It’s one thing to be able to send targeted, personalized and triggered in-app messages and campaigns. But it’s quite another to figure out exactly WHAT campaigns are going to make a real difference to your mobile business.

Fortunately, we’re here to help. Swrve works with the leading app organizations in the world, and our customer success team have delivered success for pretty much every one of them. So on the back of that knowledge, here’s five in-app campaigns that can really deliver value and ROI.

Enjoy!

1) Promote Feature Discovery

You’ve probably gone to a great deal of effort to design and develop your mobile app, and potentially spent a large sum of money on acquiring users for it. Now you need to ensure that those users actually use the app, and most importantly use ALL of the app. Users who don’t discover the full functionality of your product are far more likely to churn. And that’s a waste.

You can begin by highlighting some of the key features to the user that they have yet to discover or use.

Simply identify the group of users who have not yet used a particular feature (personalized alerts in the example below) and let them know about it via in-app messages. It’s that easy - but makes a huge difference.

2) Localize onboarding by engaging users with regional in-app messages.

If your app has an international audience, then blanket mobile marketing campaigns won’t work - or at least they won’t work particularly efficiently.

In an ideal world, you’ll send the right message to the right user and in the right language. But that takes time, and means an awful lot of individual campaigns. The alternative is simple enough: create content in each relevant language, and then let your mobile marketing engine handle sending each individual user the relevant message based on the language setting on the phone itself. Simple.

The result is a significant improvement in engagement rates - from 20% upwards to 100%.

3) Interactive onboarding

Any time a user opens the app, they are asking the same questions - most obviously: what can this app do, and how do I use it? Answering those questions with an intuitive onboarding process can do wonders for retention numbers.

This campaign couldn’t be simpler. It consists of a number of initial screens delivered as in-app messages, that do exactly the job described above. Most importantly, because they are delivered ‘outside’ the core app, they can be edited, optimized, personalized and tested on-the-fly. That makes all your efforts significantly more effective, and does wonders for retention figures.

Remember, onboarding doesn’t end after install, and you should continue this multi-stage onboarding with further in-app messages in the first couple of weeks after install to users who haven’t yet been fully ‘activated’.

4) Convert non-purchasers

In-app campaigns are a great way to migrate users from the state of ‘browser’ to the state of ‘purchaser’. Getting users to that first purchase is of course vital - too vital to simply sit back and wait. A smart in-app campaign combines an understanding of the users behavior to that point, appropriate incentives, and content that is tested and known to be effective.

Again, by getting these campaigns out of the core app experience, it becomes possible to move each user to purchase as an individual, rather than hoping the same approach will work for all (it won’t). The result is a significant increase in the percentage of users spending real money in-app - a number that is about as important as it gets in the mobile business.

5) Drive Improved App Store Rating

Every business with a mobile app aims for great app store ratings. Higher ratings mean improved app store chart positions and increased ‘click through’ when users browse to your app download page.

Given that’s the case, it’s surprising how many mobile businesses send any and all of their users go the app store to provide a rating. As an alternative, try this approach: first send an in-app message asking users if they are enjoying the app experience.

If they are, then send them right on to the app store to rate the app! And if they’re not, you can find out exactly what the problem is - useful in it’s own way. Campaigns like this have the ability to increase app store ratings by signfiicant amounts, so this is one in-app message you should certainly look to implement.

Just remember - your users won’t recommend your app if they don’t like it - so make sure that you perfect the ‘first-time user experience’ for day 1!

To learn more about driving ROI and how to accurately quantify it download our free whitepaper here