While you probably have heard a lot about the brands including Mothercare to Walmart and have been hearing the latest talk of the town including “retail apps” I’m sure what you’re thinking to yourself right now is, “Can people stop talking about retail apps already?!”
Why Mobile Marketing is Important for Retail Apps
However, I apologize, but we cannot. The reason being, as fast as the world is changing, the mobile is becoming a vital part of our lives. E-commerce is getting popular; it is a lot of more influential and under its effect, people make a lot of purchases online, or might walk into your store and make purchases there offline. It is also to be known that about 30% of all the e-commerce of the year 2016 has been done through mobile commerce, meaning through retail apps.
Besides, it requires a lot less of input (investment) and has a lot more of output (profit) and that exactly, is why retail apps in mobile phones are so important in this era.
Also, it is to be brought into notice that the marketers are not considering this a real form of profit. According to a report in 2015 in the UK, it has been proved that the retailers who are not using mobile strategies are at a loss of about 6.6 billion a year!
Following are the stats of how there has been a tremendous increase in usage of retail apps over the years.
Furthermore, engagement of your app needs to be strong with those who intend to use it. When someone downloads their apps, it is a 90% guarantee that they will only be using 3 of the apps, and through strong communication of your app and keeping the customer engaged, you need to make sure your app is in the top 3 apps that a person uses on weekly bases. How must you do that? I’ll explain to you just now.
5 Tips to Increase Engagement of Your Retail App
Create Smart Onboarding Campaigns
Firstly, we talk about smart onboarding campaigns. It includes having a guideline for the new customers who are using your site, so it is easier for them to access it without any problems. And keep in mind to also have a guide for any application updates. In this way, the old customers can make use of the guide and familiarize themselves with the new update to operate the app properly, and develop a good understanding of it.
To be more effective, you must have a user-friendly app for others to understand easily, or else it will be hectic for a customer to understand the operation of the app. And due to the problems created, he won’t have a reason to return to your app to use it.
Remarketing
Secondly, remarketing is something you must invest in no matter what. It is also known as retargeting, when your customer logs out of the app while having a picture of a product he wants to buy in his mind, and sees it online almost everywhere he surfs. It struggles with his psyche, and the more “must have” it makes the product, eventually leading the customer to buy it due to the repeated appearances of such a commendable product.
Location Based Mobile Marketing
Moreover, you must have a firm hold over location-based marketing, the reason being a customer will most definitely buy anything which is more localized to his area as it easy for him to reach towards the product, rather than rooting for a product which is based in a whole different continent. Besides, localized based marketing means personalization for the customer. Also, 42% customers buy products on retail apps after visiting a store, because the prices are lower.
Personalized Push Notifications
Not to forget, personalized push notifications make quite an impact on your customers. It’s an effective strategy to keep your customer’s attention towards your application. Like putting forth a warm welcome when someone downloads your app and uses it!
Furthermore, to keep your customer engaged, you can have personalized push notifications as “Deals of the Day!”. After viewing this, a customer is sure to go through the deal and avail any discounts he likes. Or better yet, if push notifications are enabled in your app, then 65% customers are bound to return to your app within 30 days!
Ad Formats to Increase Engagement
Lastly, the marketers need to focus on changing their techniques of engaging customers by using different formats for app ads as well. These are two kinds:
- In-app ads, which target making banners or having a 5-second ad before playing any video on the retail app, it might be irritating for customers in the start, but let’s admit the fact that it crosses their sight for once, and it imprints itself on their minds
- Secondly are native ads, which are ads based on the content of your mobile app, like if it’s an online clothing store, then the ad will be related to fashion, or if it’s a news app, the ad will have news related content present in it
However, app formats can be of different types, whether a whole tile based ad or present in the form of newsfeed and chatrooms, ads catch the attention of a customer in any case.
Conclusion
In the end, mobile apps are highly significant to promote communication and provide a vast medium for different services. So if marketers even in 2016 are not considering the improvement of the retail apps for the better engagement of customers, then they’re at a loss. Retail apps promote their brand, help customers in the selection of products, and boost the revenue of the marketers.