A cellular consumer acquisition technique isn’t tied to simply paid or natural channels — it piggybacks on the channels’ present viewers and potential alternatives to entice customers to obtain the app. Customers demand comfort, and that entails connecting with them on the platforms they’re most snug with.
On this weblog, we’ll discover a few of the most viral campaigns that drove hundreds of app installs and share greatest practices for implementing their cellular consumer acquisition methods.
1. Optimize your social media channels to drive consumer engagement
The trendy shopper not solely turns to social media to search out new apps, they really obtain apps as a result of of social media content material. Nonetheless, along with walled gardens and damaged consumer experiences, buy journeys are more and more complicated. This implies partaking customers to extend cellular consumer acquisition, income, and ROI might be tough.
But some ways might help you crush your consumer acquisition targets on social media.
Correctly arrange your social profile
For starters, be sure to arrange your social profile correctly — add your emblem, add related key phrases within the bio, and add a brief and compelling description about what your app does. Additionally, optimize your social profiles with the proper key phrases to assist them rank increased on engines like google. This fashion, when a consumer searches for these key phrases on their search engine or an app retailer, your social profile has increased visibility and thus a better chance of changing customers.
Put money into influencer advertising and marketing
Belief-based promoting like influencer advertising and marketing helps manufacturers construct model affinity amongst their target market. This additional results in elevated engagement and conversion.
It’s vital to notice that not all influencers have comparable levels of viewers attain or engagement. Additionally, a better subscriber or follower depend doesn’t essentially imply extra income or elevated app downloads.
For instance, business influencers might have a low engagement along with your model however a excessive general social affect. Against this, your present followers might interact along with your model fairly a bit however nonetheless have a low general affect on social media.
Manufacturers which can be prepared and prepared to put money into influencer advertising and marketing to advertise their app also needs to issue within the high quality of that influencer’s viewers. This implies figuring out the true viewers of an influencer and separating out the spam or faux accounts which may exaggerate their viewers measurement and result in defective conversion charges. Instruments like SparkToro might help you do that in addition to dig additional into your viewers’s supply of affect.
Listed here are some inquiries to ask your self when selecting an influencer:
- Engagement stage: How usually does the influencer interact with their viewers? Have they got a superb engagement charge based mostly on their follower depend?
- Relevance and authenticity: Does this influencer put up content material associated to your area of interest and viewers? Do the influencer’s values align along with your model?
- Demographics: Will this influencer have an effect on localized app installs? What’s the upfront funding and anticipated ROI with an influencer vs. different paid promoting for localized app promotion?
- Value: What’s the fee and anticipated ROI for partnering with the influencer?
- Sponsored posts: Has the influencer labored with manufacturers earlier than? What was their follower depend, engagement ranges, conversion charge, and ROI for earlier campaigns?
- Professionalism: What does the collaboration course of appear to be? Are they prepared to decide to a selected timeline for deliverables? What’s the course of and related prices for reshoots or adjustments?
To advertise their #LomoStyleChallenge, Lomotif partnered with Hailey Bieber — a mannequin, influencer, and skincare entrepreneur with 47+ million followers on Instagram alone. She match Lomotif’s marketing campaign as a result of her model appeals to a youthful, fashion-conscious viewers. Lomotif incentivized customers to share their go-to model footage with a branded hashtag in alternate for an opportunity to win $5,000 and meet Hailey Bieber herself.
Leverage deep hyperlinks
Deep hyperlinks immediately impression the success of your social media campaigns. They guarantee your customers’ journeys from social-to-app are as frictionless as attainable. As a marketer, ask your self:
- How are customers being directed to the app?
- What occurs if the consumer has the app put in on their cell phone?
- What does the consumer journey appear to be for somebody who hasn’t put in your cellular app but?
Consider it like this: Each further step within the consumer journey is one other friction level within the conversion course of — for instance, taking customers who have already got the app put in to a touchdown web page that prompts them to obtain the app once more.. This additional step may steer them away from making a purchase order, sharing a referral, or additional partaking along with your model.
