App marketers can benefit greatly from implementing in-app stories that connect with users in a myriad of ways. In-app stories were particularly helpful for many apps leading up to and during Black Friday. In an effort to increase engagement, attract new customers, and generally boost sales and app installs, many marketers made use of in-app stories in a variety of creative ways.
How Our Clients Used In-App Stories in Their Black Friday Campaigns
We were amazed to see how creative our clients got with in-app stories on their apps, providing their users with unique experiences that worked to maximize engagement and sales. The following are some of the story experiences that our clients developed using Storyly’s platform.
New Look
UK-based fashion brand, New Look, saw success in the days leading up to Black Friday with the help of in-app stories.
One particularly helpful story feature New Look implemented was countdowns. The brand created video stories with countdowns to announce their campaigns. Countdowns are great for creating a fear of missing out (FOMO), and New Look definitely found this to be the case. Using these countdowns, New Look saw a 100% DoD uplift in clicks, which shows how effective this feature is on its own.
New Look prepared a variety of stories for different user preferences, which effectively targeted those stories at different audience segments. For example, the app launched “Men’s offer,” “Women’s offer,” and other daily deals.
DeFacto
One of the leading fashion companies in Turkey, DeFacto did something truly innovative with their in-app stories around Black Friday, which may inspire many other eCommerce apps as the holiday season progresses.
Specifically, DeFacto marketers designed a four-hour campaign called “Acele Et” (Hurry Up). This involved positioning announcement stories in the various sections of the app using Storyly instances. The campaign launched from 20:00 to 24:00 for multiple user groups in different instances. With the help of the stories’ scheduling mechanism, the campaign went live at the same time for this four-hour window.
While countdowns enhanced the sense of urgency for their campaign, swipe-up features encouraged people to discover the many products for sale. DeFacto aimed to use the Countdown feature to generate FOMO among customers, and the results confirmed that their efforts were a success. The Acele Et campaign attracted 37,541 impressions, 26,008 clicks, and an average CTR of 69% during those four hours alone. Based on these numbers, many other eCommerce apps are likely to experience the same success with these extremely limited but enticing campaigns.
Testbook
Testbook is an India-based exam preparation app providing users with lessons, live coaching, free mock tests, PDF notes, and so on.
It is more than necessary to ensure an interactive learning environment for EdTech apps. This is why the Testbook marketers have been utilizing interactive stickers to deliver pop quizzes and quick exercises to their users. They went one step further during Black Friday and decided to reward users who complete the quizzes with a chance to get a Golden Ticket.
The reward is always a good idea to motivate learners to complete their goals. This smart move paid off, increasing response rates of interactive stories up to 60%.
Since the Testbook marketers used tracking id in these Black Friday stories, they could reward the right users with a Golden Ticket.
Mobills
Mobills is an expense tracker app that helps people with expense management, budget planning, and other aspects of financial management. The company behind the app is based in Fortaleza – Ceará, Brazil, with international users located all across the globe.
During the Black Friday period, Mobills created Black Friday-themed in-app stories for three ends:
1. The first story promoted the app’s premium version to users of the free version, offering them a 40% discount + R$10 on a Mobills subscription.
2. The second story group approached Black Friday from a financial standpoint, with tips & tricks stories covering multiple topics, including how to control bank accounts and credit cards, along with tips for planning financially ahead of Black Friday. This feature encouraged more people to engage with the app’s personalized financial planning services by bringing consistent value to users.
3. Mobills offered their premium members the ability to make Black Friday shopping payments in partner stores using their app. In return, users could earn points referred to as Pontos. Each dollar spent translates to one Ponto MOB, which users can then exchange for money.
With the social share feature activated, Mobills could boost Black Friday campaign’s virality. People could share their experiences or certain tips and tricks with ease, which helped maximize the campaign’s reach.
How In-App Stories Can Help You Succeed This Holiday Season
These are simply some of the many examples of successful in-app stories that you can incorporate into your mobile marketing strategies during the holidays. With the help of a variety of story instances and groups, you can achieve the same kind of success as you boost app engagement, attract new users, and increase sales in the holidays ahead, including Christmas, Hannukah, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day.
If you’re curious to know what all you can achieve with in-app stories, the following are some key features you’ll be able to use with Storyly.
Personalized Stories
Personalization is now more important than ever, which is why app marketers must do what they can to provide audiences with uniquely personal experiences. Today, 66% of customers expect brands to understand their needs, and this goes for mobile apps.
Using personalized stories, you can provide fully personalized customer experiences that feature relevant offerings and messages based on user preferences and past purchases. This is invaluable during the holiday season if you want to push personalized deals and offers that drive purchases. In the process, you’ll show that you truly care about your audiences and understand what they want and need.
Interactive Elements
If your goal is to drive more app engagement over the holidays, interactive story components can make it feel as though your app is directly communicating with users. You can include simple buttons and swipe-ups that move users along with ease, polls and questions that request user input for the purposes of collecting data, enable users to rate a certain feature, and much more.
Countdowns
Whether for Black Friday or other sales, countdowns are a great way to add a sense of urgency to your app experience. You can create countdowns leading up to new offers, events, and other occasions that warrant the generation of FOMO among audiences to drive engagement. Countdowns can notify users ahead of an event, and you can use them to count down to the end of an event.
Optimal Targeting
To effectively reach audiences, you also must launch highly targeted marketing campaigns. Storyly enables you to easily segment audiences and launch relevant content for each based on their unique journey and activity. This will help effectively reach people at every point of the sales funnel, carrying them from the top to the bottom and keeping them engaged with your app experience.
Using Storyly stories, you can label each story based on user segments and display content based on certain demographic and behavioral segments. At the same time, you won’t need to shape your user data at any point.
Connect With Audiences Using Storyly
As the many examples we’ve mentioned have shown, there are plenty of ways to develop unique story experiences that appeal to your audiences and encourage them to engage with you over the holidays. You can implement stories at every point throughout the holidays and into the next year, with interactive and personalized experiences that are likely to resonate with new and existing users. Subsequently, you’ll be able to increase conversions and engagement, along with retention and sales. Ultimately, stories will help supplement the rest of your mobile marketing efforts and help further optimize ROI.
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