While acquiring new customers keeps the business moving ahead, it is customer retention that keeps the wheels turning. So it becomes crucial to balance customer acquisition strategies with customer retention strategies, and not let one outweigh the other.

Every business is vying to be on the smartphone screen of customers. One of the ways to do this is to convert web surfers into loyal mobile app customers. [We emphasize the word ‘loyal’ because it isn’t enough to just make them download your app. They can uninstall it just as quickly if you aren’t hooking them.] So drive traffic to your app using a few strategies to keep customers returning.

But before that, ensure you are taking steps to send visitors to your app.

• Have goals and match your campaigns with them.
• Figure out which channels can be used to carry out your goals without saturating any one.
• Use benchmarks to score yourself.
• Keep CTAs on a page to the minimum – one if possible – to avoid confusing customers and to track them better.
• Constantly A/B test.
• And personalise the experience based on what the user needs.

And now for the strategies:

• The change from website to mobile app means you have done something right. If someone has downloaded your app it means they are willing to let you occupy precious real estate space on their smartphone. Instead of getting evicted before you can say mobile app, understand that apps means better loyalty and engagement with your brand, and a potentially higher AOV. Use this exposure time wisely. Use rich, relevant, targeted material to help you reach out to a nice blend of customers across various mobile channels and devices.
• Now you have the people on your app. Next track their activity. You have analytics to study your demographics and enough data to tweak your buyer persona. Additionally you can enlist the assistance of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to gauge your performance and compute your success. This way you learn what marketing efforts are most consequential, what needs to be adjusted, and what needs to be abandoned. Otherwise you won’t know what is impacting in-app behaviours and what to encourage for conversions down the line.
• The work doesn’t end with a customer installing the app and using it voraciously for about 3 days; they need to continue using it over an extended period of time. While apps are extremely utilitarian, navigating through them to find something can sometimes be a bit of an experiment, and thereby a slippery place to lose a customer’s interest. While content can be found on a website using a search engine, apps can create a similar functionality using deep-linking. This uses links specific to a location or activity within an app to take a customer directly to the relevant content or service. For instance, a deep-link created for an ad will take the visitor straight there, and you will be able to track where they came from and create a catchment.
• Deep-linking will help you track the number of click and where they came from. You can then generate reports – pattern reports, funnel reports, cohorts – for further analytical understanding. These tell you how a visitor move through your app, map the conversion paths or the drop-off points, how many retentions resulted from a particular campaign and the lifetime value of different demographical segments.

So get started with acquiring those app customers to capitalise on the dynamic mobile platform.