Because the festive season and new 12 months approaches, journey is bound to be on everybody’s thoughts. Lengthy weekends, colleges closing for breaks, and demand for household journey are among the many high catalysts for elevated journey demand. In Department’s newest festive season information for app entrepreneurs, we discovered that final 12 months, journey apps in India noticed an enormous spike within the variety of installs from August via December. Journey firms eager to capitalize on the seasonal surge ought to begin making ready now by rethinking their messaging and focusing on methods.
Previously three years (2020 – 2022), journey — each the methods wherein customers interact with manufacturers and the experiences they count on from manufacturers — has develop into extra handy, versatile, and private. Whereas journey apps have been profitable in driving installs, person engagement and retention continues to be a problem for a lot of entrepreneurs.
As you put together for the vacation season, you’ll must optimize your technique and up your recreation plan: out of your web site, emails, QR codes to in-app experiences and promotional gives. However, what precisely do you have to do in another way and what channels do you have to give attention to to maximise person engagement?
The way to use your advertising and marketing channels to have interaction with prospects this vacation season
From app onboarding, to emails, to push notifications, there are a selection of the way to extend engagement together with your prospects this vacation season.
Journey app person onboarding is essential
The typical journey app loses 64% of customers after simply 30 days. This quantity spikes to 76% after 60 days, and 82% by 90 days. One of many key drivers that ensures customers stick round in your journey app is a superb person expertise — one which’s tailor-made to their wants.
The problem is that you simply solely get one likelihood to win over your new customers. This small window of alternative exists from when the person clicked “set up app” or searched to your app, and stretches till they really obtain and open your app.
To make sure a seamless, personalised customized onboarding, use deep linking all through your channels to route customers to the correct vacation spot (e.g., in-app content material or an app retailer relying on whether or not they have your app put in or not).
As soon as a brand new person has efficiently downloaded your app, interact them instantly. You are able to do this by highlighting the very best options of your app, sharing reductions, or selling your loyalty program.
Right here’s what it would seem like: drive new customers straight to your loyalty program to show their loyalty standing, spotlight precisely what they’ll obtain once they hit totally different milestones, and the way they will acquire extra miles to redeem invaluable issues inside your app like drink vouchers or seat upgrades.
An instance is InterMiles, a journey rewards and loyalty firm, that used deep hyperlinks on its social platforms to precisely direct new customers to the app retailer. As soon as the app is downloaded, it highlighted a particular Diwali program guiding customers on tips on how to get further miles.
One other essential aspect in personalised onboarding is the sign-in course of. Your customers interact together with your manufacturers throughout a number of platforms and gadgets. Make it simpler and quicker for them to shortly log into your journey app with out leaving them annoyed by a prolonged verification course of.
Journey firms can leverage deferred deep linking with the flexibility to ensure a match to allow auto-login customers in apps, in addition to throughout gadgets, safely and reliably. This fashion, you may guarantee a profitable onboarding expertise and enhance conversion charges in the long term.
Give attention to first buy engagement campaigns
After you’ve onboarded your new customers, that you must nurture them down the conversion funnel.
As our analysis reveals, worth for cash is the highest issue influencing journey choices amongst Australians in 2022. That is additionally seen in India the place customers’ expectations of worth for cash and significant experiences are continually rising based mostly on our festive season information for app entrepreneurs. Given this rising pattern, journey firms must double down on their first buy engagement methods by placing “worth for cash” on the highlight.
Analysis reveals that vacationers have a tendency to buy varied ancillary merchandise considerably between the reserving and check-in interval. One method to promote that is by providing ancillary purchases to your customers, akin to upgrading your seat, shopping for WiFi, including a bag, or reserving a cab. You’ll be able to characteristic these prominently in your app straight or by deep linking from emails or push notifications.
87% of customers usually tend to store with journey manufacturers that succeed at personalizing their apps and web sites. Subsequently, journey firms can leverage in-app prompts and push notifications to additional re-engage customers again into their app the place they obtain the very best expertise with their model.
In case you’re a journey aggregator, an effective way of doing that is recommending issues to do. This may embody: reserving leases, suggesting attention-grabbing actions based mostly on customers’ places, or providing rewards and reductions based mostly on their pursuits, behaviors, and previous model interactions.
