As mobile penetration and smartphone use continues to increase, more apps are being created and downloaded daily, with mobile app downloads expected to cross 250 billion globally in 2021. Emerging markets are not left out of the rapid smartphone adoption, for example, Brazil and South Africa have smartphone penetration rates of over 60 percent. With the average smartphone user spending 88 percent of their mobile time on apps, many businesses are building their mobile apps to reach more customers, increase engagement, and ultimately drive revenue.
While some leading organizations have succeeded and are driving over 40% of revenue with mobile, getting users to adopt and use their apps remains a challenge for many marketing leaders. Studies show that 25 percent of all app users abandon an app after just one use, leading to a significant loss of potential revenue. CMOs need careful planning and a new strategy to drive app adoption and increase retention rates to win on mobile.
Why FMCG mobile apps are failing to catch on.
Many FMCGs spend countless man-hours and financial resources developing apps to engage their customers and drive sales, but adoption rates remain abysmally low, with studies showing that 52 percent of all B2B apps lose half their peak users after just three months, and only 32 percent of users return to an app more than ten times after download.
Adoption rates of FMCG apps remain low because:
- Users don’t need the app: Many FMCGs create mobile apps to solve the company’s needs, leaving the end-user as an after-thought. For example, many FMCGs develop mobile apps to digitize the ordering and payment process and eliminate the cost of cash handling. However, distributors and retailers see no need to use the app without an obvious user-focused value proposition, leading to low adoption rates.
- Marketing leaders lack the data needed to drive engagement: Many FMCG apps focus on improved front-end UI/UX but do not collect enough data at the back end to provide sufficient visibility into user activity. Without this valuable data, app marketers cannot devise data-driven marketing strategies to engage users successfully.
Today’s B2B buyers expect the same level of digital experiences they encounter as consumers – experiences that FMCG apps cannot match due to the non-user-centered design and a lack of data visibility. Given that most smartphone users will spend 85 percent of their time on only five apps, most FMCG apps suffer low adoption rates and are eventually deleted.
Increase mobile app adoption rate with data-driven marketing
Increasing user adoption and retention is vital for FMCG brands as a Harvard Business School report shows that a 5 percent increase in retention can increase profits by 25 to 95 percent. To maximize the incredible opportunities mobile apps offer, FMCGs must first design their apps around the needs of the end-users. Rather than building the app to solve their brand’s challenges, product managers must put retailers, distributors, and end consumers at the center of their design, ensuring that the value proposition provides a compelling reason for users to engage with the app.
Marketers need a solution that tracks user action, aggregates the data, and displays it in an easy-to-understand format, enabling them to use the data that sits behind user activity to create user and action-specific campaigns and promotions to drive engagement. Unfortunately, the few mobile data capturing solutions available are costly and ineffective, as they do not provide a deep dive into actual user action and leave a wide gap in the data provided. The lack of a complete overview of users’ actions leaves marketers in the dark, unable to take data-driven action to increase engagement.
At RedCloud, we have succeeded at increasing and maintaining an engagement rate far above the industry average. We accomplished this by designing our merchant app with merchants in mind and incentivizing high adoption rates by enabling merchants to sell digital products and earn a commission on each transaction. Our integrated market intelligence tool is also built specifically for marketers and tracks individual user activity in real-time, providing a detailed overview of how users engage with the app. The tool also analyzes the data captured to provide intelligent, data-driven insights that you can leverage to create campaigns and promotions that drive merchant activity and increase retention.
RedCloud’s open commerce platform is the perfect solution for FMCGs looking to directly engage their merchants. Our upcoming marketplace is optimized to deliver app adoption and engagement rates above the industry average, enabling merchants to buy better from distributors, and engage directly with top FMCG brands.. Replace your FMCG app with RedCloud’s open commerce platform today to better engage your merchants and distributors, increase sales, and drive sustainable growth.
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