5 Trends to Master Mobile CRM in 2023

Are you wondering what awaits us in 2023 for CRM for Mobile? We have covered the five trends so that you can level up your game.

The challenges—and changes—that the mobile industry has faced during the past couple of years have been discussed in depth. And now it is clear, or at least it should be, that mobile marketing as it used to be doesn’t exist anymore.

Table of Contents

What Is the Importance of CRM for Mobile?
CRM for Mobile and App Growth Taking the Lead
Recentering App Growth and 5 Trends You Should Be Aware Of
REPLUG’s Bonus Tips
Conclusion

Paid User Acquisition is not the king of the mobile reign anymore—investing huge budgets on paid activities alone won’t bring you efficient growth, but most likely, it will just leave empty pockets.

In this article, we will take a look at what should be the main focus in 2023 and how everything has changed post-pandemic. Let’s start.

What Is the Importance of CRM for Mobile?

Tailored and targeted mobile CRM techniques enable marketers to increase the retention rate of acquired consumers. As a result, app usage will increase over time, lowering the churn rate (the number of users who abandon the app).

Furthermore, CRM for mobile improves conversion rates at each stage of the conversion funnel by increasing the number of customers who do specific activities after installation (entry, acquirement, subscriptions, and more).

By improving such metrics and focusing on our main KPIs, we can raise our user base’s Lifetime Value and maximize our marketing spend and ROI. Essentially, app marketing specialists and businesses may support their company objectives with CRM for mobile campaigns.

The Advantages and Why You Need to Know About Them

When we talk about CRM for mobile’s importance, marketers can accomplish many goals by establishing long-term relationships with their clients and improving the likelihood that they will perform the desired in-app behaviors following the download.

Regarding the CRM channels and app marketing, depending on what we want to express to our users, we can choose from a variety of channels, including push notifications, in-app messaging, and email.

You might also strengthen your CRM by distributing traditional texts, although they are not as popular. Other solutions, like the Inbox App, are provided by several mobile CRM products in the current market.

Now, let’s take a look at what is actually happening and what your focus should be.

CRM for Mobile and App Growth Taking the Lead

Now, who’s the new king in the mobile kingdom, then? Let’s take a step back.

When Paid UA was the center of all the mobile marketing activities, all other activities were just supporting the budget spend. App Store Optimization, CRM, and Brand activities supported the scale but were not essential for success.

paid ua app marketing — *Paid UA was the center of all mobile marketing activities*

Today, consequentially to the changes of the past three years, but also due to the fierce competition, all those activities that before were marginal now have to play a primary role.

Does it mean Mobile CRM is the new King? And App Store Optimization is the Queen? Absolutely not.

To identify the new king, we need to rethink all processes and put App Growth at the center of our kingdom, with all the app marketing activities playing an equally important role in efficient mobile growth.

Recentering App Growth and 5 Trends You Should Be Aware Of

App growth center of mobile marketing — **App growth as the new mobile marketing center**

At REPLUG, we’ve been stressing this concept since the beginning of time, pushing every partner to consider all the activities as part of a unique full-funnel strategy.

The Growth Rocket Model.

The Growth Rocket Model was created to assist app developers in determining what matters when defining the best app growth strategy. You can see the visual representation below.

app marketing growth rocket model — *Growth Rocket Model* by REPLUG

Now, one of the most important activities is certainly Mobile CRM, which is crucial to increase engagement and retention, as well as the conversion of the users we pay so much to bring into our mobile applications—in two words: customer loyalty.

We will now cover the five trends you should follow in order to make the users more loyal and more engaged with mobile products.

1. Divide the Audience

Regarding these trends, you should be focusing on segmenting your audience based on the following:

User preferences: personalize your messages based on what your users like. For example, for e-commerce, engage with the users talking about their favorite brands, or for a delivery app, focus on the products that the user ordered.
App activities: not everyone uses the app the same way. Try to learn how the users interact with the app features and segment the audience based on their activity.
Monetary value: treat the most valuable users with white gloves, but also identify the users that could be more valuable and offer them incentives to create habits.
Frequency and Recency: some users come back to the app frequently and with no need to be “pushed,” while there are others that need a nudge from now and then. Don’t treat them all the same.

