How Email Marketing Helps Mobile App Startups
- Updated on: 2018-01-31
- Read original article here
If you think that email marketing is a beaten and outdated method that has lost its relevance years ago, you should reconsider your point of view.
There must be a reason why countless companies, including most of Jelvix customers, just adore email marketing and squeeze everything out of it!
We will try to overview the issue to understand if it makes sense to overcome the fear of loss and to invest in email marketing if you are a startup. Since we at Jelvix provide software development services to many different industries, we see the broad picture that can be useful here.
Did you know that:
According to an online survey based on the festive newsletter of Adobe in 2016, 40% of the polled consumers reported that the best way to contact them via a mobile device is email.
For your information, email distribution brings significant income (≈ 4 times more than the invested sum), which is another proof in favor of this method. Email marketing is among the most effective and staying relevant tools for increasing interest of the audience and attracting customers.
However, not everything is so wonderful in the world of email marketing. It is well-known that emails show a very meager percentage of clicks on the links – only 4%. It is also evident that our mailboxes are clogged with tens of thousands of emails, and sending advertisements to emails continues day and night, that is why your letter has almost no chance to attract the user’s attention.
Do not forget that email can boast a higher percentage of clicks on links through mobile devices. 53% of electronic messages are read from mobile devices. Moreover, 23% of recipients who see a message on the screen of their mobile gadget are most probably to open it later. From every four clicks on the links in the letter, one click is made through mobile devices.
All of these stunning statistics point to the fact that the mobile environment is the best piece of digital territory for promoting applications.
Your company most probably has a ready-made list of email addresses of subscribers. Use it to the fullest extent.
Begin to act: attract subscribers with a beautiful mailing HTML format. Do you think they will be enraged when they receive another unnecessary message? On the contrary, they will be proud and happy to know that you rank them as favorites and trust them to beta test your application.
Take a look at Echograph’s letter, in which the company offers to test their application. The text is unambiguous and in essence. There is only a description of some steps and pictures explaining how the recipient of the letter can begin to test the application.
When users send you feedback on the results of beta testing, use this as an excuse to send them a thank you letter. Before doing so, just make sure that there is some extra included in the thank you letter. Some free application update, for example.
Take a look at what Dropmark has come up with. There is a letter of thanks for those who participated in the Dropmark beta test. First of all, the company thanks users for beta testing of the application. And then it says that beta participants can get an improved version of the application at a special price.
Emails should be concise and straight to the point. In other words, cut to the chase.
This is a “military” style of electronic correspondence, nothing superfluous. If you need to explain something – use bulleted lists. The ability to save words takes on immense significance here.
In the world of mobile application marketing, things are almost the same. Mailing service allows you to send any letter a bunch of times, but only the most precise and riveting letters can claim the attention of consumers.
Look, for example, at the excellent email newsletter from FreshDirect, promoting their applications for Android, iPhone and iPad. As you can see, the message immediately proclaims the main idea, and in focus there is a mobile application. More importantly, there are large buttons with direct links to AppStore and PlayMarket, which allows users to directly download the application to their devices.
You are delighted that users are downloading your application. However, later you discover that some people started deleting it in the first days of use, thus confirming the statistics that 80% of applications are deleted in the first three days after the initial download.
Do you want to avoid this situation? Do not panic – include an explanatory letter in an app installer or send it via newsletter to the user until the three days have elapsed. Before that, it is necessary to automate the newsletter so to save time and make sure that your explanatory letter acquaints the user with the functionality of the application in an accessible form.
Let’s get an idea of how an explanatory letter should be organized, looking at the application for travelers Hitlist. Hitlist found that new users did not actively use the downloaded application. To stir them, the company developed a mailing based on the behavior and configured for the necessary triggers.
At first sight, this letter is rather dry and plain. But as soon as users start reading, they will understand that this letter will help resolve the difficulties that arise when trying to deal with the application. It feels like Hitlist can read the minds of its users! The letter offers us stop worrying and begin to act, even if we have not decided on dates or directions yet. The newsletter promises the recipients the solution to all problems associated with planning a trip.
Unlike the explanatory letter giving an idea of the basic application’s functionality, this letter draws the user’s attention to other exciting features that are underappreciated.
Such email reminders can help users rediscover the benefits of the application, which will help the application to “live” on the mobile device longer.
To compose such a letter, try to find out which features in the application are the most popular and used ones. Various analytical tools such as Appcues can help you with that.
Learn the Swarm newsletter to better understand the mechanics of the work of such letters. As you noticed, the letter immediately directs the user’s attention to the new functions of the application. No less important is that the letter has two buttons with a call to try new opportunities. Moreover, the letter contains a direct link to Swarm, and the click will transfer the user directly to the messenger.
Your company should be able to obtain the latest information which will help to keep a hand on the pulse in relations with consumers. Here, the analytics of applications comes into play again. With it, you can track in what aspects of the application people are most active, and, based on such data, adjust the content of the mailings to their interests.
For example, keep an eye on what products the user most often browses and which pages of the application have remained open longer than others. Then, take the first step and impress customers by sending them a selection of desired products with pleasant discounts.
For example, this personalized newsletter from Amazon.com is aimed at people interested in Canon cameras. Perhaps these users were viewing Canon cameras in the Amazon application or on their website, and this prompted the company to send this group of customers an up-to-date personalized letter.
Anyone who neglects data from a user profile disregards the opportunity to win their loyalty. Increasingly, emails leave a feeling that we try to sell the goods using the standard phrases. Consumers look such emails through and delete them, barely reading.
Therefore, you need to move beyond the standard approach if you want to please the users. The main idea: collect as much users information as possible while they are browsing through the application. This will help to create personalized emails for each group of recipients in the future.
Collect these and other accessible information as well:
Concluding our overview of the most beneficial advantages of email marketing based on our experience in advising email marketing to our clients in the software development sector, healthcare, logistics, and many other industries, we can surely state two things – it is always a relevant strategy, which companies have been resorting to for a very long time; It is a very profitable technique. Therefore, whatever the cost, be sure to apply twice as much effort working on marketing mailings and making them as personalized as possible – that’s a great resolution for 2018.
If you are still not sure how to deal with it, such a service as Benchmark will become a great helper to you. The service’s team has an extensive experience in email marketing and knows well how to promote an app successfully.
