Every app needs a marketing funnel. In other words, a complete strategy that helps you grow your app's user base. In this series, we'll show you in detail how the Purple DS app funnel can play a crucial role in your marketing plan and ultimately help you increase the number of your users.

The Purple DS App Funnel

Part I covers the first step of the marketing funnel and looks at how to increase awareness of your app with the support of the Purple DS Recommendations Engine.

Part II covers the second and third steps of the marketing funnel, i.e. how to get prospects to install your app and eventually discover your content.

Part III covers the fourth and fifth steps of the marketing funnel. On the one hand, it's about how to use individual campaigns within the app as key actions. And on the other hand, how to make your customers return to your app again and again(retention).

Part III:

In the first two parts of this three-part series, we already covered the first three steps of the five-step Purple DS App Funnel. You've already figured out how to generate awareness with the Purple DS Recommendations Engine. How to get prospects to install your app and why a great user experience leads to high engagement and ultimately an increase in your user base and revenue. Last but not least, we will focus on the fourth step on the one hand. Namely, how to create customized offers and triggers through individual campaigns. And on the other hand, in the fifth step of the funnel, how to keep your customers coming back to your app with article-based publishing, among other things.

App Marketing Funnel Step 4: Key Action

At a time when mobile information overload continues to increase, it's becoming more and more important to take advantage of everything mobile has to offer. It means leveraging everything from mobile-specific ads to call extensions to call-only ads. In this regard, your app can make all the difference when it comes to how you get your users to interact with your products and become aware of your offers.

Purple DS supports various monetization methods

Purple DS Publishing Suite offers various custom offers and triggers. You have the choice to integrate the different monetization options like Entitlement (direct), Analytics (indirect) and Marketing (lateral) into your app. This way, you can easily implement your individual monetization strategy.

Use advertising opportunities also for own purposes

However, we also recommend that you use the various advertising options within your app for your own purposes. In addition to offering advertising space to other companies and using it as a source of revenue, we believe it is just as important that you frequently advertise your own offerings in your app.

Best practice example Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone magazine, for example, regularly uses the banner ad space within its own app to promote annual subscriptions or free readings. In addition, you can also consider offering a 14-day trial with instant access to the current issue to entice new customers.

App Marketing Funnel Step 5: Retention

There is something very important that unfortunately far too many companies forget. It may be at the end of the marketing app funnel, i.e. after someone has made a purchase, but it's actually just the beginning. Because at this point, you have the opportunity to build a deeper relationship with your customers. And you should take advantage of it. If done right, this step alone can significantly increase your sales. The final step of the app funnel is retention - or the art of keeping your customers coming back and buying from you.

Purple DS offers the possibility to combine kiosk and newsfeed

The most common tools to get your customers to revisit your app are push notifications, deep links, and interconnectivity between web and app.

Moreover, one of the most efficient ways is to combine newsstand and newsfeed and stay connected with your users by publishing regularly. The exact frequency depends on the nature of your application and can vary from 10-30 posts per day or one post per week. As a rule of thumb, you need to keep your users updated on a regular basis.

"Regular Publishing" at a Glance:

Why?

- Increase brand loyalty

- Monetization of your content

- Keep your users, customers and employees up to date

How?

- Use the short format rather than the long format, e.g. to hint your articles

- Post company updates, newsletters, blog articles, special offers, etc.

- Easy reuse of content from other sources such as magazines or brochures

Purple DS also lets you customize your push notifications - including icons or different text colors. So that they stand out in the various notifications that someone receives on their smartphone (Android only). In addition, Purple DS allows for kiosk synchronization to retrieve specific output data instantly without full kiosk synchronization. This also allows you to push out your latest newsfeed articles to generate reach and draw users back to your app.

An example of a typical use case might look like this: You publish a new issue and send a push notification. When a user opens the app via the push notification, the kiosk is not yet fully synchronized (new issue is still unknown). At this moment, the app immediately pulls the new issue data from the backend. Full kiosk synchronization is not required in this case. Learn more about how to enable push notifications in Purple DS Manager.

Missed the first parts? Continue reading here:

How the Purple DS App Funnel can help you expand your user base (Part I).

How the Purple DS App Funnel can help you expand your user base (Part II).

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