Tag: push notifications

Increasing Customer Engagement with a Mobile App: How Does It Work?

The sales made through mobile apps in the UK account for a third of all retail spending made via mobile devices. This is just one piece of data showing how important the applications are for doing business in the digital world. Now you can engage consumers even more effectively to increase your sales with the help of your company’s mobile app. Let me take you through the features, tools and methods necessary for this.

Unique Functionalities
The main purpose of having a mobile app for your business is to use secure yet another distribution and/or marketing channel. It should build up on your website. That is why it has to offer an even richer user experience. This can be easily achieved with a native application which is designed to take advantage of the functionalities of smartphones and tablets.
For example, users can get the opportunity to make voice searches to find content, products and services more easily and quickly. If you are in fashion retail or another business for which images sell, you can have the app integrated with the camera of the smart device enabling users to share photos or to see how they look with different garments and accessories. The sky is the limit.

Attractive and Valuable Content
While some app users are ready to convert and become your customers, others simply want to gather information in a pleasant way. Target all of these segments by offering high-quality content via your mobile app. Having written content, images and video will enable you to engage the largest possible number of users.
How do you make content valuable? Use demographics and data on user behaviour and preferences to give customers what they want, be it entertaining content, practical advice related to your products and services or both. As long as your app has integrated analytics, you will receive accurate consumer data in real time and have all the tools necessary for analysing it and optimising your content and overall marketing strategy.

Easy Social Media Sharing
You know that the social media are among the most effective digital marketing channels. Around 33% of businesses in the UK generate significant lead and sales volume via them, according to a recent survey. Then why don’t you integrate your mobile app with the social media? Enabling users to share content with just one click of a button will increase your brand’s exposure without additional investment on your part. This is how you can engage new consumers interested in your products and services and in your application too.

Target Marketing
A well-built mobile up must come with a system for push notifications. These are among the most valuable tools for target marketing which you can use in the digital world, even though they have been around for a fairly short time. These notifications are automatically generated on the mobile device even if the user isn’t engaged with the app at the moment. They are useful not only for making people open your app, but for distributing powerful marketing messages. You can make announcements about new products and send promotional offers. The key to success is to segment the audience and to target them with the right message at the right time. Use your app’s analytics to help you with this.

Count on me and my team to give you a mobile app equipped with everything necessary for consumer engagement.

Planning on getting a mobile app for your business? Contact me to share your vision.

5 Key Advantages of a Mobile App for Your Business

Just a decade ago many companies, and especially small, medium-sized and local businesses, need convincing about the importance of a website for getting found by prospects and for building customer loyalty. Now managers are asking, “Why do I need an app when my website’s optimised for mobile?” As a mobile app development consultant, I’d like to introduce you to the unique marketing opportunities which the applications for smartphones and tablets have to offer.

App Store Presence
Mobile users access Apple app store and Google Play with the push of a button and watch out for new offerings every day. This will give your business’s mobile app exposure to all smartphone owners in the UK, accounting for over three quarters of the adult population. This is a fantastic way to promote your company and products on some of the most powerful platforms at present.

Customer Engagement
Once an existing or prospective customer downloads your app, this person is already engaged with your business. You will have constant presence on their mobile device and this is the foundation for getting repeat purchases and building loyalty. The application practically gives you a shortcut to retaining customers which is one of the most challenging and money-consuming tasks in marketing. My team and I will ensure that you not only have a well-functioning mobile app, but that it is especially created to engage your target audience.

Push Notifications
These messages are delivered automatically even if the customer is not actively using your app at the moment. This is a valuable instrument for telling users about new products, special offers, app features, events, company news and anything else that you want. Do these really work? A recent study has shown that the average push notification opening rate is 65% while the peak one is 80%. A marketing expert will be able to create attractive messages with compelling call to action targeting your audience for achieving top results.

