10 ways to better engage app users in 10 seconds

10 WAYS TO BETTER

ENGAGE APP USERS IN 10 SECONDS

1 Introduction

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Ensure Great Performance

Launch A Mini-Orientation For New Users

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Create An Easy Way To Register An Account

Allow Users To Opt-In For (Or Out Of) Notifications

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Create & Market To Custom Segments

Offer Mobile-Specific Rewards

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Make Sharing Easier

Trigger Event-Based Interactions

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Use Deep Linking With Push & In-App Messages

Garner User Feedback

Introduction Imagine a world in which going to the DMV meant instant service.

You walk up to the counter and are greeted by a friendly face ready and willing to help - all in under ten seconds. Your trip is a quick, but productive one, and you leave feeling accomplished, with a strong positive sentiment… toward the DMV. This guide won’t change your DMV experience.

This guide will tell you how to create that ideal experience for your app users.

Your app represents the fastest, easiest, and most accessible way for your brand followers to interact with you and, most importantly, complete a task or engage with a service. Users are looking for an app that meets their expectations, and today, those expectations center on a streamlined and efficient experience.

Ten seconds is an eternity to an app user. It can mean the difference between a one-time user and a loyal customer. Today, there’s a 60% chance that users who don’t return after seven days never will, and 20% of users only open an app once. The window for engagement is short.

So what can be done within a 10-second timespan to engage users? The great answer is, there’s a lot! Here, we cover ten tactics and marketing techniques you can use to improve your app’s stickiness, delight users and turn discovery downloads into retainable prospects.

The 10 Under 10

Ensure Great Performance You’ve spent time, money and resources to develop the perfect app. But if the first thing a user sees upon app open is an error, all of your dedicated work can go unnoticed. Similarly, if your app takes too long to load, your user could abandon it before even viewing the home screen. If within the first ten seconds of their experience your user cannot interact with the app because of a timeout or an issue, you’ve lost their trust.

That’s why bugs, outages and network latency issues are more than just a nuisance -- they can cause permanent brand damage, and lose you money. A new (or even returning) user who encounters a bottleneck might never return, so ensuring that your initial app experience is error-free is critical.

Monitoring app performance allows you to immediately address, prioritize and troubleshoot prominent app issues, ensuring that those crucial first few seconds upon app open go smoothly. You can use a tool like Crittercism to maintain 100% uptime, pinpoint errors and continue perfect performance. It also allows you to track app crashes, request volume, and network latency, covering all aspects of potential performance bottlenecks. The best part? You can catch issues before your users do, addressing the problems proactively instead of retroactively.

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Launch A Mini-Orientation For New Users When someone downloads a new or updated app, identifying the key features and how to best use it can be confusing. A warm welcome can make the entire experience more enjoyable and less frustrating for the user.

In many cases, the app features you think are most valuable go undiscovered because new users spend little time initially exploring your app - if it’s not apparent up front, why go searching for it?

While your app may be easy to navigate and self-explanatory to you, not all users will give it the time necessary to figure it out on their own.

It can be incredibly irritating when users can’t find essential components and screens. So providing simple explanations about these key features and how they work can keep your app from being uninstalled, and engage your users for longer.

Take this example from the Yahoo! app: they created a short, threescreen orientation for new users that highlights the whats, whens and whys of the app. Not only does this act as an explanatory intro for new users, it also highlights the value of the app, and why they should use it. Plus, for those do-it-yourself users uninterested in a walk-through, the first screen offers a “skip” option. A simple, minimal-screen approach to new user orientation can go a long way in

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ensuring key features are discovered, and shows that your priority streamlining and simplifying the user’s experience.

What is it? The best pieces of news combined into a story Where is it from? Around the web When does it happen? Twice a day (8am and 6pm) Why does it matter? It’s the most important, need-to-know news

Create An Easy Way To Register An Account While each app is different, many of the most successful ones are service or profile-based, allowing users to save information, preferences and interests, and personalize their experience. Often, users who do download your app have already interacted with you on another channel and set up their profile elsewhere.

