If you’re frustrated that mobile app users stop using your app after 24 hours, just know you’re not alone. Only 25% of those who download your app may use it longer than a day.

Thankfully there are ways you can entice users to continue using your app, long after that critical 24-hour time-period has passed. And it doesn’t take much to make a big difference. If you simply increase your user retention rate by 10%, the value of your company can increase by as much as 30%

Your First-Party Data

Data privacy changed forever with Europe’s GDPR, the USA’s CCPA, and many other regulations enacted by countries around the world. The limits on what can be done with customer data is becoming stricter.

On top of customer data restrictions is the blocking of third-party cookies within Firefox, Safari, and soon Google Chrome (goodbye pixel tracking). Apple is restricting IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) on iOS. This identifier is typically used for mobile advertising, and explicit consent within iOS will soon allow app users to control what information they share. 

Brands may soon lose the option to leverage third-party data to better serve and understand customers while driving business outcomes. Don’t worry though, you can use your first-party data to connect with app users, build personalized customer journeys, and deliver the best mobile experience.  

What is first-party data? It’s the information customers hand over to you and comes from various touchpoints you have established along your customer’s journey, both online and offline. You will gain considerably richer, more detailed, and more accurate information about your customers by using your first-party data.

Data Silos

Marketing professionals use anywhere from 6–10 different martech tools every day, resulting in multiple data silos and disconnected data. 

All this siloed data makes it difficult to understand the journey of each customer, and marketing teams often rely on other internal teams (such as IT) to organize this information in a way that’s useful for creating personalized journeys and other marketing campaigns. This reliance on other teams can delay the launch of a campaign, including post-campaign adjustments.

You can easily overcome the data silo barrier and empower your team to use your customer data for marketing campaigns by connecting all of it through a customer engagement platform (CEP)

With this platform, you’ll be able to collect and use your customers’ first-party data such as shopping behavior, product affinity, loyalty status, and much more, to craft personalized journeys for each and every mobile app user.

A Unified Experience

The majority of consumers (73% to be exact) use multiple channels to complete their purchase. It’s essential that your team tailors 1:1 messages across all channels for each specific customers, including their in-store experiences. 

For example, if you’re a frequent customer at a store, you’re probably known on a first-name basis, but this same interaction doesn’t always occur online with that same retailer (but it should). Online and offline/in-store interactions should be the same. As the in-store experience is unique, and tailored specifically to that customer, so too must the interaction be online. 

Since “32% of customers will leave a brand after a single bad experience,” it’s more important than ever to connect with consumers during their purchasing journey, and provide a personalized experience. Unifying your marketing across all channels is not just what marketers want, but also what customers desire.

Use More Than Mobile

Once you acquire a new mobile app user, you’ll want to collect their information ASAP so you can connect with them at any point during their interactions with your brand. No matter whether you receive their email or their phone number, you want to be certain that you have explicit permission to interact with them. Oh, and don’t forget to ask permission to send push messages.

Once you’ve collected this information, you can then ask deeper questions to provide a more personalized experience.  

Babbel, a Berlin-based language-learning app, asks new mobile app users for their email, and then immediately starts with customized questions to discover more about the language the user wishes to learn and how much time they’re willing to commit each day.

babbel mobile identifier collection

Babbel uses this information, and the user’s interactions within the app, to connect across multiple channels to further encourage them to continue toward the goal they set.

babbel question regarding language on mobile - 1
babbel question regarding language on mobile - 2

With their investment in mobile and personalized mobile marketing, Babbel grew 200% in March and April of 2020. The company has experienced 100% growth in the US (their biggest market up to now) during 2020.

Final Thoughts

Placing all your data in one location makes it easier for your team to create unique and personalized experiences for mobile app users. And as third-party cookies are being eliminated, it’s vital that all the first-party data you collect can be used to create better, more personal experiences for users across multiple channels. 

As more mobile app users download your app, be sure to collect their identifier (email or SMS) in order to connect with them across more than just mobile… so long as you have their permission. 

Mobile is truly unique to each and every person, so make the experience with your app truly exceptional and you shouldn’t have to worry about users leaving your app.

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