liftoff re-engagement-guide

LIFTOFF GUIDE TO

MOBILE RE-ENGAGEMENT

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Liftoff Guide to Mobile Re-Engagement 2

Introduction

As the mobile industry continues to grow, app marketers have

become more sophisticated in their approach to user acquisition and

the metrics they use to measure success. While installs were once an

indicator of an app’s success, marketers now rely on performance-

based metrics like app engagement and revenue to measure the

outcome of user acquisition campaigns.

The finish line is no longer the moment a user hits the download

button. Mobile marketers today are responsible for everything from

building awareness to long-term user retention. This shift has led to

marketers building out highly-relevant re-engagement campaigns

for users at all stages of the funnel in an effort to increase post-install

activity in their apps.

This guide provides an in-depth look at the re-engagement tactics app

marketers are using to build a bigger community of active users and

generate mobile revenue.

re-engagement


Re-engagement campaigns bring users back into your app and are

typically segmented by user activity. For example, a travel app may target

users who looked at a particular destination with a promotion offering

a discount on the trip if they book in the next few days. Whatever the

segment you’re targeting may be, re-engagement campaigns are run to

drive inactive users back to your app for a chance to monetize.

The primary methods of re-engaging users are:

Mobile Retargeting Ads

Push Notifications & Badges

Email

Each method has its own distinct set of pros and cons that will be covered

in this guide.

What is re-engagement


To generate revenue, mobile apps need active users. Having a great

app helps, but it isn’t always enough to get users active in your app

on a regular basis. User engagement is a problem that every mobile

marketer has face - most people carry anywhere from 40-70 apps on their

smartphone, but 43% of users use only four to six apps a day 1.

Even if your users love your app, there’s still a good chance that they aren’t

using it every day, which means you’re missing out on a chance to make

money for your app. Re-engagement campaigns help create meaningful

touchpoints with your users and provide them with reasons to open your

app more often.

App retention is another issue marketers can address with re-engagement.

According to mobile intelligence company, Quettro, the average app loses

more than 80% of its users within seven days of installation2, while Statista

found that 25% of mobile users open an app just once. With app turnover

that high, marketers are turning to re-engagement to bring former users

back into the fold and keep current users onboard longer.

Why re-engage?


Additionally, re-engagement helps marketers keep costs per first action

(CPA) down, while increasing install-to-conversion rates. The Q3 2015

Liftoff App Engagement Index found that current costs to acquire a

registered app user can easily top $9, and the average cost of acquiring

a user that subscribes to a paid service is $193.61, but re-engagement is

a proven way to bring those down and stretch marketing budgets further.

Register Share Reserve Purchase Subscribe

$9.46$16.01

$56.42$67.16

$193.61

Mobile Cost per Action Index Q3 2015


Re-engagement methods and features

App marketers use several communication channels to re-engage their users,

including mobile ads, push notifications, email, and SMS messaging. Each

channel has its own set of pros and cons, but they all allow you to use deep

links and segment your audience for highly relevant messaging.

Deep links

Deep links allow you to direct users to a specific location in an application,

rather than the start screen. If a user who has since deleted your app clicks on

a deep link, they’ll be taken to the app store to re-install it. Deep links make

app usage more efficient and user friendly, improving app engagement and

increasing conversions by as much as 66%3.

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If an eCommerce app is running a campaign targeting users who abandoned

their shopping cart at checkout, it’s more efficient and user-friendly to link users

to their shopping cart from an ad. If you simply send users back to the app’s

home screen, you’re adding several additional steps to the checkout process.

To use deep links, your developer must first set up a mobile deep-linking

scheme and create Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) for locations in your

app to directly send users.

Popular examples of mobile deep linking:

Introducing users to a new feature in your app by sending a push

notification that takes users directly to that feature

Drawing attention to a price drop on a feature or service, linking users

directly to the purchase page

Targeting a single user through email or push notification who has abandoned

a shopping cart, taking them back to the cart to complete their purchase

Deep links


Segmenting your audience

Eff ective re-engagement campaigns are highly relevant to the users who are

targeted. With that in mind, marketers who excel at re-engagement keep track of

how their users are interacting (or NOT interacting) with their app, and use that data

to message users with promotions targeted to their activity.

No matter where a user falls in your funnel, there’s a reason to re-engage with them:

If a user deletes your app, you want them to re-install

If a user hasn’t use your app in a long time, you want them to be active again

If a user makes a purchase in your app, you want them to come back and make

more purchases

If a user researches a service or product in your app, but doesn’t purchase, you

want them to come back and complete the transaction

Even if a user actively uses your app on a regular basis, you’ll want to re-engage

them when new features or content become available

INACTIVE USER DELETED APPBROWSED, BUT HAVENOT PURCHASED

?

