The mobile channel is complex, in part because it is constantly evolving. What is now considered a key issue, the following month may be outdated. This evolution is also transferred to the user. What the user claims now, may in a week the interest disappears.
Technology changes. The market changes. Users or customers change as well. Having a successful app goes by adapting to the new scenario and knowing its features. There are two common mistakes:
- Have an app for following a fashion (“If everyone has, I will too”)
- Have an app and only worry about having many downloads
This exists. And it is an unequivocal sign that the strategy has not been well considered. In the first case, there has been a previous analysis of the needs to be covered with the app, the goal to be achieved, the possibilities of recovering the investment, or what is more serious, if the app is the channel To meet those needs.
In the second case, the potential of the mobile channel is being ignored. According to data from the Annual Report of the Information Society of Telefónica, by the end of the third quarter of 2012 active users of apps increased by 140% – from 5 to 12 million. These users downloaded an average of 2.7 million apps per day. The market is very broad, which also involves a lot of competition. With the mobility strategy you have to get away from the competition, but for this, you have to offer the user valuable content. That is to say, if the application does not offer any value to the user for many downloads that are had will be of no use; It will be a waste of money.
The mobile offers a lot of information about our users that go beyond the volume of downloads. The key is to analyze and measure this data, so that you can act in the most effective way possible. Tools like Malcom add value to the mobile channel because they provide a complete view of the user’s behavior within the application and thus make the right decisions.
What does success depend on in a mobility strategy? Here are the five steps required to achieve conversion on the mobile channel:
- Know your users and the use they make of the app : Not only are downloads important. To find out if the app succeeds, focus on the number of sessions performed, the volume of unique and active users, or whether users reuse the app. Another very useful fact: the users who use the app every day are coming from new downloads or are regular users?
- Detect the content that interests you : After knowing how many users the app has, the next step is to detect what content the app interests. Which sections are the most visited, if they share the content in social networks, what type of content they mark as favorites, etc. You can focus on reinforcing the content that interests you most.
- Group users by segments and measure their behavior : One of the principles of marketing says that not all users are equal and therefore it is a mistake to treat them all equally. Segment users by location, use of the app and even combine it with CRM (volume of expenditure, type of products that buy more, preferences, etc.). It is important to know what actions have been effective and in which segment have had the greatest impact. This way you can launch the communication actions that best suit each user and, depending on the impact, reproduce the same action or work on it, to improve it.
- Contextualizing the actions : The mobile has generated many contexts. If a user is active only in the afternoons, trying to communicate with him in the morning is not the best option to achieve the desired impact. Sending offers from a Madrid store to a user who resides in Barcelona is not effective either. When planning an action you have to take into account these contexts that surround or generate the users themselves, as it is the only way to establish a link between brand and user.
- Fidelize the user : When we understand the user’s behavior and transform it into related actions that add value, we get the user to maintain interest in our content, generating recurrence in the use of the application. We will be closer to achieving the goal we set as we develop the application.
The goal when investing in a mobility strategy is to increase conversion. This conversion can be to recover the investment, to make a sale, to redeem a coupon, to attract investments, etc. Only if we bring value to the user, will increase the chances of achieving the target marked.