The foundation of customer engagement is data.
Although customer data receives the majority of focus evidenced by the argument over first- versus third-party data, it’s equally it’s critical for marketers to understand other types of data, such as metrics, benchmarks, and key performance indicators (KPIs).
With the use of this data, it is possible to determine which customer engagement efforts and programs are effective and which ones need to be redesigned.
However, while there are numerous perspectives from which to look at engagement and performance, not all of them are created equally.
In this blog post, I’ll explain:
- What app engagement metrics are
- Why do they matter
- Some app engagement metrics that can work wonders
Table of Contents
What are App Engagement Metrics?
App engagement metrics provide you with information regarding the effectiveness of your app and will keep you updated on your customer retention, engagement, conversion, and revenue generation.
Keeping track of your app downloads is a smart place to start, but this measure might be slightly deceptive because most apps are only used once before being deleted.
Before we dive in, it’s important to keep in mind that not all of the following app metrics will apply to your company, so think about that before you start tracking them.
Read also: The What’s What of Customer Experience Automation
Why Do App Engagement Metrics Matter?
Without app engagement metrics, businesses cannot identify whether their apps are successful or unsuccessful.
Companies without precise metrics must rely on broad metrics like total sales or total downloads. These top-level signs may mask the fact that the program may be losing money or users more quickly than it is bringing in new ones.
Companies can identify these problems and take action thanks to app metrics. They can utilize app analytics software to track the stats of your mobile application. When users perform actions like logins or purchases, this software records the data and compiles it on a dashboard.
This enables app developers to pose queries, investigate theories, and come to better business and marketing judgments. There are a huge amount of metrics you can monitor, but it’s ideal to concentrate on the 4-5 key performance indicators (KPIs) that are most closely related to the objectives of your app.
Read also: 9 Customer Management Strategies To Nurture Brand Loyalty
Some Magic Metrics To Track Your App Engagement
Now, let’s take a look at some of the most important app engagement metrics for any business.
Retention Rate
Since users can’t interact with your app if they aren’t using it anymore, retention is likely the most crucial KPI for mobile marketers.
The first step in lowering churn and retaining more of your audience is to acknowledge when and if it is occurring.
There are various ways to quantify retention, but for our purposes, we’ll focus on range retention, which measures the number of users who have been retained by comparing their numbers from one week, month, or other date range to those from a subsequent date range of equal size.
Therefore, range retention can be calculated by simply dividing the total number of users over a current period of time (let’s say the last month) by the total number of users over a previous period of time (say, the month prior to that).
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The Dreaded Churn Rate
Your churn rate measures the other side of the equation, i.e., how many app users are leaving in a given time frame, whereas retention rate shows you how many of your customers you’re keeping around.
As a result, figuring out your churn is straightforward: all you have to do is divide your retention rate by one.
Monthly Active Users (MAUs)
Understanding your monthly active users (MAU) is a terrific method to obtain a rough idea of what your engaged audience looks like for the majority of apps.
Depending on how your firm tracks things, this metric identifies someone as an MAU if they log an app session in a given month or for a specific 30-day period that might be classified as a month.
You can determine how successful your customer acquisition and retention efforts are by tracking the MAU count. Although you should think of MAU as a directional signal—since, of course, a customer can stop using your app for a month and still return—you should also consider it as a metric.
Read also: Revenue vs Profit: A Simple Explanation of Income
Daily Active Users (DAUs)
While knowing the number of monthly app users is interesting for some brands, knowing the number of daily users gives them an insight into the number of how many highly-engaged customers they have.
After all, it’s one thing for people to download and keep your app, but your engagement efforts will be more successful if your audience uses it frequently and actively.
Each user of your app is counted just once, whether they use it just once a day or hundreds of times a day because this pertains to each individual user, not the number of sessions. DAU can be computed for a particular day (for example, yesterday’s DAU), or it can be averaged over a period of time.
Read also: How to Sell on Facebook Marketplace: Steps, Tips, and Lessons
Stickiness
A micro-level view of recurring user activity is provided by daily sessions per DAU, but stickiness broadens that view by integrating a larger monthly viewpoint.
Stickiness, a statistic that reveals how engaged and likely to return your audience is, is obtained by dividing DAU by MAU. The more closely MAU and DAU are related, the better your software is in luring users back repeatedly.
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Return on Investment
This is sort of the pinnacle of KPIs for mobile marketing.
Knowing how much value a campaign generates in comparison to the amount of money spent on it can be a crucial and important tool in formulating future strategies.
Unfortunately, because of the haziness of the contributing elements, figuring this out can be a little challenging.
For instance, you might examine the money brought in by conversions made through a specific campaign, but there might be other elements at play that had nothing to do with the campaign itself.
However, if there is internal agreement on what is being valued as a return (profit, net revenue, etc.) and what the campaign’s investment expenditures were, return on investment (ROI) can still be determined.
Read also: Track These 15 Marketing Metrics To Grow Your Business
The Verdict
There is no one surefire way to turn data into a successful campaign; if there were, the marketer’s job would consist of checking a few boxes in the appropriate order and then sitting back to watch the conversions come in.
The KPIs listed above, however, can help to provide a clearer picture of how effectively your mobile marketing initiatives are performing and indicate potential areas for development.