How to increase mobile app engagement with beacons

Marketers are flocking towards mobile app development for their companies. We can mainly attribute this to the exceptional popularity of mobile apps among millennials considering that 21% of millennials open an app more than 50 times in a day. With mobile apps expecting to generate a revenue of around $189 billion by 2020 through the app stores and in-app advertisements, the amount of power that mobile applications hold over businesses today is unsurprising.

Challenges in App Marketing

Although the mobile applications have enough potential to help scale up the profits for businesses across all verticals, app marketing comes with its own set of challenges. App marketers often tend to overlook user retention and engagement in their drive to increase user acquisition rate. User retention and engagement, however, is the biggest challenge faced by app marketers today based on Mobile App Performance survey by InMobi.

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Why increasing mobile app engagement is essential.

As an app marketer, if your focus is to generate revenues through a mobile app,  a noteworthy fact to keep in mind is that 95% of the U.S. adult population who own smartphones prefers free apps. The top-grossing mobile apps among the popular mobile app categories are predominantly the free apps available on app stores. Since the free apps trend nullifies the possibility of generating revenue at the time of user acquisition, it becomes inevitable for developers to focus on generating revenues through in-app advertising and user engagement.

Boost millennial engagement with BLE Beacons, QR Codes & NFC

How mobile app engagement increases when app marketing meets beacon marketing

Beacons are tiny devices that deliver notifications and marketing campaigns straight to the end user’s mobile app when they are within the range of a beacon. Based on the location where the beacons are deployed, they deliver relevant notifications to the app or direct the users to a specific landing page.

Combining mobile app development with beacon marketing serves as a pathway for using location intelligence to promote user retention and engagement within your mobile app. Beacon marketing is a targeted approach to engaging users the right way by delivering notifications relevant to their location and time of the day. You can consider outsourcing app development if you don’t have in house capabilities of developing your own beacon-enabled mobile app. 

You can also leverage Beaconstac and Kumulos partnership to increase your mobile app engagement and also get access to a robust mobile app performance management as well as a comprehensive proximity marketing solution.

Most promising app categories & how they can increase mobile app engagement with beacons

1. Shopping

Beacons are the best proximity marketing devices for your business’ mobile app.

With beacons, you can make your in-app advertisements and promotional campaigns more accurate and engaging by delivering real-time offers to consumers based on their location.

Beacon campaigns on discount sales and offers

Retailers deploy beacons in strategic locations such as the entrance of the mall and food court to inform consumers about their ongoing discount sales within the mall.

How beacon campaigns can help increase your CTR

Push notifications on new launches

You can also deliver push notifications via your business app to inform consumers about new launches as soon as they enter your store or pass by an aisle of new launches within the store.

Loyalty programme offers at checkout

Beacons deployed at checkout counters can be a brilliant way of compelling consumers to subscribe to the loyalty programme to avail exclusive discounts before they make the payment for their purchase.

Beacons for in-store navigation and locating specific products

Beacons can help you increase mobile app engagement by providing your customers with a better way of navigating inside your store outlet and effortlessly find the products they are searching.

Know why beacons are the unstoppable force of proximity marketing

2.   Education

Educational institutions have been using beacons in their operations to enhance the learning experience for quite a while now. However, we have already established that the millennial population is more inclined towards mobile apps. Since we are currently living in the era of digital learning, it’s time for education-related mobile apps to start using beacons to serve the students better.

Announcement via Push notifications

There are educational apps like the TED that are helping millions of people stay inspired and motivated every day. Such apps can use beacon technology to send out location-based announcements & alerts on an upcoming TED talk nearby.

Important facts pop-up based on the location

Many mobile apps like Science Journal, Curiosity, and Just Facts: Did You Know help users discover interesting facts. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if you are passing by a historical place that you have no idea about and you receive a notification on exciting and fun facts related to the location? With Bluetooth beacons, you can do precisely that for your educational apps.

Availability of reference books in stores nearby and offers on them

Educational apps that also sell physical books via bookstores can help customers know the availability status of the books they searched for as the customer passes by a book store.

3. Lifestyle

Lifestyle apps include apps ranging from food-delivery and cab-service apps like UBER to travel and accommodation-related apps such as Booking.com and Airbnb. Here are some ways for lifestyle category apps to increase mobile app engagement.

Reminder to order food around lunchtime

With beacons, you can schedule reminders to order food around lunch. These beacons when strategically placed in an UBER cab can help deliver a reminder to the passenger to order their food from UBER Eats while they are commuting in the taxi. The same strategy can be adopted by other restaurant apps to send out reminders by placing beacons in malls or other high traffic areas near the restaurant and schedule the reminder for different times of the day.

Build a contactless menu for your patrons

Top-rated restaurants in the locality

Another way beacons can be helpful to food-related apps is when they are deployed in areas of high traffic to send out push notifications on top-rated restaurants within the customer’s vicinity.

Availability of houses for rent/sale in the vicinity

Apps like Airbnb and Realtor can benefit from this use-case by placing beacons on the homes that are currently open for sale/rent. Beacons are excellent devices for realtors to generate more leads and close deals faster.

Use keychain beacons for real estate, events, and on-the-move applications

4. Entertainment & Events

Entertainment apps range from movies and music apps to event bookings and information apps like Bookmyshow.

Movie & Event schedules

Beacons can be used to send out movie and events schedules as a way of increasing mobile app engagement for customers when they are crossing a movie theatre or a mall.

Ticket sales and promotional offers

Besides increasing mobile app engagement, beacons can also help increase ticket sales accomplished via your mobile app by sending out real-time discount offers and flash sale coupons for a movie with high demand. Such strategies help in bringing back the customers to your app each time they wish to purchase a movie ticket eventually leading to user retention.

Show timing reminders via beacons

Show timing reminders are especially useful for those customers who prefer to pre-book their tickets in advance and lounge around the mall before the show begins.

5 verticals flourishing with the use of Beacon technology

Are you looking to integrate beacon technology into your app to increase your mobile app engagement and user retention? Schedule a demo with Beaconstac or check out our product offerings for a wide range of beacon devices integrated with an intuitive dashboard that helps you effortlessly create custom landing pages.

• Author Details

Author Details

Chaitra Joshi

Check out other posts by Chaitra on Beaconstac! You can also explore the related posts below to help you maximize your ROI.

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