Depending on your mobile strategy, this may or may not be your reason for a business app. However with mobile payments, push notifications and in-app loyalty programmes, it is now certainly an achievable target for a small business.
To ensure your business app will be a successful investment not just a mere marketing expense, ask yourself these questions when shopping for an app provider:
- What’s the profile of customers you wish to engage with using a business app? Is this different to your current customers? What proportion of your customer base does this “new” segment represent?
- What business, marketing or sales challenge does the business face? How will an app help you mitigate these challenges?
- Is customer loyalty important to you and if so, what’s the lifetime value of your customer? How do you build customer loyalty? Would you like your customers to buy more from you, or visit your business more frequently or BOTH?
Assuming your app is built, mobile commerce enabled, published and you’ve launched it with much digital fanfare, you may want to ensure you are able to track returns on your investment. This being the case there’s a simple ROI calculator which you can use:
A typical read-rate of a push notification from an app can be 94%, higher than email open rates and cheaper than text messages. Out of this 94%, it is not unusual to achieve a 4 – 8% sales conversion. As an example, if your business app has 500 downloads so far and you run 2 push notification campaigns (timed, location-specific, targeted push messages on a smartphone) a month, you would engage 940 push message readers of your campaigns.
Assuming an achievable 4% sales conversion, this equates to 37.6 in-app sales and at an average spend of £20, you’ll be getting a monthly revenue of £752 from app purchases. Subtract the monthly subscription fee of £168 (this varies of course depending on your app provider) from £752 and you have a £584 monthly return on your investment.
As your business app gathers momentum, you will achieve more downloads with consistent, targeted marketing. This in turn increases your chances of achieving higher monthly sales via the app. With your mobile marketing strategy in place and a plan well executed, you are on your way to achieving positive returns within 6 months of launching your app. What’s this worth to your business?
Joyce Ong, Marketing Tech / Eazi-Apps – Mobile Solutions for Businesses
Marketing Tech is a mobile marketing specialist and app developer for small and medium sized businesses, helping businesses to stay ahead of the competition by building customer loyalty, converting prospects and social media followers into paying customers and by developing affordable, cutting edge, customisable and user friendly mobile apps.
Small Business Research and Enterprise 