Apps have emerged as a standalone sales  channel bringing in new customers for brands beyond the online, retail store-fronts and social networks. To engage audiences in 2015, a study  by Localytics has been shared in The App Marketing Guide 2015. Personalized campaigns based on segmentation are recommended as an effective Marketing Tactic for 2015 to engage and retain your App users.

Users are spending more time than ever with their apps, but certain app categories show a greater increase than others. In a similar manner Push messaging has brought in more  engaged users with higher app installs and iPad users have longer app sessions. App customers acquired through Paid advertising campaigns are as likely to return to the return the app within 60 days with second and third session more likely for the Paid ad acquired user than the organic user. Push messaging is seen more effective in certain context and for certain verticals such as Travel & Leisure. The open rates for e-commerce push messaging is the highest in anticipation of deals.

Music Apps are The Most Engaging App Category

Music apps were the big winner with a 79 percent increase in time spent with these apps,resulting in an increase of 64 minutes per month compared to last year. As more people shift from iTunes to music apps such as SoundCloud and iHeartRadio, the time spent in music apps has drastically increased.

Social Sharing Wins it For Music Apps

Most Music apps also incorporate a social component, allowing people to share their favorite playlists. These reasons could explain why Music has seen such a strong time in app increase . The other feature responsible for increase in time spent on Music Apps is availability of more genres and radio like features.

Health and Fitness has shown the second highest increase in time in app at 51 percent, for an average 22 more minutes per month spent with these apps than last year.

As the hardware specs for smartphones increase, so  does their potential to act as a health device. The recently announced iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus comes with a new Health app that continuously measures motion data.

Similar features came with the Samsung Galaxy S5 released in May 2014, including an integrated heart rate monitor and a fitness tracker. Health features are now coming standard on many smartphones, as hardware becomes more advanced and consumers demonstrate an interest in fitness tracking.

Social Networking apps exhibit “snacking” like behavior with the highest number of app launches and lowest session length – meaning users are opening the app more frequently than others, but are not in there for long. Sports, Music, and News apps also exhibit a high number of app launches, likely due to the timeliness aspect of such apps.

Session length is highest in the Music category. Music apps are commonly used during commutes and downtime, so it is no surprise that Music has the highest app session length, which helped drive increased time in app from last year.

The Size of the device plays a key role in App Engagement with users logging in from phones that are larger than 5 in.

Gaming apps demonstrate one of the largest increases in time in app based on device screen size. Most Gaming apps require quick finger movements, which are easier to do on a large screen. For most of the other categories examined, such as Photography, Sports, News, and Books, an inclination towards large screen devices for video streaming or reading is understandable. Music Apps are used on larger screens for sharing on Social networks and liking.

Smartphones have more App Installs while Tablets have Longer User Sessions

The average session length for an iPhone is 5.2 minutes, which is over a minute shorter than their iPad counterparts at 6.4 minutes (a difference of 23 percent). While a smartphone may be used for quick news or sports updates, people typically use their iPads for longer activities, such as reading or watching content. Essentially,the larger the screen size, the more likely users are to spend more time in apps.

Customers Acquired With An Ad Campaign are  Engaged Users

Apps users acquired with a paid ad campaign are as engaged as the Organic users who may have discovered your app through search. The App users acquired with a paid campaign are likely to use the app again in the first sixty days and are more likely to return for the second, third and fourth session.

App Engagement Is Higher Among Push Enabled Users

It is often considered that push notifications are intrusive or annoying to users, and don’t actually improve retention or boost time in app.

e-commerce sees an enormous 278 percent lift in engagement when comparing users who enable push, versus Health and Fitness apps, for example, which see only a 34 percent increase. This could be because the majority of e-commerce users are looking for mobile-specific offers and discounts, and are more likely see push messages as deal indicators.

Customers who have enabled Push Messages also have a lower churn and abandonment rate for Apps.

Segmented Push Messages Bring About More Clicks

Marketers who segment their push messages, compared to those who blast them to all users, see significant improvement in engagement. Broadcast push messages are only opened by 3 percent of users.However, this rate increases to 7 percent if the push message is segmented by user behavior and preferences. In other words, segmented push messages have over double the open rate as push messages blasted to everyone.

Push Messaging works effectively on certain times of the day and week as well as is proven to be more effective in certain verticals with a shorter message length.

Create A Personalized App Marketing Campaign

First, get a complete view of your users – Your app is an increasingly important business channel, but it’s also a supremely different medium in terms of functionality and user experience. What users do in-app gives insight into the mobile usage patterns of your audience, and how they like to regularly interact with your brand. Using in-app behavior to inform personalization is one way to ensure a great app user experience; but it’s only half of the equation.

Many brands are stuck when it comes to tracking the right metrics and determining what works. More than that, an app can be viewed as a solitary channel, one that’s profoundly different from in-store, web, and traditional medias companies use to engage customers today

Capture behavioral data

Behavior data is a collection of individual user attributes, such as age, location, gender, customer type, and more, that include user data gathered across every channel .

Behavioral data is how your customer uses your app or interacts with your business across other channels. This is typically expressed in-app by the completion of an event (an action) or a screen viewed. Online, this could be emails opened, and in store, it could be events attended. If profile data is the attributes, behavioral data is the action.

Using profile data in conjunction with behavioral data, you can get a complete view of the persons shopping behavior in app and serve them targeted messages.

Identify buyer personas and target audiences

Run transactional push messages

Create cross-channel marketing campaigns

Segment to create similar audiences

Segmentation is how you go about making sense of your user data. It is the tie that binds your analytics and marketing. Analytically, it allows you to discover common patterns between users and what that means about your audience and for your app. Then, you can target relevant marketing campaigns to specific segments.

Segmentation is important as it helps you target high-value users who are engaging with your app and converting on a purchase. You can use this data to personalize (and therefore improve upon) their app experience, build loyalty, and encourage conversions. Plus, with segmentation, you can track which of these user groups have the highest customer lifetime value (LTV), or how their value increases once personalization is implemented.

Create Custom Marketing Campaigns

Just as emails drive subscribers back to your website and sales associates create positive interactions with in-store purchasers, push and in-app messages are the best marketing tool you have to engage and convert app users.

Starting with segment-based campaigns

With segments, you can target similar groups of users based on common attributes or interests, making the app messaging they receive relevant and worthy of a swipe or a click-through. This is the most elementary way to start running personalized campaigns.

Apps Push messaging campaign does not need to be a singular effort and in-app behavior can be combined with other initiatives such as email to target audiences that engaged with your brand in a multi-channel effort.

Source: The 2015 App marketing Guide by Localytics