But what about new app users who haven’t created an account?

Or if you’re a mobile-first startup that has an app but no web presence? Many times, people on-the-go download the apps of brands that they find interesting to do a “test drive.” In these situations, you want to make it exceedingly simple for new users to register for an account and experience the best of what your app has to offer (plus, it allows you to save their data for additional insights down the road).

When new users open your app, ask them whether they are an existing customer or a casual explorer. Then, guide the casual explorer through the cool features of your subscription and showcase how your app can make their life easier. You want to provide a tempting sneak peak and turn one-shot users into members of your club. You get new subscribers and your mobile app serves the dual function of helping current members while also marketing your business to prospects.

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Zipcar, for example, does this exceedingly well. Their app is dependent on registration with the service. They proved a path for non-users that provides a list of reasons to become a “Zipster,” and also a step-by-step guide to what sign-up and car reservations look like. Additionally, Zipcar built an app-specific feature for non-users, so there is at least something they can do upon opening an app.

The flip side of this is to make sure that the sign-up process is clear but not intrusive. If there are aspects of your app that can be utilized without creating an account, it’s important not to block those with repeat prompts to register. The key is to make registration a breeze, and to highlight the benefits, not to push every user to create an account repeatedly.

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Allow Users To Opt-In For (Or Out of) Notifications App messaging has become an increasingly important tactic in engaging app users, to the point where 68% of people have enabled push notifications and 70% of consumers find all types of push notifications valuable. But while app users are ready and willing to engage with push messages, they want to do it on their terms.

Presenting your users with the option to opt-in to receiving notifications right away, and making it simple to change that within their settings over time, establishes an immediate sense of trust and verifies your app’s credibility in under ten seconds. When your users know that their personal preferences take higher priority than your marketing capabilities, they are more willing to fully interact with your app.

Beyond that, it ensures that your users are receiving the messages that they want to receive. Your app users are not a giant homogenous group of people, and so not all push messages will be relevant to everybody. Allowing for opt-ins ensures that your pro-push audience is more likely to engage with the messaging and convert.

The Pact app uses personalized push messaging as a crucial part of their app offering. Pact app users agree to this set up: they will be charged money if they don’t complete a set amount of workouts per week. Pact will send users reminders throughout the

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week to stay on track with their goals, and notifications of when they are about to be charged. Because these notifications are specific to the end user and integral to their individual app experience, they are more likely to opt-in for notifications, and see the value.

Using data specific to the user, such as time left for their goal, encourages action

Starting off with a friendly tone makes the app experience more personable

Create & Market To Custom Segments We like to say that user segments are the glue that tie your app analytics and marketing together -- and it’s true! Segments are a group of users who have completed at least one event (action) in your app within a specific time period, but can include multiple events and even events not completed by users. You can use segments within your analytics in reference to ad acquisition campaigns, marketing funnels (such as which segments of users complete more in-app purchases), and gain a slew of other insights.

Not only do segments enhance your analytics and help you better understand your app users, they are also the foundation for running great app marketing, particularly through push and in-app messaging. You can (and should) target your marketing campaigns to specific user segments, using offers customized to that segment to boost a particular event or conversion.

How does this further engage users in under ten seconds? Because when you know which users you’re targeting for messaging campaigns, and choose your content accordingly, the chances that they will immediately engage with those campaigns is higher.

When an offer or message is relevant to them, they will want to act on it sooner, rather than later.

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Say your user segment is “Second Screeners.” These are people who are engaging with an app for a TV show or broadcast network while the actual show is going on. They’re watching their favorite show and they have their tablet or phone in front of them, discussing the show, or voting on who to kick out, or maybe just looking up trivia about the show or actors.

You can determine this group by the time that they’re interacting with the app or, in the case of network apps, the time that they’re interacting with a particular piece of content. Once you’ve determined these users, you can send them push notifications to let them know their favorite show is starting, or use in-app messages to invite them to watch the next show based on their entertainment tastes.

