Increase engagement with your users and increase your bottom line… yada yada yada. Everyone says it repeatedly but actually getting it done can be tricky. Obviously you don’t want to divert their attention while they are actively using your app, but you need them to help you market the app to the next round of potentially paying customers.
Think about rewards systems, gamification (of your games, even!), additional levels, gratuitous updates (not too many but sometimes its the easiest way to re-connect with users who just aren’t using the app but still have it installed), ratings/review requests, social components, personalized features, and of course, some gentle push reminders.
Some apps are inherently designed for more engagement – a keyboard that’s used continuously has an easier time of engaging users (generally speaking) than a game that may not be played every day. Apps are sometimes cyclical, as well – for instance, a user might go through a period of trying out photo editing/camera type apps, which leads to a lot of photo posts (especially while cooking or dining out, if the photos are to be believed), and then the activity level might drop off dramatically when the holidays are over or warm weather shows up and users are out of doors and not limited to electronic amusement due to bad weather or boredom.
Creating a plan to address the cyclical issues as well as to create a doable schedule of updates and engagement attempts takes a bit of thought and planning; getting the users to come back on their own is also a great goal, especially in an app that’s not a daily use utility.
Drop us a line if you are looking for help creating and implementing an engagement strategy, we’re always cooking up new and innovative ways to make people shake their heads and wonder how they lived without us.