Posted by A user downloads your app. Success!
Except… why aren’t they using it?
To find out what’s wrong, we set up an unusual consulting session between an entrepreneur and a digital marketing consultant—and filmed it so you can benefit too.
Lavinia Hajji is the founder of Dance Embassy. It’s a studio that teaches dance classes, and she created a new app to help customers book classes—but the app isn’t getting the traction she hoped. We connected her with Emma Bates, the former head of global marketing at Away, who’s now the co-founder and CEO of the app-based company Diem.
Here were three fixes that Bates proposed:
1. Incentivize!
Even if users download your app, they may not develop a habit for using it. “Create a reason for them to do it,” Bates says. You could offer discounts for purchases made through the app, for example, or gamify the experience with special prizes for every 5 or 10 purchases.
2. Segment Your Audience
“For certain demographics, different things drive them,” Bates says. She offers a hypothetical: Maybe young women who already took a dance class will be motivated by a push notification, whereas young women who haven’t taken a dance class will convert better after seeing influencer stories on Instagram. There’s no way to predict what will work, so Bates suggests doing a lot of experimentation. “Think of ways that you can reach them with different formats and then move them through he funnel in different ways,” she says.
3. Call Your Customer
A user almost purchased something, but then they closed the app and never came back. Why? It’s the question plaguing many entrepreneurs—and Bates says that, at the very beginning, there’s only one real way to find out. “Just reach out to them,” she says. Call your customer and nicely ask why they didn’t finish purchasing. Was it a bug in the app, or did they just change their mind? You’ll learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and you can then update your app accordingly.
But that’s just the start. For more great insights on how to boost your app, watch the video above.
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