How Do You Effectively Connect With App Users Via Email?

Patrick Sanders — May 31, 2017

Admittedly, we’re biased toward mobile engagement, but we realize that the ideal marketing strategy makes the most of every available messaging channel. For many companies, email remains one of their most important touchpoints with customers and we’re always getting asked how marketers can use email to improve their mobile app marketing and vice versa. So, if email is a critical channel to your enterprise marketing strategy, then you’ll want to read on…

Examples

Let’s dive right in and look at a few use cases that will apply to almost every marketing strategy, regardless of size or industry:

#1: First Impressions Are Key

So you’ve built a really cool app and your rank in the app store is rapidly rising, which means people are installing and loving your app. That’s great! The next question is, how are you engaging with these new users?

In most cases, you’ll start by guiding users through their first experiences, showing them how to use your app or surfacing valuable recommendations. In mobile, this is known as onboarding, which is usually done over the course of a user’s first 3-5 sessions. One of the key objectives of onboarding is to make sure that as many users as possible opt in for push notifications, since users who have push enabled are far more active than those who don’t.

The question is, how do you keep engaging those users who get through onboarding and still haven’t enabled push? Our most sophisticated customers have found success in emailing this user group. Here’s how they used Localytics to make it happen.

Goal: Successfully engage new users that have Push disabled

Segmentation

• In Localytics, create an audience of users with 3 – 6 sessions, and push disabled
  
• Using Localytics’ Audience Export send this audience to your email service provider on a daily basis
  
• Using your email vendor, create a recurring onboarding email campaign that’s driven by the Localytics’ Audience

Performance Measurement

• Using the Localytics’ Events API, share the result (ex. Opened, Bounced, Unsubscribed) of the email campaign for each recipient
  
• Use Localytics’ analytics reports (specifically the Usage, Engagement, Retention, and Funnels reports) to analyze these users’ downstream behavior versus those that enabled push during onboarding

Outcome: You can now effectively engage new users that have disabled push and measure the downstream impact. You can even build variations on this example to engage users with push disabled long after they’ve finished onboarding. Send a message as a push for users who can receive it and send the same message as an email for those who have push disabled.

#2: Reward Customer Loyalty

Loyalty program members spend up to 20% more than non-members on average (source), so if you don’t have a customer loyalty program, you’re missing out. For marketers who manage a thriving loyalty program, a major part of a successful program is getting your customers to redeem their points. Here’s how marketers are using Localytics to increase loyalty redemption.

Goal: Increase loyalty reward redemption

Segmentation

• In Localytics, create an audience of users with more than 180 days worth of outstanding loyalty rewards
  
• Using Localytics Audience Exports send the audience to your email service provider on a weekly basis
  
• Using your email vendor, create a recurring redemption reminder that’s powered by the Localytics’ Audience

Performance Measurement

• Using the Localytics’ Events API, share the result (ex. Opened, Bounced, Unsubscribed) of the email campaign for each recipient
  
• Use Localytics’ Analytics and User Insights to analyze these users downstream behavior versus those that haven’t redeemed their rewards or non-loyalty members

Outcome: You can now increase loyalty redemption and measure its impact on mobile engagement. Additionally, you could also use this process to make loyalty-based offers and incentivize other behaviors from your best users.

Closing the Loop on Campaign Performance

In these examples, we are using Localytics to drive targeted email campaigns, so you might be wondering why I also included sending the campaign results back to Localytics. Why not just view those results in your email vendor’s dashboard?

Closing the loop with performance measurement is critical, because it enables data-driven marketers to measure the deeper impact of their efforts, not just the typical ‘click through’ surface metrics. For example, from the onboarding scenario, you could use Localytics’ Analytics to see if users who receive the onboarding email and enable push have a higher retention rate or Lifetime Value (LTV). If so, you can implement additional campaigns that strongly incentivize users to enable push, since you now have evidence that the return on investment is significantly higher.

Start Emailing Your App Users Today

So if you consider yourself a savvy marketer then it’s critical that you implement a closed loop, multi-channel approach to marketing. These are just a couple examples of how you should be using Localytics in conjunction with your email provider. For more examples and assistance integrating Localytics and your email vendor, be sure to contact your Localytics Mobile Engagement Consultant.

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