Did you know that a 10% increase in user retention can increase the value of a business by more than 30%? *
On top of that, a study from our partner Gartner shows that 80% of your future profits will come from just 20% of your existing customers.*
These mean the revenue sources you have been trying to find are most likely sitting right under your nose, waiting to be nurtured and cultivated.
Yet, we have reached the time in which there are seemingly limitless options available at every customer’s fingertips. Business owners everywhere are facing a major question: how to distinguish myself enough to win over a customer on that initial purchase, and then keep them coming back time after time to shop? Digitalization of business transactions made mobile apps have become a norm for all online businesses as ideal means to reach out to every customer on a personal level; the more unique customers feel, the longer they stay connected. If you feel that having a quite functional responsive or mobile-friendly website for your e-commerce store is enough; you might have missed the difference it has with a native experience. In contrast to the mobile website, apps will make your customers more engaged with your brand.
For any business unleashing a new mobile app, the most logical step would be pushing its existing customers for using the new app for the sake of business interaction; this is mostly done by offering app-only discounts; doing so not only would make your customers on board quickly, but it would also easily spread the word far and wide long before your app actually gets ready to get good AppStore and GooglePlay ratings and reviews.
Besides providing app-only offers and discounts, there are many different sources through which your customers ultimately download your mobile app. It could be online advertising, organic search results, or a peer’s suggestion (word-of-mouth is still the best way if you manage to convert your customers into ambassadors). Once your customers start using the app, it is up to you to keep their interests intact by engaging them.
After onboarding the first batch of users, the following users who download your mobile app will not do that accidentally as well, just as it happens with the traffic and bounce rates of your website in most cases; people will already know you when downloading your mobile application. Furthermore, people who visit your app will be spending more time and visiting more pages than visitors to your website. Do you know what happens when visitors spend more time and visit more pages? They become customers.
So, what is the deal with mobile apps? How a mobile app will boost your customer retention? How can you distinguish yourself enough to keep customers coming back time after time?
An outstanding experience: One of the reasons why customers will download your app is because they look for convenience. While making purchases through your mobile app, customers expect an uncluttered and unhindered shopping experience. If your mobile app is providing a hassle-free enriched experience, then your customers will certainly stick for long. Creating a seamless end-to-end customer experience also includes not letting customers simply drop off the radar once they make a purchase; on the contrary, it is far from a best practice. Not only does it result in missed nurturing and cultivating opportunities for your business; but it also creates a poor experience for your customers. As such, in order for a mobile app to boost your customer retention easier, you need to keep engaging even after this conversion point. Remember, when done correctly, the buyer journey will cycle through again and again on repeat, forever; and, those efforts need to begin as soon as the first purchase happens. In this sense, you need to actively engage with customers to keep your business top of mind. For instance, you might provide proactive support and offers in order to incentivize them to return at first (in most cases giving discounts are far cheaper than customer acquisition costs).
Personalization brings loyalty: We talk much, but not enough about personalization. Even though mobile apps are a powerful, intimate medium for engaging, retaining, and monetizing customers; they rely on collecting the right customer data to reach their full potential. As stated in our last blog, the ways that customers engage with an app during their sessions can give businesses very important insights into how to reach and retain them in the best way, but only if the app’s tracking the right things. As digitalization has empowered customers to make better, informed, and educated choices; it has also given businesses different perks such as monitoring and rewarding customers who stick with them. Some businesses make the grave mistake of taking existing customers lightly while directing their efforts towards attracting new ones. Since a business can only grow when it first retains the existing customer base while attracting new customers on top of it, directing all the effort to personalization in the acquisition will play havoc with a business. You need to continue to personalize the experience for your existing customers as well. With what contents are your customers engaging? What sources are driving them to this content? Understanding how customers keep interacting with your business in the light of what you already know about them is the key to personalizing the ongoing experience they have. The longer your relationship with customers, the stronger it will be. Think of this: your interactions with lifelong friends are much more desirable and valuable because you have a shared history.
Mobile applications help you keep a pulse on your customers through advanced analytics from track in-app activities to see the types of content that are drawing users most to the demographic information of your customers; thus mobile applications make personalization and creating better experiences a lot easier. Nevertheless, you also need to analyze the data and evolve according to the trends you uncover in order to get and keep more customers. These all may sound a lot to work on, and you may wonder how beneficial user retention really is to your bottom line. After all, deleting an app is easier than installing one—it requires little to no effort to part ways. But as it turns out, app users are far more likely to depend on the apps they already use than to shift to new ones. In some ways, it’s a winner-takes-all market, and the best way to reach new customers is through old ones.
This is why in Mowico, we do not only offer a simple SaaS to create your mobile application. By constantly updating its features in accordance with the best practices of the industry, we equip you with one of the most advanced mobile SaaS that will also enable you to create outstanding retention strategies by its dashboard easily. If you like to learn more about how a mobile app will boost your customer retention, and how we may benefit your business; we will be more than happy to get to know you.
