05 Methods For Increasing App Engagement & User Retention

With so many apps available for download, app engagement and user retention have become a major concern. However, convincing consumers to use your app and remain actively involved with it may be challenging, but it is critical.

It is very obvious that there is no use in developing a feature-rich mobile application if no one uses it. So, if your company has an app and you've realized that your existing retention strategies aren't working or that customers are ditching your app, it's time to act...!

App retention and app engagement are the two indicators that help in giving true insights into your app’s success. It's simple to comprehend that low app retention & engagement equates to failure and alternatively high app retention & engagement equates to success.

Let us get a little deep into the concept and understand app engagement and user retention plus how you can increase them

What is mobile app user engagement?

Mobile app engagement is a metric of how your visitors interact with your application overall or with specific elements within your app. You could make better marketing plans by gathering analytics about how people engage with your app.

Time spent on the application, actions performed, and daily/monthly/weekly app installs & uninstalls are all examples of engagement metrics.

Companies may improve their Return and build stronger relationships with their consumers by tracking user engagement. Individual user behavior data is an important aspect of the personalization and automation workflow. App engagement motivates new users to return to the application by attempting to connect with customers at each stage of their app experience.

What is mobile app user retention?

Simply said, mobile app retention means maintaining your user base as clients. The amount of people that download & stay to use your application over time is referred to as the mobile app retention rate. High download rates are a good start, but if you witness an elevated retention rate it indicates that you are on the right track. Admittedly, that is the only way to achieve true progress.

Client retention is becoming as crucial as customer acquisition in the mobile app business.

Below mentioned figures provide a striking picture:

It is vital to remember that based on the nature and structure of the app each business will have its own interpretation of retention and engagement. These indicators, when combined, indicate an app's "persistence" — how involved and committed users are to a certain app.

For data-driven marketing companies, user retention must be the guiding principle. According to Gartner, only 20% of your current consumers will account for 80% of your future income. Your profitability rises by 1% for every user you maintain.

In fact, boosting user retention by only 5% can raise earnings ranging from 25% to 95%. While most firms prioritize product development, building a great client service crew is yet another priority.

Your company will drive in more engaged and committed app users from increased retention and engagement. The below listed 5 tactics will help to increase your app retention and engagement and also assist organizations in realizing the intended benefits and ROI from their investments in mobile app development.

5 Tactics For Increasing App Engagement & User Retention

Customize your mobile app landing page

To increase engagement rates, tailor your in-app message to newbies using data obtained during the login process. As per Braze, tailored messages to app users enhance conversions by 27% relative to generic communications.

Welcome pages represent a key milestone in your user's journey. Your requirements are met as soon as they navigate from the post-click landing page to the product.

Landing pages serve two major functions: They embrace new visitors and users and create expectations on what is going to come. The next to be created is their “AHHAAH” moment as rapidly as possible through their first onboarding. There are various methods for onboarding new users, but phase one should be your welcome/landing page.

Here are some ideas for making user acquisition via onboarding easier:

First impressions of the user are extremely crucial, especially in the world of tech. Users are more likely to ditch your app if it is too complex to operate and does not provide value as claimed. That is why streamlining the landing page onboarding process is critical for app success. You can streamline your interface by providing personalization choices, demonstrating your value instantly, and motivating conversion. You can achieve the real goal for every firm by telling your consumers why your software is the finest and letting them customize their experience to meet their needs.

Segment your audience

User/Audience segmentation is essentially the act of breaking individuals into relevant and manageable segments – in order to build and customize items/solutions, as well as communication efforts, to please the targeted segment or group.

Audience segmentation means how distinct groups of consumers have different requirements and traits. Segmentation is to determine how much attention, understanding, and action they take on different communications. By segregating the audience, a company may have a better knowledge of who to target and how to target.

One of the most common errors that marketers make is presuming that their whole consumer profile is the same. You may segregate your audience based on their geography, purchasing patterns, time spent on the application, or even how long they've had your app installed on their smartphone. Then, you may approach those various groups to achieve the desired results.

Push notifications

As per Airship, if the app users receive one or more push alerts within the first 90 days, the retention rate jumps by 190 percent. Obviously, this does not imply that you should flood users with messages on irrelevant subjects, since this might have the reverse effect and will increase uninstallation rates. The objective of push notification should be to create awareness in the minds of the content that is useful to them.

Consider it this way. It's pleasant to walk into a neighborhood coffee house and be greeted by your name by a barista who remembers your favorite drink. Isn't it? Well, that’s the power of personalization. It helps smartphone app users feel valued and increases conversions and sales. Leverage push notifications to customize the customer experience by providing relevant content and advantages depending on personal data and user activity.

