Conversion is the lifeblood of a business and a main focus for brands large and small. When apps are built thoughtfully with conversion goals as part of their mobile strategy, brands can be rewarded with strong business outcomes and loyal customers. When blunt force is used to drive conversion (whether through unoptimized design or businessversus user-centric engagement) the opposite can become true.

For a retailer, the obvious conversion action is product purchase, but there are microconversion actions along the way for any business that can ultimately lead to purchase. Examples include viewing product images or videos, reading reviews, socially sharing or adding mobile wallet coupons — each offers a signal for greater likelihood to purchase. In this whitepaper, we’ll explore tactics to help you build an effective conversion strategy.

Design For Conversion

Planning your app’s user experience around your conversion goals creates a more seamless user experience while also minimizing friction towards a user completing the desired actions. For example, Walmart’s addition of its Savings Catcher to its app is a prime example of simplifying conversion. The Savings Catcher feature gives Walmart shoppers confidence they’re getting the lowest price out there. If they happen to find an item at a competitor’s store for a lower price, Walmart will give the shopper the difference back via an eGift card. After adding this feature, Walmart’s app jumped from 4 million to 14 million users, as it simplified the price comparison process down to a few taps and created a more streamlined user experience.

Similarly, ridesharing apps such as Uber and Lyft have also mastered this idea — users can easily request a ride in a few taps (no need to call a driver, tell them your address, etc.) and a driver will be dispatched to their desired location on demand.

Analyze To Optimize

Both the Walmart and Uber use cases are based on heavy-lifting development resources and cyclical app store updates to optimize conversion rates. To optimize conversion more rapidly, marketers must take the reins and use mobile engagement to impact business outcomes.

Drive Conversion With Mobile Engagement Tools

Meeting both your users’ and business’ needs is essential to creating a seamless user experience that drives conversion actions. Using a welcome series to explain the benefits of taking certain actions, such as opting in to push notifications or giving the app access to personal information like contacts, location or calendar, can dramatically increase your conversion results. For example, a customized app experience or exclusive offers to partially registered users can encourage completion of specific goals.

A best practice is to use multiple engagement channels and forms of messaging to drive users through a process. For example, a retailer could send users a tailored push notification paired with an in-app message that links to a specific campaign landing page with a speedier offer. Based on each user’s response, the retailer can trigger more specific automated messaging workflows to respond to their behaviors and drive them closer to converting. These experiences can provide a great engagement experience for users and drive your engagement rate higher, all without needing to update the app.

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For example, during its anniversary sale, REI implemented a mobile wallet campaign, offering a best-in-class experience delivered across multiple mobile touchpoints. The outdoor retailer sent app users a push notification sharing its offer, which deeplinked to detailed message center content that included a link to “add to Apple Wallet.” This allowed users to easily add the promotion to their mobile wallet, in a few taps. REI followed up by sending an automated push notification reminding users who downloaded the pass to take advantage of the sale. Once the offer expired, the image on the pass was updated to notify users that the same pass would be updated in the future with new deals.

Target And Finesse Your Messaging

The ultimate key to conversion is to keep your messaging relevant and responsive to your users’ behaviors in order to best serve their needs. Whatever channel(s) you choose for communicating with your audience, aim to use tools like A/B testing, audience segmentation and marketing automation for improved results.

We’ve found a drastic difference when brands use highly targeted messaging in favor of broadcast (the same message sent to everyone). The result: a 293% higher engagement rate on average, and up to 7x greater engagement with notifications in different industry verticals. Even a single targeting element, such as location, can lead to a 4x increase in response.

The United States Tennis Association (USTA) used sophisticated targeting during its U.S. Open event to drive last-minute ticket sales. To do so, USTA targeted app users that had previously looked at tickets within the app, had already been to the tournament (as measured by beacon proximity to a U.S. Open ticket booth) and were currently in the Tri-State Area. This high-level of targeting achieved massive response, with 32 percent of recipients tapping the Buy Tickets Now button.

Be User, Not Channel Focused

Build your conversion strategy from a user’s perspective. For instance, if they add a wish list item to your app on their phone, they expect it to be there when they visit your website, and vice versa. As a retailer, what if you gave your high-value shoppers the option to buy through the app, pick it up in store and get special treatment by skipping the line? When they get within 50 meters of a store, a sales associate is notified. When the customer arrives at the counter, the item is already wrapped and the receipt is tucked in the bag. This is a great user experience that spans channels.

User-centric mobile data is key to long-term conversion efforts. It’s important to remember conversion, particularly with apps, is not a one-time event. Brands must understand and monitor conversion behavior and metrics over time in order to evaluate efforts.

For example, funnel analysis can help you measure users’ progress through the stages of your conversion funnel and prioritize development efforts to optimize conversion processes. Once you’ve identified potential roadblocks or speed bumps in conversion funnels, you can use cohort analysis to test the impact of optimization experiments against different user populations, including longerterm metrics such as LTV (lifetime value). You can also begin with tracking your acquisition results using cohort analysis to discover which sources generate the strongest return. Brands can also feed individual user-level data to different systems to enrich customer profiles or execute actions across other channels — from triggering a targeted email, to providing an exceptional omnichannel experience that earns long-term loyalty.

Beyond conversion, it’s also important to think ahead to retention and re-engaging lapsed users. To build a successful longterm conversion strategy, brands need a sophisticated approach that considers all phases of the mobile engagement loop, and employs a targeted, multi-tiered view informed by user-level data, analytics and testing.