9 Mobile App Marketing Campaign Types to Boost App Retention

9 Mobile App Marketing Campaign Types to Boost App Retention

Human attention span is continuously decreasing and has explicitly reduced in 15 years. In 2000, it was 12 seconds, and today, it revolves around 8.25 seconds. In fact, it is even shorter than goldfish who can focus on a task for 9 seconds.

With such little attention span, it is now difficult for us to concentrate. Likewise, we cannot retain our focus on our task or while using an app. We download apps one after the other but either uninstall them or stop using them for being deleted later on because of little to no attention. To combat this situation, different mobile app marketing campaigns have been introduced to boost app retention.

Some of the interesting app stats are as follows

  • Mobile users click open 9 to 10 apps on average on a daily basis.
  • Around 30% of users delete the app because of excessive ads or notifications.
  • 88% of mobile time is spent on apps.

There are different techniques to improve retention with mobile marketing, which explains how to retain app users.

Best mobile app marketing campaigns to boost app retention

App retention is the number of users in percentage that come back to your app time and again. If they come back at an interval of day 1, day 7, and day 30, they increase your revenue.

App retention is essential as it allows you to engage with your users. Also, it informs you about their level of interest, loyalty, and concern. If your retention rate is anywhere between 35-60% on the first day, you have a great app that provides value to the users.

Maintaining app retention is important because once the user deletes an app, they’re not likely to download it again. The loyal users, on the other hand, are your potential customers to boost mobile marketing campaigns, which costs less than acquisition. These customers prove to be more profitable because of their app retention.

Below is the list of best mobile marketing campaigns to educate on how to improve retention.

1) Awareness Campaign

If users do not know your app exists, how are they even going to engage with it?

Here comes the app awareness campaign that helps your users get to know about your brand quality and the value it provides. This is called brand awareness and can be done through mobile ads.

Some of the marketers spread the word about their brand through different influencers or via affiliate marketing. All these campaigns are pretty useful and not very costly.

However, some apps provide instant solutions to their user’s problems and need little to spread awareness. For instance, two businesses can join hands together to get more users and increase profit. This is very common nowadays, and people find it very profitable for their businesses.  

2) Onboarding Campaign

Some of the apps are most likely to get uninstalled after their first use only. This mostly derives from the inability to introduce what the app offers for its users. An onboarding campaign can help improve retention as you give a complete tour to your users on their first visit and give them an idea of how the app works and what kind of value it provides to its users. It is even possible to create custom onboarding flows for different cohorts based on acquisition channels.

You can make your users used to your app and get them addicted to it. This way, a user gets in the habit of using it repeatedly; if not, they might feel something missing in life. It can generate good enough revenue for your business and can go a long way in making your app a success.

3) Transactional Campaign

After generating well enough brand awareness, it is time for another mobile app marketing campaign, i.e., a transactional campaign. It is possible to leverage these campaigns in different app verticals. For example, if you have an online shopping or food delivery app, you can send an email to your user confirming their order, and the estimated delivery time.

This is a perfect campaign to increase retention and improve user engagement. The user has developed enough trust over your brand that they have placed an order. Now all you have to do is make the transaction as transparent as possible to give your user a first-class experience.

Such a great user experience will push them to engage more often and build your app retention. This is one of the best app retention strategies to enhance engagement, interest, and loyalty. For instance, when you place an order at a shopping app, you get a confirmation email telling you about the ready-to-pick date and place.


4) Promotional Campaign

A promotional campaign is one of the best marketing campaigns for a mobile app. One has to make sure what are the interests of the users to send promotional ads. Knowing your users before offering any promotional campaigns can be a great strategy to avoid being deleted or ignored.

Once you are aware of their behavioral tendencies and interests, you can present custom offers that will definitely attract their attention. This also helps you reach your target user and generate profit by increasing app retention.

SMS marketing by Pizza Hut is one of the best promotional campaign examples. They generated great revenue by sending message ads to the users than TV or print media. In short, this strategy was 4.4X more beneficial and profitable with little to no cost.

However, you can always go beyond traditional methods of conducting a promotional campaign for the sake of retention. You can announce your offers and discounts through in-app stories to attract the audience while they are already using the app.

5) Referral Campaign

A referral campaign is proved to be one of the most successful app marketing campaigns as referring an app or brand increases brand awareness and the conversion rate. Friends, family, other brands, and influencers are all the perfect ways to boost app retention.

Becoming a good word of mouth and being referred by people around helps the app find new users. When a product, service, or app is recommended by someone closer or important, we tend to believe them and end up buying it.

According to research, around 83% of users feel like sharing their good experiencing or recommending something after using it. If utilized properly, it can become the best mobile marketing campaign type to boost retention.

6) Win-back Campaign

Winning new customers can be pretty tough; therefore, retaining an old one is the right choice to boost retention. Here comes the role of the win-back campaign where you use interesting and custom strategies to solve your lost user complaints.

It’s better to know why they left in the first place and then strategizing accordingly. You do not have to blindly call them back and get ignored on every try. Funnels allow you to look through all the features your users operate and find interesting or useless details to later customize your call to win them back.

Sending effective emails that are personalized can help you win your customers back. You can also bring personalized changes to their user experience by improving app features that do not interest your lost users anymore.

7) Upsell Campaign

There are also some free users who find your app effective. You have a good opportunity to use upsell campaign as it allows you to reach these users and ask them to update their app or subscription models. Since they are your loyal customers and are receiving value from the app on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, you can educate them on upgrading and subscribing models.

Also, make sure not to send the requests to your new users as they might not be fully accustomed to your app on their first use, eventually deleting or uninstalling it.

Upselling can be a great way to monetize your app and generate money from your regular users.

8) General Updates Campaign

Among the different types of mobile advertising campaigns is the general updates campaign. It allows you to connect and engage with your users on every update or change in your app. This engagement helps you boost app retention and promote your app.

This campaign varies depending upon the industry you are working in.

But the thing is, this type of campaign works well for any industry whatsoever as there are always minor changes or updates needed for improvement. Likewise, most of the apps use dynamic content that is user intended and always needs updating for customer retention.

Different food apps provide general updates on the addition of new deals or food items to their menu.

9) Feedback Campaign

Feedback campaigns always have and will continue to add to mobile marketing campaign types to boost app retention. This feedback comes from your regular users, as they can be a better judge when it comes to reviewing your app. You can do different surveys or campaigns to get an idea of where your app is lacking.

Moreover, your consumers can definitely add to the research by giving ratings to the app and different suggestions to improve app quality and hence its retention.

Final Thoughts

To sum it up, these are the nine best mobile campaigns that are the perfect guide on how to retain users on the app. Using one or two campaigns won’t do the job, so use all the campaign types that suit your app retention strategy and help users find value from it. This campaign not only helps you generate revenue but also benefits the users in finding some value, so build a two-way relationship.

Lastly, with little knowledge and experience, you can identify which marketing campaigns work best for your app and stick to them until you get the desired results.

If you are struggling with increasing your app’s retention rate, you may also find this article useful: Why Is Your User Retention Rate So Low?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deniz Tasyürek

Content & Brand Marketing Strategist at Storyly. Writes about mobile user behavior, user engagement, and retention. A genuine Potterhead. She also loves succulents, cats, and aerial yoga.

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