Social platforms act as walled gardens that preserve customers inside their very own ecosystem by robotically opening hyperlinks of their in-app browsers. This implies deep hyperlinks turn out to be much more important to your cellular consumer acquisition technique.
Integrating Department deep hyperlinks in your natural and paid social posts gives a seamless consumer expertise and helps you enhance buyer lifetime worth (LTV). For instance, you may route the customers straight to your cellular app or app retailer, relying on whether or not they have the app put in.
Ace2Three, a number one on-line gaming platform, leverages Department deep hyperlinks that redirect customers from the model’s Fb profile account to their cellular web site, after which routes customers to their Ace2Threetheir cellular app.
Alternatively, you may direct customers to your cellular web site the place you may present them a Department Journeys banner to immediate an app set up.
Australia’s main OTT platform, 9Now, built-in Department deep hyperlinks throughout its social media content material — together with Instagram posts, tales, and bio — to redirect customers straight into the 9Now app.
“9Now has undergone a giant effort to make sure as a lot of our inbound app site visitors as attainable is coming from Department hyperlinks, together with our natural social channels. Aside from the seamless consumer expertise from a hyperlink click on to particular content material within the app, it permits us to extra precisely attribute efficiency to the proper channel and perceive the true effectiveness of our paid initiatives.”
— Adrian Grasso, 9Now Efficiency Advertising and marketing Lead
2. Create a referral program for present prospects
Making a referral program is a cheap approach to delight present customers and organically drive new customers. It thrives on the social proof idea, which is when people look towards the alternatives of others earlier than appearing themselves. This mannequin helps manufacturers create area for themselves amongst their target market by leveraging their present viewers.
An efficient referral program can incentivize customers to obtain an app and instantly refer it to their community of family and friends.
India’s largest restaurant and desk reservation app EazyDiner carried out a referral program utilizing Department’s cellular linking platform (MLP) to reward present customers and doubtlessly drive new prospects to obtain the app.
Watch it in motion:
However what makes two apps with the identical advertising and marketing price range find yourself with radically totally different outcomes? One app may be struggling to amass 100 customers from its referral program whereas the opposite constantly garners 1,000 customers day by day.
The “winner takes all” mentality is true relating to referral applications. All of it boils right down to an idea referred to as virality, and it’s one of the crucial essential parts of selling right this moment. Virality sits on the intersection of three key elements: incentives, ego, and emotion. Let’s see how one can combine these elements into your referral program so it has a better probability of going viral.
Provide tangible incentives to extend consumer engagement
Tangible incentives make it easier to purchase and retain new customers. An incentive might be so simple as a reduction inside your app, unique swag, an add-on product, or a level-up reward system.
Up Banking, an Australian financial institution, offers new customers $5 to enroll and one other $5 in the event that they full 5 purchases on the app inside the first 30 days.
Automate referrals for fast sharing
Make referring to new customers as simple and handy as attainable. For instance, while you use Department referrals, there’s no have to manually enter promo codes. New customers robotically get incentives like redeemable coupons, cashback, and so forth. after they obtain the app by a referral hyperlink.
ShopBack, Asia’s main cashback reward program, lays out a transparent worth proposition — “Give $5, Get $5.” Through the use of deferred deep linking, ShopBack ensures correct hyperlink matching and permits user-to-user sharing.
Allow sharing on a number of platforms to cut back drop-offs
Make it simple for customers to share referrals on a number of platforms through the use of native share sheets. Native share sheets allow customers to share with out ever leaving your app’s ecosystem. This enables customers to rapidly share referrals whereas lowering drop-offs.
Indonesia-based magnificence and skincare model, Sociolla, runs a referral program the place customers can determine how they need to share their rewards hyperlink with contacts — through QR code or different native sharing strategies like WhatsApp or Instagram.
Embrace deep hyperlinks to make sure a clean consumer expertise
Be certain your hyperlinks can share related content material inside the app, and guarantee they defer deep hyperlink by the set up. This implies taking new customers on to the related product web page in your app, fairly than leaving them to determine how one can navigate the app by themselves and manually hunt for a product.