Offline Interaction
You can readily choose what app features to be accessible offline to increase the level of customer engagement. These could be product catalogues, posts, audio content and much more. Nowadays, people rarely go offline, but when they do, they actively search for something to fill the gap. Wouldn’t it be great to have customers checking your products or articles instead of magazines, newspapers and other content on long flights or while travelling in the London Underground? When they go online again, they can be ready to make a purchase or take another action.

Effective Management
The performance of a website depends on the speed of the internet connection and the browser’s loading speed. A mobile app is used directly and can offer great experience even offline, as pointed out just now. These are important factors for gaining solid presence on the mobile devices and minds of customers. Furthermore, when you have an application especially tailored to the needs of your business, you can derive accurate performance analytics directly and use it for giving your marketing strategy a further boost.
The latest forecasts show that in the second quarter of 2016, there will be 43.2 million mobile app users in the UK. Your business can secure a permanent spot on their devices.

If you consider a mobile app for your business, email me or send me a message.

Going Mobile for Better Marketing and Higher Sales

Just five years ago, a business website was perfectly sufficient for a company to carry out its marketing strategy over the internet and to generate more leads and boost its sales. Now, if you are not on mobile devices, you may not even get found by a large number of consumers, who are actually looking for your product or service. According to Deloitte, 76% of adults in Britain have a smartphone and these gadgets are used for much more than making calls. Now is the time for businesses to take advantage of the mobile revolution.
Source: http://www.deloitte.co.uk/mobileuk/#feature

Endless Opportunities
With responsive design, the website of your business can offer the same kind of user experience on smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs. You will be able to sell products directly via mobile devices or have your brick-and-mortar business more easily found through integration with map applications. With just one tap on your phone number, the user will be able to call you via their phone. A mobile app, on the other hand, gives you constant presence on the mobile devices of your customers. You can exploit this for more effective marketing through push notifications. It is also possible for the app to collect valuable marketing data.
Going mobile will make it much easier for you to carry out promotional campaigns and to achieve better results with them, especially using the most popular channels at present – the social networks. According to the “Digital, Social and Mobile 2015 Report” of the We Are Social agency, 32 million people in the UK access their social media accounts via their mobile devices.
Source: http://wearesocial.sg/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-2015/

Huge Market Potential
Consumers are actively using their mobile devices to find products and retailers and to make purchases. Statistical data from comScore shows that 31.7% of smartphone users in the United Kingdom rely on their devices to locate shops while 29.3% purchase goods and services via them. Over 23% of all users use their mobile to compare product prices and features. These factors establish mobile applications and websites as powerful marketing tools.
Mobile sales continue to grow. In Q4 of 2014, 40% of all online sales in the UK were completed via smartphones and tablets, according to research of IMRG and Capgemini. This is 3% higher compared to the same quarter of 2014.
Source: http://www.imrg.org/index.php?catalog=1769

By 2024, the annual spending via mobile devices will reach £53.6 billion, according to Barclays. The value of all sales influenced by a mobile channel is predicted to reach £112 billion. They will make up nearly half of all retail sales made in the country.
Source: https://www.barclayscorporate.com/content/dam/corppublic/corporate/Documents/research/Future-of-m-commerce.pdf

Staying Competitive
What is the competition doing? Businesses focus on solidifying and diversifying their presence on mobile devices. In a survey conducted by Econsultancy among 1,412 companies in the UK, 58% of respondents said that they had employed responsive website design as part of optimising for mobile devices. Another 49% shared that they have employed mobile applications. The competition for the minds and hearts of consumers is moving towards the mobile field and it is paramount for companies to act quickly.
Source: https://econsultancy.com/blog/66543-50-fascinating-stats-about-mobile-commerce-in-the-uk-2015/

If you want to gain larger exposure, to be more competitive and to get higher returns from your marketing efforts, mobile is the answer. My role as a digital consultant is to provide assistance with the development of a complete strategy for achieving top results.

If you are ready to go mobile, get in touch. You can send me an email or call my office at Whiz and seek Philip Philipov.