Mcommerce apps often use segments in their marketing campaigns to promote discounts or special offers and boost app revenue. Flash sale site Rue La La, for example, segments users who have store credit, and targets them with a reminder in-app message (scheduled during the holiday shopping season) to encourage credit use and in-app purchases. This kind of highly-targeted offer to the right audience segment immediately grabs the users’ attention and means higher initial engagement.

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Targeted promotions sent to a segment of users that fall under specific criteria

Combines the user segment with the holiday season for an even more targeted message

Offer Mobile-Specific Rewards Fifty percent of people say the #1 reason they download apps are to receive discounts and special offers. If you have a segment of users who don’t use the app regularly, it could be a sign that they aren’t engaging because they’re missing the mobile-only exclusivity. Re-engaging them quickly can be as simple as creating a rewards-based program, or even implementing a one-time, mobile-only offer.

Here’s where app marketing again comes into play. You can use a push messaging campaign to bring lost users back into your app with specific discounts or membership perks. Or, the next time a fairly inactive user opens your app, re-engage them immediately with an offer just for mobile users. You can also create a purchasing program or points system that users can engage with regularly to receive great offers.

The important element here is to recognize unengaged users and provide these offers the next chance you get. Timeliness is crucial, as it could be your last chance to turn an uninterested user into a loyal consumer.

There are other ways to make it all about the mobile reward. You can go above and beyond and take a page out of Old Navy’s book, and what they did in building their SnapAppy app. When Old Navy

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customers download the app and sign up as users, they have the ability to play a game in which whenever they snap a picture of an Old Navy logo they win a chance for a mobile-specific discount or offer. A wheel pops up in the app and spins to choose your new offer. While not all brands are going to want to invest the resources to build this kind of app, it is a good model to study in researching and creating your own mobile-only offer or rewards program.

Giving users the ability to share mobile rewards with friends to garner more mobile usage

Providing users with a reason to re-engage with your app

Make Sharing Easier Social sharing isn’t just for news and media apps. Whether it’s “liking” an app on Facebook or tweeting your tracked run time, social and email sharing the going-ons in your app experience have become commonplace. Often, it can be a natural extension of your app, going beyond the norm and making it a part of the overall app experience.

For content-based apps, the easiest and most important way to accomplish this is to ensure that all of your articles, news pieces, stories or other assets have social sharing buttons that are clear, blatant and clickable, to all of the major social networks and via email. If one of your stories makes it big, it could bring an influx of users to your app, which is not only great for ad revenue, it’s an excellent boost to your brand recognition. More importantly, it allows users who are currently engaged with your content to share their interests, with your app being their home base.

For lifestyle apps, social sharing enables your users to make public to friends personal “wins,” such as their progress against workout goals, travel plans, or even weight loss over time. This serves as a way to keep on track, and even offers public endorsement, feedback and positivity.

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By enabling cross-platform sharing, most notably the ability to share with friends various activities or content your user enjoys, your app becomes a more integral piece of their lives. When sharing is made easy, this value is conveyed sooner, improving engagement long-term and prompts immediate usage. Essentially, when social promotion is available and easy to do, your app users can more readily share what’s important to them, engaging them with the app immediately and creating a more cohesive experience.

Again, in this scenario it’s important to keep in mind that while social sharing should be readily available, it should never interfere with the app experience. Make sure your efforts aren’t intrusive, but easily accessible for those who want it.

RunKeeper, one of the most popular fitness apps that tracks your runs and workouts, has taken their social element and brought it in-app. Not only does the RunKeeper app provide the ability to share your run stats across channels, in its latest version it also built an in-app social stream, where you can post to and track your friend’s activities and photos. For them, the social sharing aspect is actually an important component to the app experience. They’re betting that users’ ability to view their friends’ activities will be a sticking point, and will engage them instantly and often.