You might additionally ship push notifications upon arrival for accomplice applications (cab firms, journey shares, and many others.) to additional enhance your customers’ journey expertise. Show varied messaging and worth propositions to not simply cater to your customers, but additionally to determine the very best performing push notifications that may drive customers again to your app.
Cleartrip makes use of Department’s push notifications to inform customers about adjustments and occasions in real-time. Since Department’s push notifications are powered by deep hyperlinks, they be sure that the notifications direct customers to the correct in-app vacation spot to scale back friction. This, in flip, helps customers shortly get what they want with out manually searching via your app.
Ramp up your QR code advertising and marketing technique
QR codes are a wonderful method to complement your journey model’s expertise, drive engagement, or just assist customers join together with your model higher. In response to a Department examine, from January 2019 to January 2021 there was a 496% surge in QR codes because the final attributed contact earlier than a conversion occasion.
Use QR codes to run totally different campaigns round holidays — provide discounted cab leases, free in-flight meals, free WiFi entry, flight data, and extra. Change messaging shortly and dynamically add the brand new promotion behind your QR code to make sure your content material is updated.
For instance, GoIbibo makes use of QR codes on their web site to navigate customers to their cell app. This works extremely nicely as a result of their internet customers have already got some model affinity, curiosity, and intent to buy from them. As such, they’re extra prone to convert to app customers versus focusing on customers who are usually not but of their funnel in any respect.
Department’s QR codes answer can even assist you to add branded QR codes in your web site to lower dropoff and improve retention by encouraging customers to obtain your app. Since these codes are powered by deep hyperlinks, you may personalize customers’ expertise by directing them to the identical in-app content material inside your app that triggered their curiosity on the internet.
Flip e-mail into a strong person engagement channel
Changing first-time customers is simply half the battle. To drive engagement and retain your first-time customers, optimize your e-mail advertising and marketing campaigns in a method that motivates customers to take additional motion in your app.
Advocate journey locations, personalised itineraries, climate forecasts, widespread sights, live shows and occasions, high eating places, or just ship reserving reminders in your emails. You can too use e-mail as a method to drive app downloads and engagement by alerting prospects that your app can present additional advantages, like in-flight leisure entry, VIP entry, complementary meals, and purchasing reductions on the airport.
Get rid of gaps from the email-to-app journey to permit customers to take fast motion with out interruptions. Direct them straight to your in-app content material or your cell web site relying on whether or not they have your app downloaded or not. To attain this, contemplate partnering with a dependable linking and attribution platform that not solely precisely routes customers to the right vacation spot, however lets you measure each set up and down channel conversion exactly.
MakeMyTrip — India’s main participant for flight bookings — nails the personalization recreation in the case of their e-mail campaigns.
Leverage reward-based referral applications
Mix referral applications with the best degree of personalization. Even one thing as small as including the referrer’s title within the referred person’s onboarding journey may considerably impression the referred person’s expertise. You should utilize deep hyperlinks in your app to routinely apply the referred person’s credit score, encourage customers to have interaction additional together with your app, and ship a seamless expertise.
As an illustration, MakeMyTrip permits customers to ship present playing cards to others through a number of channels like WhatsApp, Fb, Instagram, and extra. Right here, when a person receives a present card and clicks on the hyperlink, they’re directed straight to the MakeMyTrip app and the present card is routinely added to their account.
To take away biases and really perceive which channels drive probably the most impression when it comes to person acquisition, evaluate referral installs with different natural and paid campaigns. Department’s highly effective referral answer lets entrepreneurs monitor clicks, installs, and opens to research the efficiency of your cell referrals.
Wrapping up: The cell person acquisition itinerary for entrepreneurs
It’s necessary to know that the vacation season isn’t for reinventing the wheel however quite optimizing what’s already in place and ensuring you set your person expertise on the coronary heart of every little thing. As a journey firm, that you must be ready to capitalize on shopper spending this vacation season otherwise you threat shedding substantial new installs and income for your enterprise.
Right here’s a stable plan to get began:
- Personalize your person onboarding expertise
- Implement deep linking all through your channels
- Add ancillary purchases to point out worth for cash
- Use push notifications for accomplice applications
- Add QR codes in your web site and in the actual world to drive new customers to the app
- Leverage e-mail campaigns to spice up retention
- Use deep hyperlinks in referral applications for clean person expertise
Be taught extra about how Department might help you drive person engagement and acquisition this vacation season.