2. Use Different Strategies

Creating clusters and segmenting the user base is not enough if you don’t also differentiate the communication. After segmenting the audience based on the criteria from point 1, we should be keeping the following in mind when building the Mobile CRM and app growth strategies. It is proved that if we use personalized messages, interactions and conversions increase.

Not all users behave the same: people have different habits, buy different items, order on different days, play in different situations, etc. Don’t assume that all the users have the same habits you have, but rather analyze the data and differentiate the messages based on the parameters that we’ve seen at point 1.
Use different times/days: send messages based on the app usage and when the users are most likely to convert. For example, for a grocery delivery app, try to identify when is the day of the week and the time of the day when the users will probably make the order.
Use different frequencies of messages/discounts: when creating clusters based on recency and frequency, you can also associate different types of messaging and promotions.

3. Be Helpful: Don’t Only Chase the Conversions

We see, unfortunately, more and more app developers and marketers asking the users to do actions—buy, subscribe, order, and others. It’s like continuously asking for users’ money. It is crucial, though, that you provide users with something they will appreciate. When it comes to mastering Mobile CRM in 2023, take a look at this:

If you only ask users for their money, they will get tired: in the long term, the users will lose their interest in your product and in your brand, and eventually their loyalty.
Send useful and interesting messages/statistics: for example, with a client operating in the wine delivery industry, we started sending statistics about wine consumption across our userbase, which wines were the favorites, etc. – generating interest and eventually conversions as well. It’s just a different approach rather than just asking.
Ask for users’ opinions. They will appreciate: people love it when they get the chance to give their point of view. You can do it both with the most loyal users, to understand what they love about your app, but also with the ones that are unhappy, to understand what could be improved.

4. Exploit Referral Programs

There are so many app developers that just don’t realize how powerful is word of mouth. Hence they just neglect referral programs, or at least they don’t invest time and resources to create specific strategies.

Identify the best users and make them promoters: you probably have a good base of users who love your product, use it every day, and would like to be your ambassadors. Why not ask them to share it?
Identify the right moment: of course, we should wait to be sure that the user really loves us. Maybe after they left a positive review or just after they received their second order, don’t ask to refer a friend immediately after the download.
Offer rewards: yes, they love your app, and they probably will share it with their friends if you ask. But with an incentive, the probability of success can increase, and it’s also nice to reward the users who are happy to help.
Get free users (+13%): a good and well-planned referral program can really help get new users “for free.” With a client operating in the photo printing app, we managed to get up to 13% of the new orders coming from referred members.

5. Surprise Your Users

You should try to be original, to be personal, and funny if you want. Try to include these tips to generate a smile on your users’ faces:

Be original, be personal, and be entertaining: we receive discounts every day and incentives from all the apps and products. Of course, promotions are welcome and useful to generate conversions, but they don’t create retention. Be personal—send a photo of your team to the users, and address them in the first person.
Don’t forget the special occasions: if you have the information about the user’s birthday, don’t forget to send your personalized best wishes (with a present), but also don’t forget about the day when the user became your customer and other special occasions.
Include gamification: reward the users for the actions they do inside the app, let them know that they are among the most active users, and create competitions to keep the users engaged.

The above points are, of course, just a few tactics that can be implemented on a Mobile CRM strategy, and each app and product is a different case. Nonetheless, we believe those are the points that are applicable to almost any type of app—subscription, nonsubscription, gaming, e-commerce, utility, and others.

REPLUG’s Bonus Tips

To help you apply those points to the mobile CRM strategy, we prepared a list of Dos and Don’ts to keep in mind when thinking about the retention activities:

1. Mobile CRM Dos

Use multichannel campaigns—push + in-app + emails for maximum reach
Collect as much data as possible to personalize the messages
Segment your audience—seriously, segment it!
Sleep, test, repeat
Work in frameworks

2. Mobile CRM Don’ts

Don’t forget to set specific goals—possibly monetary
Don’t look only at open rates and CTR—they’re vanity metrics
Don’t mix your goals—tackle one at a time
Don’t forget about emails—they increase the reach
Don’t stress your users

Conclusion

Keep in mind that the factors we included are a good starting point for creating a mobile retention strategy to maximize customer loyalty. But of course, there are many other things to do.

Be mindful and take a step-by-step approach when it comes to CRM for Mobile. Your app will get the best results (with satisfied customers).

Need help implementing a CRM strategy for your mobile app or improving communication with your mobile users? Get in touch with us by clicking here.