Effective Strategies to Scale Mobile Customer Retention

Acquiring new users is only one half of the sales equation. The other half? Retention. Here are effective strategies that can help you craft an effective retention marketing campaign, writes Charles Richard, Business Analyst, TatvaSoft UK.

There has been a mantra Eat, Sleep, and Repeat for those who are not a businessperson whereas the life of an entrepreneur is all about Leads. Customer. Sales. Customers are the key to any successful business more often than not; they are the ones who script the growth story of the brand. So, you need to take care of your most significant assets for your brand because of mere negligence, or a wrong step can cause negative results. Unfortunately, businesses are so obsessed with lead generation and ignore customer retention to a great extent. It’s time to shift your focus back to the pavilion.

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Download

Are you among the ones who believe that a download is a win? It’s not so! For your app to succeed, you need your end users to keep coming back. Here you need to focus equivalent to your efforts on marketing campaigns. This surely leads to an effective engagment and conversion of your current users over the long term. Never take your loyal users for granted, apart from being provided for you they are the lifeblood of your app. In fact, one of the most profitable and most responsive audience to your campaigns. Besides, one should never forget that these are the ones who make the most of word of mouth technique and are more likely to bring in new users. So let us understand what exactly customer retention marketing is? 

The term Customer retention marketing encompasses of creating campaigns that merely focus on your existing user base. This includes everything from creating habitual active users to retaining old customers that definitely increases metrics like session length and frequency or purchase frequency and average order value. Tracking retention comprises of three stages:

1. Onboarding- This one caters all the first-time users. Here the new users experience your app’s worth. No brainer!
2. Building user habits- Stabilization will soon be witnessed as soon as your app becomes a regular part of new users’ lives.
3. Long-term retention- This is the time when you expect to see users sticking around weeks after weeks and months after months.
    

Importance of Retention Marketing

Average Order Value- According to facts, repeat purchases make up only 8% of customers but if we see as a whole they have the potential to contribute up to at least 40% of all sales.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) - The profitability of each user goes up. Hence, we see improved frequency.

New Acquisition Opportunities- Spending more time on new customer acquisition channels becomes viable these days. Also, your app grows exponentially- all thanks to higher LTVs per user.

Steps to Building Retention Marketing Strategy

Success has no shortcut. Improving user retention won’t offer you any results overnight. But continuous planning, precision, patience – and a lot of experimentation can definitely impact on your business’ bottom line.

Also Read: Build Your Customer Engagement Game Plan and Ace CX in 2019

#1 Determine how much to focus
 

Every business loves to focus on acquiring new users but what about the old users. A know-nothing knows nothing- I mean you won’t be able to retain users if you don’t have any. So, try getting more and more active users/ loyal customers. Time has come where we need to take a step forward towards retention marketing.

#2 User journey
 

To optimize retention at every stage, understanding how, where, and when potential and current users interact with your brand is essential. A user journey map is extremely crucial where different users discover your brand in different ways. And chances are there they may have different expectations for your app.

#3 Determine current retention
 

 Have you considered how many customers have left till date? And why are they leaving? Also, have you thought about who your happy customers are and why are they satisfied with your app? Fortunately, with the help of several analysis tools, one can find how many customers churn, and what impacts the most?

In addition to this, you can see what kind of factors play a significant role in increasing retention. The users who joined via a specific acquisition source stay more active on your app or do the ones who took advantage of a particular promotional campaign end up buying more often or spending more in the long run?

#4 Identify and solve friction points
 

Do you what is the most critical factor due to which users can keep coming back? It’s smooth user experience. Unfortunately, there are times when we cannot define what the major turn off is for end users in your app. Apps like Funnel analysis can assist in focusing on critical spots in your current app (in regards to registration or checkout process). In addition to this, you can see how many users start the process vs. how many finish it, and where they drop off. Several areas where a large number of users are leaving are being highlighted. This will guide you well in troubleshooting and get more users to complete the most important in-app actions.

For instance, Amazon’s one-click ordering facility. The company has shaved the purchase process down to a single step, removing as many barriers as possible to make it quick and easy for customers to get what they want.

#5 Create meaningful, personalized customer communications
 

Connecting with users on a personal level is what retention marketing is all about. It improves the entire end-to-end user experience, deepening their relationship with, and loyalty to, your brand. If you wish to create messaging and offers that are specific to a user’s need, in particular, it’s important to know regarding them.

With the help of sophisticated mobile marketing platforms, you can create detailed user profiles which is not related to simple demographics; it goes to technographics, psychographics, user intent, and more. Collecting and analyzing these tons and tons of user data helps you understanding your customers as a whole— from their age, gender, location, and interests to how they use your app.

Also Read: Customer Experience Examples to Inspire a Culture Shift in Your Organization

Final Verdict

The moment you figure out what actions make your app more valuable to users and nothing can stop you from creating an effective retention marketing campaign.