Wake-up call: Time to Reactivate Dormant Users
It’s the uncomfortable number that nobody likes talking about at App Strategy meetings; the number that grows steadily but is seldom measured. The number that leaves a bad taste even when the conversion and User Acquisition (UA) metrics are encouraging. Yes, it’s time to reactivate your Dormant Users.
tl;dr
Dormant Users represent strategic economic value. With CAC on the rise, there is even more urgency to rekindle your relationship with the users who already know you; they’ll be a much easier sale. But what do you know about them? For more, read on.
Dormant Users mean Sleepy Performance
Many marketing strategies (and the metrics that guide them) focus on short-term achievements: downloads, registration, conversion, retention. What happens to active users when, like Sleeping Beauty, something pricks them and they sink into a deep sleep? It is easy to lose track of them among the less specific, overall performance metrics such as ARPU and LTV. Every month companies leave more and more money on the table, while the pile of one-time customers underneath it grows. Anagog helps recapture that lost revenue potential by helping companies monitor the pulse of each individual customer and then re-engage them as if they never left.
It is well documented that existing customers are an easier group to sell to, with a lower cost of sales; they make up the lion’s share of a company’s revenue. This has been widely recognized by financial analysts, leading public companies to list customer value as an asset on their books. The degree to which companies are able to tap into that asset has a great impact on their performance; Dormant Users weigh down heavily on the LTV metrics and their number continuously rises. Anagog has identified that waking them up, i.e. re-engaging and reactivating Dormant Users, is of strategic importance.
It would be easy to write all these customers off as “a poor fit”, a result of poorly targeted UA campaigns. There probably are a few of those. But remember, these users went to the trouble of downloading the app and completing the onboarding process. They showed enough interest to make an initial transaction/conversion. All this did not happen by accident; these were legitimate new customers, experiencing your product/app for the first time. What went wrong?
Avoid being lulled to sleep
Maybe they never came back. Or maybe they were customers for a while and no one noticed that their activity level slowly dropped off. Apps that incorporate the Anagog Mobile Engagement Platform don’t have that problem. First, you can create campaigns that target users whose activity levels may be dropping or who have yet to establish the behavior patterns of a ‘regular customer’. Then, instead of meekly waiting for them to engage with your app, you can proactively engage users with pinpoint accuracy, presenting them with useful messages that are relevant to them at the moments in their day where they are most likely to be available.
Once someone has become a Dormant User the challenge is that everything we knew about them (and sometimes that was very little) may no longer be relevant, whether it is product preferences, areas of interest, recent purchases or Home address. How can we rekindle their interest? In order to prevent companies from losing touch with the user, our Edge AI makes sure to continue generating and updating our insights whether the user is on the app or not. Did they take up a healthier lifestyle? Have they moved from a house to an apartment? Did they buy a car? All these can help you stay relevant when you reach out to users who haven’t been around in a while.
Wake them gently, it’s worth it
To reactivate Dormant Users, you must adopt a soft touch; your approach must be sensitive to what they need, rather than a simple “Remember me? Buy Now” message. Perhaps their preferences have shifted, maybe their circumstances have changed or they had an unpleasant experience with your customer service. The trick to recovering this relationship is to re-earn their trust by focusing on their side of the equation. Like Sleeping Beauty, you need to show them some love in order to wake them from their slumber. Helpful tips, relevant content, entertaining experiences. This cannot be done when all you have to go on is their app or online behavior, you need to take into account their complete Persona. For these attempts at engagement to be effective, they need to be informed, up-to-date and relevant.
As people embrace their mobile phones for almost every aspect of their lives, the slice of the economy represented by mobile commerce grows larger. This increased adoption means that your best chance to reactivate Dormant Users is through their mobile phones. Not only that, once you reactivate them, your app will put you in position to drive significant revenues.
