.png){kind=small}
When you go to a burger joint and order a BBQ burger with no cheese, extra bacon – that is an example of customization. If you enter that same location and they already know what you want and begin preparing before you order – that is personalization.
This is the step that most major brands are taking in their marketing strategies. The evolution of personalization uplifts consumer voice with relevancy in the product, marketing, communication, and more. There are few businesses left out of the virtual personalization loop, but not all brands are doing it right. Taking the time to learn who your consumers are, gaining reliable data, and developing strategies to use that data effectively are key.
Why Personalize?
To break it down simply – your customers expect you to. That is really the only reason you need. If the majority of your ICP requires a specific feature or incentive, you listen. Last year’s survey has shown that mobile app personalization is the number one expectation among internet and mobile users. This should be enough influence for even the most skeptic among us to roll out personalization methods. In addition to fulfilling a demand, mobile app personalization increases user engagement and overall conversions.
The fact is you can have your cake and eat it too. Mobile app personalization is excellent at improving your overall bottom line, and it doesn’t take long to see the results you are looking for once you get your process down correctly. Personalization allows the feeling of instant gratification, through notifications with special discounts, limited offers, reward programs, and more. Our mobile-driven society has a weakness for instant gratification, and this strategy has an incredibly high success rate when following this model.
Achieving Ideal Personalization
You can describe personalization as the process of building an app that meets the needs of a specific audience or user base. User experience becomes customized to users’ needs, rather than a mass-market, one-size-fits-all approach for all consumers. User experience is at the core of mobile app personalization, and achieving optimal success starts with a solid UX.
We can divide personalization into two specific areas:
Personalization inside the app: Within the app, achieve personalization through features like dialogue boxes, search recommendations by location or preferences, discounts and special offers suited to the content the user utilizes.
Personalization outside the app: From the outside, personalize apps through push notifications. Using real-world brand, Starbucks, whose personalization efforts made headlines, uses user behavior data to craft special offers, discounts, and coupons that complement each specific user. Gathering first-party data directly from users gives prime details to push the perfect campaigns for each segment. Use specifications in demographics, location, behavior, and more.
Test and Optimize
We include things like default search settings, location-based form autofill, promotional offers, and suggestions based on in-app behavior with the clear goal of making the app more personalized and convenient to use. If not done correctly, they can have the exact opposite effect though. Search defaults can only add extra work to the user if they are irrelevant and force the user to clear them before being able to search for anything. Location-based form auto-fills can also add extra work if they don’t match up with the actual user details. If you want to make sure your personalization efforts hit the mark, you need to keep your app on a very short leash. Test and optimize it through every new stage of features using qualitative analytics.
The Finish Line
Personalization is more than just an evolution of customization. It is now a demand to meet in order to keep users engaged. Provide instant gratification with a clean UX, deliver the features that users expect, and make the entire user experience convenient.
BoardActive is a software installation that propels mobile app engagement and retention through, personalized notifications, first-party data gathering, and attribution measurement. Schedule a demo to see the results firsthand!