the same. Having a ratio of the single view visits to the total number of visits is important because it shows you just how many potential customers are launching the app and then closing it right away again, versus how many are launching it and then actually using it.
• DURATION – You need to know how much time your users are spending on your mobile site or using your mobile app. Again, this will show the level of engagement your visitors have with your properties.

What is a Conversion?

Another metric that you need to stay on top of is your conversion ratio. You must establish the actions you want your customers to take when they use your app and then measure how many of them have “converted” – in other words, done exactly what you desired them to do. A conversion can be any action that you want it to be, such as the purchase of a product, a membership, a registration for a promotional campaign or even the viewing of a gallery or video promotion. Measuring the level of engagement in this area is extremely important if you truly want to measure the success of your mobile marketing campaign. This is true of any mobile property – websites, apps or other SMS promotional campaigns.

To measure the success rate of your mobile project, you must identify all the different possibilities for your app to help you to achieve your goals. By strategically tracking and applying the measurement to individual customers who have completed the activities required for conversion, you will be able to see the true value of your project. Think about the various demographic characteristics of your target audience and how you might reach them through your mobile site, app or SMS promotion. If you maintain a strict focus on your target market, you will be able to easily identify the critical elements of success. Also, think about the activities you want to make available for your customers, how they will generate additional revenue, save you costs or help to brand your business in some way, shape or form – also priceless.

Retaining Customers and Encouraging Usage

If you own a smartphone, then you understand how it’s possible for people to download dozens of apps that they ultimately never use! Retaining your customers and encouraging them to use your apps is one of the most important aspects of a successful mobile property marketing campaign. You want to offer features that will be useful and relevant to your users. The best place to start is to think about how your customers will use your app. If your app is highly useful, they will use it more often and will keep coming back on a daily or weekly basis. Here are some things to think about that will help you to encourage use, and retain active customers:

• BE STICKY – We’ve all studied the development of sticky websites for year – you have likely been successful if you are ready this, or will – and the sticky concept is no different when it comes to mobile property development. You need to find unique ways to keep your app at the forefront of your customers’ minds and you need to stay on top of innovation and development and keep it fresh! You can’t stay comfortably sticky forever – there’s always a newer, bigger and better app being launched. Take measures to make certain you remind your customers that your app exists, keep them informed about the present and upcoming features using the app provides, keep it easily available and stay ahead of your competitors by launching the newer, bigger and better app yourself!
• FEEDBACK – You need to keenly aware of what your customers think, and feedback is an essential part of gaining insight into the true customer-experience. Make certain you offer opportunities for your customers to give you feedback, either a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down metric or an option to send you a paragraph or two in their own words. Utilize Web forms wherever you can and watch for an upcoming blog on that subject. You can do this via your online app store showcase or via your main or mobile websites – just remain unique and creative in how you accomplish it and build a following.
• DISTRIBUTION – You may not be surprised to know you can’t just count on the expectation that your customers will find you via the online app store. You must make your app readily available and distribute your app freely to as many markets and in as many opportunistic ways as possible. Market your app via traditional websites, mobile websites, offline print marketing – anything you think will get new customers to download and use your app.

You’ve all learned over the years how to successfully market your websites, now apply everything you’ve learned about site marketing to your app marketing efforts!