Bukalapak, one in all Indonesia’s main e-commerce firms, does this extraordinarily nicely. Their deep linking directs customers straight to the app retailer relying on their cellular gadget OS. Then they’re instantly taken to the identical in-app content material that they initially engaged with.
Run A/B checks to measure and construct virality
A/B checks establish how totally different copy and creatives impression the outcomes of your referral program. To construct your app’s virality, attempt to infuse totally different feelings in your copy to inspire customers to take motion — like referring your app to their community.
The only approach to measure virality is by particularly measuring what number of new customers are generated from one present consumer. It’s calculated by the next formulation:
On this formulation, ok = 5 x 0.2 = 1. Because of this each new consumer you get will herald yet one more consumer on common. The upper the worth of ok, the upper your cellular app consumer acquisition development. Ideally, to make sure exponential development, you desire a ok worth of larger than 1.
In actuality, virality goes past one consumer. That is referred to as a double viral loop, and it may be defined with the next diagram:
When a brand new consumer engages due to a referral from an present consumer, the unique consumer is notified, which makes them extra prone to re-engage along with your app and share it once more.
In case you acknowledge the concept of virality as a key a part of a referral program, your goal will shift from gaining particular person customers to gaining large consumer engagement.
3. Leverage e-mail advertising and marketing
About 43% of emails are opened on cellular gadgets. This represents an ideal alternative — entrepreneurs can use deep hyperlinks inside emails to drive app adoption and assist develop your app engagement.
However as we’ve written earlier than, there’s a disconnect between e-mail and cellular apps that impacts the consumer expertise and the flexibility to trace clicks, particularly on iOS. Whenever you ship an e-mail to your contacts, they learn it, click on on the CTA, and are directed to the app retailer or your app.
Right here’s the issue: Most e-mail hyperlinks are damaged, and customers find yourself in a vacuum. Whereas it could appear to be you’re buying customers from e-mail advertising and marketing, chances are you’ll very probably be shedding out on a big variety of customers and driving increased abandonment charges.
To counter this, most profitable e-mail campaigns with excessive conversion charges use deep hyperlinks all through their emails — within the copy, pictures, and CTAs.
Be purposeful about the place you’re sending your customers
You need to redirect your present customers to your app rapidly — with out shedding their curiosity, the curiosity of your supply, or the intent to buy. That is extremely vital as a result of cellular app customers drive 3x extra engagement.
GoMechanic sends app customers on to the promoted content material within the app, enhancing the consumer expertise and rising engagement.
To accumulate new customers who don’t but have your app put in, you might introduce an middleman touchdown web page that prompts potential customers with a sensible banner like Journeys.
Leverage deferred deep linking when messaging potential prospects
Individuals who subscribe to your emails aren’t essentially your app’s customers. They could have come out of your weblog, homepage, pop-ups on a third-party web site, or perhaps a paid commercial. Through the use of deferred deep linking in your e-mail campaigns, you may present a clean expertise for customers who might not have already got your app put in.
In case you’re operating a promotional e-mail marketing campaign, a deferred deep hyperlink will direct them to the app retailer, relying on the gadget they use, after which to the precise product web page inside your app as soon as it’s put in.
4. Use QR codes to fill in gaps between offline and on-line
In case you have a retail retailer or do paid promoting utilizing offline channels, it ought to embody QR codes. The pandemic pushed manufacturers to undertake QR codes as an important a part of each their offline and on-line advertising and marketing methods.
At Department, we noticed a 496% surge in QR codes because the final attributed contact earlier than a conversion occasion from January 2019 to January 2021. By 2025, eMarketer predicts 10.4% of all U.S. retail gross sales will likely be made through cellular gadgets. This implies QR codes will proceed to be a important factor of consumer acquisition methods.
Prospects anticipate modern options for rapid wants — they search for a unique measurement of the identical product inside the retail retailer, rapidly scan merchandise and make funds, and use presents or reductions whereas they’re purchasing. To fulfill these expectations, manufacturers have to ship real-time data and rapid options. To take action, entrepreneurs are more and more integrating QR codes to bridge the hole between offline and on-line channels.
