To Keep Your App Conversion Low, Don’t Personalize The In-app Experience

In the simplest terms, personalization is the method of giving your users a custom experience based on the information you have about them like age, gender, surfing history and purchase history. With personalization you can present your app, offer, content or product at the right time, in the right place and with the right message. In order to make personalization effective for your mobile acquisition and activation efforts, you need accurate attribution data. Each piece of data is layered to create a chain that links user activity before the initial click to install to activation to engagement to conversion.

But personalization is more than simply segmentation. Market segmentation takes a top-down approach in finding homogeneity and grouping people together who share similar characteristics, reactions and motivations. Personalization takes a bottom-up approach and looks at users as individual people.

When I worked at Yahoo Frontpage and Netflix, personalization was a key part of the strategy to improve conversions in both companies, with great success. With Yahoo, each article a person reads contributes to the specific content surfaced to the reader. And at Netflix, each movie or TV show drives future recommendations. In fact, the Netflix category recommendations have become modern lore with exposes, listicles of categories and multi user support to tame angry boyfriends.

The Importance of Personalization

Personalization is valuable on the web. In a Forrester study commissioned by SAP “75% of respondents stated that personalization could have a significant or very significant impact on their customer retention rate, 75% said the same about lifetime customer value.”

In particular, eCommerce has seen the benefits of personalization. There’s a reason why Amazon gives personalized product recommendations and companies like Stitchfix are popular. 65% of retailers report an increase in conversion rates by using personalization.

App Personalization Comes of Age

Just like in digital marketing, personalization can be a powerful tactic to drive conversions and engagement in apps. For example, Yozio customers see a 15-30% increase in post-install conversion rates when applying personalization to the user activation process. However, using personalization in mobile app growth is still new.

Personalization for app growth isn’t as popular as digital growth for two overarching reasons. The first thing that prevents personalization from proliferating in app growth and marketing is the absence static URLs which are the mainstay on the web. Unlike on the web where a shared URL can connect experiences and pass data, in the app world, apps need to specifically use deeplinking to connect experiences between apps. The second big obstacle for implementing personalization in apps is “the app store black box” which prevents the passing of pre-install information through to the app.

Examples of Personalization in Mobile App Growth

Today, the most common path to personalization in app growth involves two things.

The first is to route users to the correct app store based on their OS. By detecting the operating system and directing the user to the correct app store, you are adding a piece of personalization to the acquisition flow. This also means you don’t have to use two different calls to action to route people to the iOS and Google Play Stores.

The second thing you can do is to deeplink the user to the content or product that led to the app install. Remember, URLs that work on the web don’t translate to mobile apps. By using deeplinking, you use information about users and the context in which they clicked a link to deliver them to the optimal location within the app – instead of the standard home screen.

We recommend that all companies implement these easy to apply measures to personalize. But don’t stop there. Below are some examples of how Yozio’s customers are driving higher conversion rates by taking additional measures to personalize.

Social Media to App Install

Let’s say you run a media company. Social media is a great way to spread your news because it gives the news a human advocate. Since Facebook and Twitter are accessed on mobile devices more often than desktop, our customers have seen success in driving app installs using social media.

(image: Statista)

For any article shared to social media, apply the following to increase app installs and activation:

1. For any link shared over social media, include a prompt to view the article in your app.


2. Redirect the user to the correct app store.


3. Deeplink directly to the article in the app. Additionally you can personalize the first app experience with the person who shared the article on social media.

Connecting Promotional Email to the App

Most email is first opened on mobile phones. For retailers with large email subscriber lists, email is an untapped opportunity for app installs. Let’s say you’re running a promotion for 20% off for loyal customers to celebrate the new year. Incorporating this workflow will help personalize the experience and drive conversion.

1. For any user who clicks on a sale item in the email, prompt them to download your app.


2. Automatically redirect them to the correct app store based on their OS.


3. Deeplink the user to the exact item clicked in the email.


4. Automatically apply the promotion upon check out, removing the chance for promotion abuse and the need for a user to enter a code.

Data Is the Foundation of Personalization

Why is having accurate data important to personalization? Because personalization only works if it’s relevant to the user. Furthermore, using wrong data to personalize is embarrassing and detrimental to your brand experience. The best way to ensure you have the most accurate data for personalization of organic app installs is to use an Organic Mobile Growth Platform.

(Image: Marketoonist)

By using an Organic Mobile Growth Platform you can deliver a personalized experience to drive activation, engagement, retention and conversion and ensure your organic app installs are matched properly. Interested in seeing how an Organic Growth Platform can help you personalize?

To Keep Your App Conversion Low, Don’t Personalize The In-app Experience