INSTALLED BUT NOT REGISTERED


Audience Exclusion

Audience exclusion prevents users from seeing promotions for products

or services they’ve just purchased from an app. This eliminates wasted

ad spend for the marketer, and improves the user experience by not

serving an irrelevant ad. Proper re-engagement campaigns require

a dynamic process to blacklist users from your campaigns after they

have already performed the desired action. There are instances where

marketers may want to promote the same product to their users at a

later date, such as a travel app promoting a deal on flights to Las Vegas

a few months after a user booked a trip there, or an eCommerce app

promoting tickets to a user’s favorite band next time they’re in town.

Every app is different, it’s up to marketers to determine how to best

segment and re-engage their audience in a way that improves user

experience and drives mobile revenue for the app.

eWish


Mobile Retargeting Ads

Mobile retargeting ads are similar in format to a user acquisition

campaign, but focus on driving users back into an app to complete

an action, rather than an initial install. One of the reasons mobile

retargeting is such an effective form of re-engagement is that because

they utilize advertising units, there’s space for compelling images,

video, and animation. Retargeting also gives advertisers the ability to

display ads when users are actively engaged with other apps on their

mobile device, giving it a distinct advantage over more passive tools

like email.

Most importantly, mobile retargeting has proven to drive results.

Because retargeting focuses on users that have already expressed

interest in your app, marketers have increased post-install conversions

by as much as 60%, while decreasing CPAs by 40% when running

retargeting campaigns on new installs. The performance increase has

led to several marketers including mobile retargeting as a piece of

their user acquisition campaigns, rather than a separate entity.

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Mobile retargeting also has a huge advantage when it comes to users

that have uninstalled your app. In fact, as long as the user has not

opted out of standard ad tracking, you can re-engage someone who

has done nothing more than download and open your app once. This

makes retargeting the most effective way to reach any segment of your

audience.

Using Mobile Retargeting to Re-engage Users

TopTravel is a is a one-stop travel booking app, allowing users to

reserve flights, cruises, trains, hotels, and rental cars on their phone

or tablet. Because their users don’t frequently book major vacations,

TopTravel often sees long periods of inactivity, even from their most

valuable users.

To get their users more engaged, TopTravel started running mobile

retargeting campaigns to users who haven’t opened the app in more

than 60 days. By featuring special promotions on popular weekend

getaway destinations, TopTravel knew they could increase app activity

even during non-peak travel parts of the year.


How Retargeting Works

In order for an ad network to perform a retargeting campaign, you must

first share your data on which users it should be targeting. Every app

user you have (unless they have opted out of advertising) has either an

IDFA or an Android Advertising ID that identifies the user and allows the

network to target them when seen in another app on their device.

This is all your users – the top of the funnel. Platforms like Liftoff will start

to segment your users based on ideal characteristics: users that have a

high potential for performing a desired action in your app, whether it’s

purchase, register, subscribe, or other. Once these targets have been

identified, the IDs of these users are passed back to the mobile ad

networks so only those users are served ads.

This allows you to pinpoint only the most desirable users and convert

them at the lowest price. Once a user has converted, they can be

removed from the campaign via audience exclusion to ensure that

additional advertising budget is not spent on them.

For optimal campaign performance, it’s recommended that marketers

send all postbacks to their partners. This ensures that your partners are

continually re-engaging new users with the most up-to-date activity data.

TopTravel News App TopTravel

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Your App Your UserYour Ad


Retargeting Ad Creative

It’s important to remember that your retargeting campaign targets users

who have experienced your app already. Creative messaging should

focus on something new about your app that will encourage users to

come back to it.

This doesn’t always mean promoting new features. In many cases,

retargeting campaigns are based on eCommerce activity. While gaming

apps tend to use in-app-purchases, most non-gaming apps are more

likely to generate revenue from actions like reservations, product

purchases, or subscriptions. With these revenue streams, retargeting

messages that highlight sales or special promotions like free shipping

are likely to attract new attention to the app.

As with app-install campaigns, it’s important to constantly test ad creative

to improve engagement. Whether running a campaign to entice return

customers or propel a user to their first conversion, testing will help

you narrow down the best creative to use for users at any stage of the

funnel.

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Frequency Capping

There is no industry standard for how many retargeting ads it takes to

re-engage a user. Some marketers feel that over-saturating users with

retargeting ads may cause them to feel “stalked” across the mobile

landscape, while others believe that increasing retargeting campaigns

will only make your brand more memorable and increase engagement

opportunities.

The answer is that both can be true, and every marketer needs to

A/B test their own campaigns. Setup one campaign that has a low

frequency of impressions as your control (three to five impressions),

and one or more campaigns with higher numbers of impressions. (It

is important that these campaigns run simultaneously with all other

variables, such as targeting and creative, being held consistent). Results

of these campaigns will determine at what point continuing to target an

uninterested user is simply a waste of advertising budget.


Push Notifi cations

Push notifi cations are the most popular way to communicate their existing

users, with some app marketers seeing engagement rates as high as

40%4. These short messages are sent directly to users’ devices from the

app, often featuring a promotion or announcement of a new feature that

will get users back in the app. These are typically free or low cost for

marketers, depending on if you build your own push notifi cation tool or

use a pre-built push platform such as Urban Airship, AppBoy or Kahuna.

