The Evolving Mobile App User

1to1media.com

Mobile wallets and enterprise apps are just the beginning. Here’s what companies need to know about the evolution of apps.

Mobile apps are ubiquitous. With more than 1.4 million apps in Apple's App Store alone, there's an app for nearly everything. Apps drove the majority of media consumption on mobile devices last year, accounting for about 7 out of every 8 minutes, according to comScore.

However, the average person spends the majority of his or her time using only a handful of apps. Driving app downloads and high engagement rates are harder than ever. To stay ahead of the competition, marketers must adapt their mobile strategies to better serve customer needs and expectations. Here's how to jumpstart your app strategy.

Social media, messaging, video, and navigational apps command a large chunk of time spent on apps, reported Forrester Research. In a three-month study of nearly 3,000 U.S. smartphone owners, the top three most-used apps were Facebook, YouTube, and Google Maps. These results aren't surprising, notes Mark Tack, vice president of marketing at Vibes, a mobile marketing solutions provider.   

"I only use apps that have a lot of utility and this is true for many people, so it can be tough to get [consumers] to download other apps like a retailer's branded app," he says. "Marketers have to look for new opportunities, like mobile wallets."

As an example, Tack points to Men's Wearhouse. Vibes helped the retailer create emails with coupons that could be saved on Google Wallet or Apple's Passbook. Last year, Men's Wearhouse launched about 50 of these email/mobile campaigns. Emails that included the "save to wallet" feature had a coupon redemption rate that was 10 times higher than those that didn't offer the feature.

"We think giving customers something to react to by saving the coupon in a mobile wallet drives engagement instead of just another email that gets pushed down," says Men's Wearhouse Executive Vice President of Marketing Matt Stringer in a webinar. "Email offers mass reach, but the mobile wallet ultimately drives a much stronger take rate." The company is also exploring ways to integrate its loyalty program into mobile wallets and provide a smoother experience, Stringer adds.

Within a few years mobile wallets will be used for more than just managing digitized coupons, predicts Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson. "Mobile wallets will become marketing platforms," Husson says in the webinar. Payments will be only one of the features that mobile wallets offer, as marketers increasingly use them to reach customers. "We expect some apps to morph into marketing platforms with open APIs" he continues, "that allow you to integrate your services and your brand to enable commerce."

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