The Top 7 Reasons that Personalization is Important to Mobile App Marketing

The standard user experience – typically associated with mobile apps – is going through a rapid transformation. Apart from the new and innovative ways of presenting content and engaging audiences, these days, apps are also offering a variety of user experiences for different types of individuals.

Instead of providing a single, static user experience for everyone, targeting each person on an individual level – with appropriate features and content – is quickly becoming the industry standard. For example, something basic like a “cookie cutter” push notification, while it may have worked well in the past, will no longer drive the right level of engagement. Rather, it is the “personalized push notification,” which is based on user preferences, that ultimately makes today’s apps more engaging.

Let’s take a look at why personalized user experience is an indispensable feature for today’s mobile app marketing strategies…

 

1. In-app purchase gets a boost

By far, it is the principal reason behind the widespread adoption of personalized user experience. Let’s explain this with a few befitting examples. While playing a mobile game some players can show more responsiveness to the temptation of buying new gears, chits and tools through in-app purchases just because they prefer to remain loaded.

In contrast, there will be many players who would like to go for an in-app purchase only when their resource get emptied or just when they need to buy coins to continue playing. Obviously, both these audience cannot be addressed with the same in-app purchase offers. Here comes the need for personalizing in-app ads and merchandise.

 

2. User retention

Apps that primarily monetize through subscription need to retain their users as long as possible. It is not just about giving them contents to engage and interact, and it is also about building a highly personalized connection so that they cannot even think of dumping your app into oblivion.

If you have a retail app, it is important to help them browse the products in a preferred way and make their preferred items and categories easily available. It is also important to offer recommendations that suit their taste and buying behavior. From notifications to product page layout to the payment gateway, in every aspect, the individual preference should be addressed with your retail app.

 

3. A push to user interactions

Passive presence in an app ultimately leads to complete absence and deletion of the app. Such is the experience of the vast majority of apps. This is why app developers are now more focused to make users act and respond than just being passive spectators. Personalization can make a strong push to the user interactions. There are ways to implement it and let us explain with only one example.

Within a travel booking app, a first-time user most often slides through the offerings, contents and get away with a quick impression. This is where personalization should step in. Make it interactive with some optional questions, and in most cases, they respond exerting their gross choices. When it is done, you can come up with appropriate categories, contents and listings for them and keep them engaged. The mantra is, never stop asking and never ever allow them to get away with an unverified impression.

 

4. Create a loyal audience

Some people just unknowingly tap on the ‘Evernote’ app or ‘Dropbox’ when they need taking notes or saving a file on their mobile. This explains the true loyal behavior of app users. Your app should be part and parcel of the daily life of users. But these days, this doesn’t happen without personalization of the app for individual users.

You need to help them get in touch with their preferred contents almost instantly when they open the app. You need to make the most useful features available in the right context and most relevant time. Most important of all, your users unknowingly should acknowledge that the app knows a lot about them and makes an inseparable tool.

 

5. Brand positioning

A brand is the sum total of user appreciation, loyalty and widespread awareness of its offerings. Any mobile app when gasping for growth actually strives to become reputed and applauded brand. But that doesn’t happen without being customer-centric. The best way to remain customer-centric and audience-focused for the sake of brand positioning is to personalize the app in all attributes.

The personalization doesn’t happen with your focus on the single business motive. It is the usability and usefulness of the app from a user’s perspective that matters most. Why should the user be interested? What is there for each separate user with your offerings? Do your content and offerings address a group of users and leave aside others? Personalization can only happen and create a wider brand presence with these questions addressed.

 

6. Involving user feedback to make the app better

One of the most important ways to address individual users is to engage them with your app development. After the initial unrolling and first wave of user acquisition, there should be a persistent effort to get user feedback and opinions about the betterment of the app and about the ways different user preferences, as well as pain points, can be addressed.

The personalization of your app user experience with every subsequent update can only make confident steps if you have been in constant touch with the users through several inbuilt feedback loops and remain wide awake to hear user opinions.

 

7. Personalization beyond the digital experience

For many app niches, the need for personalization doesn’t end with digital experience or the mobile app user experience. In fact, for niches like retail, sports, media, etc. the personalization of the app should be in sync with the offline activities. If a business has planned an event or unleashed a new product range in stores, the personalization should start with the event and remain visible through app-centric communication and user experience.

 

Conclusion

Every user is different in aspirations, user habits, preferences, demographic aspects and many other aspects. Naturally, “one size fits all” type of app marketing is just outdated and irrelevant as there are too many apps across every niche and when every one of them is looking forward to addressing users individually. Personalization is no longer the cherry on the cake of the marketing mix, but it is now the key ingredient.

 

Author Bio

Juned Ghanchi is a co-founder and CMO at IndianAppDevelopers, a mobile development company which offers to hire app developers India for mobile solutions. Juned has Ten years of experience in online marketing, especially in the tech sector.