Mobile Marketing Masterclass

Glossary

Retention Rate

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What is App Retention ?

Retention is an important KPI that illustrates the ability of an app to keep its users. The retention rate states the percentage of users who continues to use an app after installing it.

Retention rates refer to a specific time period, counting from the point of install. For instance, the 30-day retention rate tells app owners which share of users still use the after 30 days after installing it.

Why is Retention important?

Retention is one of the most crucial KPIs, because it is the basis for the app’s success. Only users who keep engaging with an app have the potential to contribute to its monetary success. In contrast, users who leave the app will not create any revenues from IAPs or ads.

Thus, app owners must do anything they can to increase retention rates and encourage users to keep using the app.

How to keep Users in the App?

App owners can take many different measures to keep users in the app and encourage them to come back.

Onboarding

If users do not understand how an app works immediately, chances are high that they abandon it very soon after installing.

To avoid losing users so early, apps should have an onboarding process that explains the basic features to people right after opening it for the first time. A common way is to show a couple of cards containing text and visual elements to new users. An onboarding process like this has the potential to increase retention in the very short term significantly.

Tool Tips

Tool tips are another useful approach for explaining app content to users. But instead of pushing guides and tutorials to users, tool tips are available on demand. So users have to access them willingly. It is common to implement small information-bubbles next to content or navigation element. When users click these bubbles, they open a short guide that explains the content or feature.

FAQs

Another way to provide helpful information is question-and-answer sections. They provide more helpful content but usually, they are less visible in apps than tooltips.

Push Notifications

If users have not opened an app for some time, sending push notifications is an option to get them back in. As push notifications require the consent of users, a basic level of engagement is necessary to get them to people’s devices.

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