Customer Loyalty is More Important than you Think 

The success of a business mobile app is measured in many different ways. For some companies, nothing is more important than conversion rates or increasing the number of customers who make a purchase. For others, unique app views are paramount because it means that more new people are finding the company and seeing the brand for the first time. Regardless of how you measure success, one thing that must always be considered is customer loyalty – how loyal are app users to your particular brand name?

The Weight of Brand Loyalty in Mobile

For any business looking to market their brand, they often conceptualize their ideal customer as being whoever is the most likely to be able to influence the greatest amount of people. For example, they might target users who are extremely active on social media platforms and have a high following. The truth is, however, it doesn’t matter how many people that person is connected to if they are not loyal to your brand.

In fact, you would net far greater results to have a loyal app user with 50 social media followers advocating for your than you would with a regular app user with 5000. Why is that? Brand loyalty is everything! Especially when it comes to increasing the reach of your business mobile app.

When a customer is loyal to your brand, and to your mobile app, they are much more involved. This means that they are not only using your app regularly, but they might also be interacting with your brand through other forums as well, like on social media, and they are also telling their friends about the service they receive and the products they buy. As an added advantage, customers with higher engagement levels have been proven to regularly utilize mobile features like app sharing or referrals, which in turn drives more downloads and encourages new users.

There have been several studies dedicated to determining how increases in loyal customers relate to increases in overall profitability. For example, a 2013 report found that the average brand categorized 20% of their customer base as ‘loyal’ – and that these loyal customers visited the brand more than 10 times in a year.

How to Increase Mobile Customer Loyalty

Now that you understand the true weight of customer loyalty as it relates to your business mobile app, how do you go about guaranteeing that your customers remain loyal to your brand – and do not simply delete your app after the first use? Here are a few tips:

• Focus on users who are most likely to use apps. Rather than fighting to keep one-time app users on your website, target the users who are already using apps frequently.
• Research when and how you should be using push notifications.Push notifications are a fantastic way for apps to engage with infrequent app users, however, they have become more closely related to spam than a viable marketing tool. There is still value there, however, research how to use push notifications in a meaningful and helpful manner.
• Offer rewards or incentives for customer loyalty.Thanking your loyal customers with rewards, points or some other incentive is a surefire way to increase loyalty to your brand and to entice new users to download anse use your app.

What other great tips do you have for increasing customer loyalty or brand loyalty? What has worked for you? We want to know.