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How to Engage Millennials on Mobile Apps

This article originally appeared on Apptentive’s blog and can be found here.

Millennials — the word still occupies public discourse, and rightly so. Whether it is forcing consumer giants to think of new ways to fix declining sales of fabric softener or inspiring innovations in industries, millennials are reshaping businesses.

Considering that the millennials are a smartphone generation, app advertisers, too, are trying to catch the attention and engage millennials on mobile apps. What are some of the ways app advertisers can speak to the millennials to keep them engaged? We share some of the most important tips to keep in mind when engaging millennials on your apps.

1. Be unique in what you offer

There’s a reason why Snapchat has the kind of success it enjoys. By being a pioneer in its format of letting users share pictures that appear only for a couple of seconds, Snapchat hooked millennials early on with its different approach that proved highly engaging. The short-lived nature of the content also gave the young audiences plenty of options to share and discover content in new ways. Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and Pokemon Go apps all shared this unique advantage of selling something different to the audience, and were all met with huge success. The latest trend-chasing apps to hit the App Store are a virtual take on the hugely popular fidget spinner — while how wise is it an idea is open to debate, but is an example of how app developers are constantly trying to offer something new to the audience that seeks instant gratification.

Be sure to know the pulse of your audience and offer innovative, highly engaging content that can keep your users attention for long-term success in the app stores.

2. Have a social media strategy

This comes as no surprise. Millennials are on social, and taking advantage of these channels can help take your brand’s message to the right audiences. Keeping your target audience engaged through a creative social media strategy can help to boost the app’s organic reach and keep engagement levels high.

Cleverly using social media not only keeps your millennial audience coming back, but also has the potential to influence their peers. Research suggests that 25% of millennials share their online shopping content to their social networks, generating clickbacks per link that are 30% above average. This can be a golden opportunity to get organic users by brand advocacy on social media by word-of-mouth. The trick is in careful listening of your audience behavior.

3. Smooth the pain points

App engagement can drop for many reasons: cluttered experiences, slow load time, long onboarding process, poor product range, cart abandonment, complex checkout process, etc. Get your users to stay with the app by smoothening out the pain points. Offer the audiences speed, efficiency and convenience to use the app. This can be in varied ways for different app categories. For instance, for eCommerce players, making mobile payments secure and fast is one way to minimize the issues of cart abandonment.

While consistent engagement with the users is a key to user retention, the same old formats of push notifications can make your app suffer. Learn how to write better push notifications and experiment with new ideas, such as using emojis that can actually boost engagement 85%.

4. Experiment with AI

With Siri and Alexa, we already see conversational experiences that drive modern-day app interactions. With wise use of chatbots, app marketers can offer personalized experience as well as minimize the need to navigate between different pages within the app, improving user experience and engagement. This can prove to be highly beneficial for taxi-hailing apps, food delivery apps as well as eCommerce apps. With their ability to provide the app marketers with an in-depth knowledge of user behavior, AI-powered chatbots can also bring a whole new level of targeting capabilities.

Summary

Reaching millennial consumers continues to be a challenge for marketers, but it’s never been more important to have an innovate app marketing strategy than now. The brands that have been able to make millennials a center of their app marketing strategy have been the ones to have successfully managed to retain and engage users, as well as taste long term success on the App Store.

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