You should take a cue from Netflix when it finally comes to push alerts. It does not bombard you with useless stuff. Instead, it makes you think about the story arc and films you've been intending to see. That is precisely how you must utilize push notifications to boost user engagement & retention.

So, how can push notifications provide the intended outcomes? Follow these guidelines:

This seems apparent, but so many marketers overlook it. Several push notification systems state that volume of alerts is essential for increasing engagement. However, if you do not include personalization and appropriateness in your push notification approach, this will swiftly backfire.

Tip- Only transmit push alerts when it is necessary- If you glance at your smartphone screen right now, you'll undoubtedly notice a long list of unchecked alerts. Rarely swiped and barely read. If you want to captivate your smartphone app users, you must first generate a positive opinion of your application in their thoughts.

Mobile app personalization

One of the most crucial parts of an engaging application is mobile personalization. Personalization enables the user to have a more distinctive and meaningful interaction. The more closely the experience matches a user's wants and tastes, the more inclined they are to utilize the program again.

Let’s first try to understand the difference between customization and personalization with an instance. When you go to a pizza parlor and order a veg paradise pizza with olives on a topping, this is customization. On the other hand, when you walk into a pizza parlor, and it immediately knows what sort of pizza you want and creates it for you despite your asking, that's called personalization.

In that way, we can argue that personalization should be the next progressive stage after customization, and mobile app professionals have also shifted significantly towards personalization.

Airbnb, for instance, tracks users' journeys, travel interests, and plans and uses that data to provide the most personalized service possible through.

We may split personalization into two categories:

Personalization in the app: Personalization within the app is accomplished via elements such as pop-ups or conversation boxes, searching suggestions depending on geography or interests, coupons, and special offers.

Personalization outside the app: Push notifications may be used to customize apps from the outside.

Rewards & Incentives

Offering users a reason to use your app may take you a long mile toward increasing retention & engagement. Mobile-specific incentives, specialized content access, vouchers, special discounts, and other offerings will aid in acquisition and engagement.

People enjoy being rewarded. While selecting an online shop, 69 percent of them look for incentive schemes for loyal customers.

Various incentives or discounts lead people to assume they have gotten a fantastic deal & save money on items or services they would have purchased anyhow. Furthermore, it is an excellent technique to persuade people to select you over your rivals.

Incentives pique consumers' interests and engage them with your application. There are several instances in the mobile application industry of brands using such incentive programs to boost mobile app engagement. Starbucks, Uber, Amazon, and Airbnb are the best examples of them.

The nature of your smartphone app will determine the structure of your incentive programs. For instance, if you have an e-commerce app that monetizes through in-app purchases, you may provide limited period offers to your devoted customers. You can also incentivize your users for making referrals

Things to remember

1. Nothing will help until you dedicatedly focus on learning what performs better for your audience. Every application is unique, with unique app interaction KPIs.

Understanding your interaction statistics is critical to developing a successful app engagement strategy. You can get push notifications analytics for your app. They provide you with vital information about your users. If you want to learn how to increase application customer engagement, you must first grasp mobile app analytics.

The response from your push notification campaigns assists you in determining what motivates your mobile consumers.

I'm not merely referring to your users' age, time of day, gender, and device kind, though all might be useful. I'm referring to determining the micro-moments your visitors are most willing to resonate using your app.

2. You must understand the importance of content. The very first step is to consider the content. Simply because you create a feature-rich app it doesn't guarantee your app visitors will be easily engaged with push alerts that you will send.

You must consider yourself as an app user and think like that. What are mobile app users doing? What are you most interested in as an application user? Which applications on your smartphone are the best at this? If you really can think like a user then you’ll continue to get it online with your application engagement plan.

This entails precisely identifying the context in which your app audience expects you to communicate with them. This may necessitate in-app analytics and reviews. You don't need to worry about this - Swipecart AI-based features provide you with all the in-app analytics for better app insights.

For instance, if you have an e-commerce app, would you consider sending them updates when they are at the bank. Obviously not, otherwise, they will put restrictions on your alerts service. All over the point to consider is the right notification, with the right content at the right time.

Wrapping Up

In a word, it all comes down to providing an experience. You should now have a good idea of how to increase app interaction. But, before you become influenced by application toppers, launch your app and make sure it is of great quality since no tricks will help you if your mobile application is laggy and buggy. So, build an application that is worth engaging with. Make it social media friendly, regardless of the goal, and improve it frequently depending on customers' feedback.

Customers demand a customized and smooth experience with their favorite applications, and by implementing these tactics, you can offer your customers exactly what they want while also getting what you want: their engagement, retention, and business.