On iOS devices, app badges (the little red circles with numbers that

appear above your app) serve to remind users that there is an in-app

notifi cation waiting for them when they open the app. Both iOS and

Android notifi cations can also be found in the status bar or lock scree n,

depending on a user’s settings.

The biggest drawback to push notifi cations are the percentage of users

that can be reached when using them. According to push notifi cation

service Kahuna, up to 60% of users opt out of push notifi cations5, so while

they may be a very eff ective tool based on engagement rates, it’s not a

viable solution for reaching your entire user base.

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Using Push Notifications to Re-engage Users

Navigator, a utility app that gives drivers the most time-efficient directions

from point A to point B, wanted to increase app engagement with

commuters who have the app installed but don’t need directions on a

regular basis.

To do this, Navigator began sending timely push notifications to users

when routes they regularly traveled were affected by road closures,

construction, or heavy traffic. Navigator’s push notifications alerted users

to the road conditions on major roadways near them and suggested an

alternate route.

In doing so, Navigator was able to greatly increase user engagement with

a segment of users who were previously inactive and maximize the app’s

value.


Email

Emailing users is an eff ective tactic when the message is too long or

complicated for other forms of communication, or for delivering multiple

messages at one time. Like push notifi cations, email is a popular way for

marketers to deliver promotions or announcements to their user base. Unlike

push notifi cations, promotions sent via email should be less time sensitive

than ones sent via push, because email is not typically read as quickly. For

example, 90% of people will read a text message within three minutes of

receiving it6, while only 25% respond to emails within 30 minutes7.

Using email to re-engage users is advantageous for mobile marketers

because of the sheer number of people who read email on their phones.

Sixty-seven percent of email is read on a mobile device8, making it ideal

for using deep links to improve the user’s app experience and increase

engagement.

However, despite the number of people who read email on their mobile

device, marketing emails are still severely limited by reach. Mobile app

marketers see average email open rates of 20.22% and click rates of 2.26%9,

so it’s hard to rely on email alone to drive your re-engagement eff orts.

We missed you!

next purchase!

eCommerce App Email


For some apps, email marketing isn’t even possible because email

addresses aren’t collected upon signup. Marketers of those apps must

look to other re-engagement methods to grow their active user base.

Using Email to Re-engage Users

FoodMe is a food delivery app that allows users to order food from their

favorite local restaurants without making a phone call. To increase app

engagement, FoodMe sends a weekly email every Friday afternoon

featuring reviews of nearby restaurants with high ratings.

Utilizing deep links, FoodMe directed email readers directly to the

restaurant’s menu within the app when they clicked on the review, allowing

users to easily place an order. Knowing that Friday night was their most

popular night for delivery orders, FoodMe further increased app activity

with their email strategy.


Taking it further: How Liftoff optimizes re-engagement campaigns

Liftoff re-engagement campaigns are run similarly to app install

campaigns, except the users targeted have already downloaded and

opened the app. Armed with more user information than before, Liftoff

takes advantage of that data to serve ad impressions within related

apps, resulting in more post-install conversions. We also provide

full creative design and A/B testing services to continually improve

campaign performance over time.

Liftoff integrates with all major ad networks and real-time bidding (RTB)

exchanges, enabling us to place bids on individual ad impressions.

Since re-engagement campaigns already target a very specific and

likely to engage audience, it’s the most efficient way to drive additional

conversions.

Re-engagement can

increase conversion

rates by up to 60%

Conversion Rate

60%


Conclusion

There is nothing more frustrating than spending money to acquire a

user that stops using your app, but these missed opportunities are not

the end of the line. A well-planned, diverse re-engagement strategy

allows marketers to turn more of those missed opportunities into active

users by wisely using their data to bring users back into an app.

Fueling Mobile Growth.

Liftoff is a full-service mobile app marketing and retargeting platform

which uses post-install data to run true CPA-optimized mobile user

acquisition and retention campaigns. With Liftoff, campaigns are

optimized to drive specific actions beyond the install, to acquire users

who engage in more profitable post-install events like booking a

hotel, subscribing to a service or making a purchase.

[email protected] @liftoffmobilewww.liftoff.io


Sources

1 http://www.emarketer.com/Article/

App-Marketers-Focus-on-Engagement-Retention/1013111

2 http://andrewchen.co/new-data-shows-why-losing-80-of-your-mobile-

users-is-normal-and-that-the-best-apps-do-much-better/

3 https://www.kahuna.com/blog/introducing-dynamic-deep-linking-

amplify-the-effectiveness-of-your-mobile-marketing-campaigns/

4 http://andrewchen.co/new-data-on-push-notification-ctrs-shows-the-

best-apps-perform-4x-better-than-the-worst-heres-why-guest-post/

5 http://andrewchen.co/why-people-are-turning-off-push/

6 http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/27/why-businesses-cant-ignore-sms-

hint-90-of-people-read-a-text-message-within-the-first-3-minutes/

7 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/

this-is-how-fast-you-should-reply-to-work-emails-2014-12-11

8 http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics

9 http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-marketing-benchmarks/

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