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Social aspect isn’t obtrusive and even serves as a motivating factor for users to workout

Using a competitive aspect amongst friends to keep users engaged

Users still have quick access to the app’s main function, starting a workout

Trigger Event-Based Interactions When users open your app, they’re going to complete a series of actions, or “events,” in-app during their session. These events are easily tracked in your analytics, and are representative of how your user interacts with the app and which features they find most useful or interesting. Events are individually defined by your goals, and can include actions such as read an article or posted to a social network.

This gives you a level of specificity to supplement your screen flow analysis, giving you insight into not only what screens your users view most, but also what they do while on those screens, and where they convert.

With events, you can see how your app users progress through a funnel (such as added a product to cart through completed checkout), and you can also trigger in-app messages upon event completion to encourage further in-app activity, or provide additional information. This form of marketing automation takes little time and effort to set up, and is a way to quickly re-engage users after they’ve completed an action, and are considering exiting your app.

In just a few seconds, you can re-gain their attention and direct it toward a customized message, all without doing any manual work.

Say you’re a sports app with ticket-buying functionality, and you want to become your users’ go-to source for game tickets. If a user

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adds two tickets to next week’s Red Sox game to his cart, you can enable a triggered in-app message alerting him to the Red Sox v.

Angels game that’s happening in two weeks. Not only is this information personalized to his interests, it is also relevant to the in-app action he just took, and thus has a higher chance of converting him again.

Use Deep Linking With Push & In-App Messages Deep linking is something that most brands employ today, regardless of whether or not they call it deep linking. It is the practice of embedding links to pages deep within your website around the internet – in email signatures, article syndications, social publishing sites, forums, etc. With deep linking, instead of linking directly to your homepage, you want to highlight the pages that work best in that context.

When it comes to mobile, deep linking isn’t about SEO juice or discovery possibilities, but rather, is about ensuring that the links viewed on a mobile device directs your user to right place – a screen within your app – and doesn’t just launch your app on the home screen.

Using deep linking, you can direct your user through a mobile ad, push notification or in-app message to a corresponding screen within your app.

Let’s go back to the sports app example. Say you’ve sent that great push message out to Red Sox fans through a personalized, highly-targeted campaign. Your deep linking here shouldn’t direct the user to your app home screen; it should take him or her directly to the results screen.

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Why is this important? It saves the user time searching for the relevant screen, engaging them immediately with the subject matter at hand and negating navigation confusion. Making their in-app path clearer and easier to flow through not only meets difficult user expectations, but improves the quality and conversion opportunity of your app marketing campaigns.

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Garner User Feedback Great apps are bi-directional, and rely on user data and feedback to create a continually better experience. Running customer relationship surveys is a simple way to gather this information. In the broadest sense, a customer relationship survey seeks to understand how satisfied customers are with your business. One of the most widely used survey types is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, which empowers you to identify users who would be willing to recommend your app to a friend.

You can create a segment of users who have completed a certain event and open your app at least X number of times, and send them a survey. Because you’re executing these surveys in-app, you already have the user’s attention, and are likely to receive relevant, useful feedback that is top-of-mind.

Not only does this help you determine where your app needs to improve (and which features are user favorites), but a survey also lets your users know that their input is essential to the success of your app. Much like with allowing for opt-ins, prompting survey participation makes users feel valued as an integral part of growing your app.

It is also a quick and easy way to capture attention and direct it toward an in-app action, one that keeps users engaged with the app and draws attention to various app features, updates or other unique elements.

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Promoters can be further nutured to rate app in app store (detractors can provide feedback)

Warm messaging

Easy-to-answer, one question survey

Evolving To Win In An App-Driven World When it comes to the promise of mobile and web apps, we’ve only scratched the surface of what they can do to attract, excite and retain app users. What we do know is that by 2017 there will be 4.4 billion app users worldwide, and they are making it clear what they want in an app experience. By implementing these ten tactics, you can improve your app to meet (and even exceed) their expectations, garnering loyalty and just generating brand loveability.

As your app evolves, even more opportunities will appear to improve your engagement strategy in under ten seconds, and in the long-term. In the meantime, you have a set of stellar techniques to start with - ones you can easily implement using your set of analytics and marketing tools. Get started today, and see where your app users take you!

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