Listed here are some alternative ways you should use QR codes to amass cellular app customers.
Join your app with in-store to ship extra private experiences
By utilizing QR codes in your retail retailer, you might be each omnipresent and private. Give customers entry to digital loyalty playing cards, digital coupons, product opinions, data, and customized presents based mostly on their earlier interactions along with your model.
Tata Digital used Department to create and place distinctive QR codes all through bodily shops on the level of sale to drive app installs. They incentivize prospects with a “NeuPass” which presents further reductions within the type of cash each time a buyer makes a transaction utilizing the Tata Neu app.
This method helps manufacturers utilizing the Neu app to ship a constant expertise to prospects throughout touchpoints. It creates a holistic customer-brand relationship that’s each related for patrons and ripe for model engagement.
Use print media to drive offline customers to your cellular app
Including personalized QR codes in print media campaigns gives a concrete entry level to offline customers.
Pizza Hut, one in all India’s main signature pizza chains, created QR codes powered by Department deep hyperlinks for its newspaper adverts to encourage customers to obtain their cellular app.
One other instance is THE ICONIC, Australia and New Zealand’s main on-line style and way of life retailer. They provide styling ideas together with incentives (just like the $20 low cost under) to drive loyalty and increase engagement from present prospects through QR codes.
The most effective factor is Department presents granular visibility into marketing campaign efficiency, thus enabling manufacturers to measure each scan, set up, and channel conversion to precisely establish the ROI of every channel.
Enhance model affinity by interactive and academic content material
Customers who’ve bought a product in-store have already got a pure affinity to your model. Including a QR code to your product packaging lets you create a long-term, extra nurturing, and interactive relationship along with your prospects. QR codes are particularly useful within the meals and beverage business. They function the benchmark for authenticity and battle counterfeits so your prospects know they’re shopping for items from the unique model.
For instance, Hershey rolled out QR codes on its Hershey’s Kisses Milk Chocolate. This gives fast entry to model representatives and presents transparency for his or her components.
Customers who scan the Hershey QR code are directed to a touchdown web page that consists of a glossary of components with allergens and dietary info.
Cut back friction factors within the web-to-app consumer expertise
Together with QR codes in your model’s web site is the simplest approach to direct customers the place you need them to be. As an alternative of anticipating your web site customers to manually lookup your cellular app on their smartphone, make it simple for them to transition from web-to-app utilizing a QR code.
Hungry Jacks is an Australian quick meals franchise of the Burger King company that leverages QR codes to drive web site guests to their cellular app.
Utilizing QR codes in your web site saves customers effort and time and makes the client journey extra seamless. As an alternative of typing and trying to find your app and hoping to obtain the proper one, prospects can rapidly scan the QR code to open the obtain web page and set up your app.
Use QR codes for quicker checkout and re-engagement
Offering cellular checkout stations with QR codes can considerably cut back billing time and take away cumbersome processes.
EatSure is an app that enables customers to take pleasure in cuisines from world wide from numerous trusted eating places in a single single order. It makes use of QR codes in offline environments (just like the facet of a meals truck) to assist prospects place orders and pay on-line for quicker checkouts.
Place QR codes at key metropolis areas
QR codes in key areas encourage prospects to obtain your app on the go. For instance, Cult.match, India’s largest well being and health model, shows QR codes on bus stands to encourage app downloads. As soon as the consumer scans the QR code, they’re taken to a Department hyperlink that opens immediately within the app or the app retailer.
What’s subsequent?
Entrepreneurs are desperately attempting to navigate a mature market the place shoppers rationalize their buying selections. The entrepreneurs that step up their consumer acquisition recreation will turn out to be indispensable change brokers, even when meaning experimenting with methods like influencer advertising and marketing and channels like TikTok that have been much less widespread pre-pandemic.
Partnering with a cellular measurement platform like Department will play a vital function. That is very true for efficiency entrepreneurs who will have the ability to establish the true supply of conversions, measure ROI, and optimize campaigns.
To study extra about how you should use Department to drive your cellular consumer acquisition, get in contact with us right this moment.
