13 proven strategies to increase app engagement

Why is increasing app engagement important?

App engagement refers to any interaction between a user and a mobile app. Typically, the more time users spend in your app, the more content they consume, the more screens they interact with — the more engaged they are.

Engaged app users tend to spend more time and money on your products and services. They also generate more data and feedback, helping you inform product development, in-app personalization, and your app marketing strategy.

For example, engaged customers in the retail banking industry contribute 37% more revenue than those who don’t actively engage with their bank. Meanwhile, brands with highly-engaged customers are 2.2X more likely to increase their market share.

And most importantly, engagement leads to retention. 9 in 10 users who engage with an app as little as once a week are likely to retain that app.

User engagement for mobile apps can take many forms — such as completing an onboarding tutorial, making an in-app purchase, or exploring your app’s content.

App engagement is a key metric for businesses. It reflects how your users interact with the app, how often, and how valuable it is to them. Basically, it’s a measure of user satisfaction.

You can track mobile app engagement metrics like total users, daily active users (DAU), monthly active users (MAU), average session length, conversion rates, and more to measure your app's engagement potential, or stickiness.

13 mobile app engagement strategies to drive growth

Keeping users engaged is no easy feat in the modern attention economy. New competitors enter the market every day, while users expect more from digital experiences all the time.

Here are 13 mobile app engagement strategies proven to increase app engagement and create a sticky user experience:

1. Design an efficient app onboarding flow

If new users can’t figure out how to use your app to achieve their goals, they won’t return.

Design an intuitive onboarding flow that creates a positive first impression, and reduces the barriers to using and benefiting from your app's key features.

You can simplify app onboarding in a few ways:

• Reducing the steps needed to create an account

• Providing clear navigation and progress updates

• Revealing features gradually in context of the user flow

• Teaching through action so users learn how to interact with the app

To learn more, you can also check out successful examples of app onboarding.

2. Use push notifications strategically

Push notifications appear on the home screen of a mobile device, so they’re a great way to bring inactive users back to your app. They allow you to provide helpful information, share updates, and stay top of mind even when users don’t have your app opened.

Personalized push notifications have been shown to lower app abandonment rates from 25% to 19%.

Besides sharing updates and content, you can use push notifications to deliver a personalized app experience that will increase app engagement, such as:

• Suggesting new content or features

• Promoting discounts on recently viewed products

• Encouraging signups for your customer loyalty program

• Reminding users of abandoned carts

Push notifications play a key role in helping to increase app engagement, helping you stay top of mind and re-engage users with relevant content and offers.

3. Encourage feature use

Users may not have the chance to explore all of your app’s features right out of the gate.

To ensure users try your essential features they might miss, you can:

• Highlight features in your app store description, welcome screens, and onboarding flow

• Surface features using in-app notifications or push notifications

• Follow up with email marketing

For example, Spotify uses in-app notifications to encourage feature use for its Spotify Radio feature, offering contextual tips as users navigate the app.

Because in-app notifications let you engage users as they're interacting with your content and features—they’re a key piece of any mobile app engagement strategy.

4. Personalize the app experience

Users who receive a personalized app experience are more likely to engage with your app and stick around. 

For example, personalized over generic in-app content and messaging can increase app retention by 13%. According to Business of Apps, personalized push notifications have been shown to improve reaction rates by up to 400% compared to generic messages.

Many companies tailor the user experience to increase app engagement. This includes playlists on Spotify, search results or Airbnb, or H&M’s product recommendations in the form of custom push notifications.

You can also create and trigger custom in-app notifications based on user's behavior, on specific pages, or history to increase app engagement.

However you use it, personalization is a key mobile app engagement strategy that increases app engagement by delivering timely, relevant content and offers to users.

5. Gamify the app experience

You can increase mobile app engagement by letting users compete against themselves, their friends, and other users.

Gamification adds an element of ongoing fun to your app that helps users stay consistent with your core features. And when users achieve a win in your app, they’re more likely to tell others about it and come back for more.

Create an appealing scoreboard with graphs and colorful icons to help users visualize their progress, highlight recent achievements, and encourage feature exploration. When the user has achieved an objective, encourage them to share the accomplishment with their social network.

Duolingo, for instance, uses badges, leaderboards, and streaks to entice a habit of app usage and increase mobile app engagement.

6. Provide in-app support

In-app support increases the likelihood that users will complete onboarding and get to that aha! moment without having to leave your app. This helps to increase your mobile app engagement, while also improving user satisfaction and retention.

You can offer in-app support through:

• Live in-app chat

• Chatbots or AI chatbots

• Self-serve resources and FAQs

• Interactive tutorials and guides

• Community forums

These days, users want a mix of self-service resources and live support options. This allows users to get help in the way that’s most convenient and efficient for them. For example, 51% of people say they prefer support from chatbots to human agents when in need of immediate help.

The beauty of AI chatbots for customer service is that they provide 24/7 support at the exact moment users need without human oversight, which saves on support costs. Meanwhile, users get to lead the conversation in their own words, and if they need to escalate to a human agent, they can do so easily.

7. Use email and social to increase app re-engagement

Email and social media retargeting are effective strategies for engaging users outside the app and increasing app re-engagement.

For instance, you can send a series of onboarding emails to encourage users to try your most popular features, or stay top of mind by appearing in their favorite social media feed.

Refer to your product analytics to identify users who’ve gotten stuck and are likely to churn, then send them targeted content and offers. You can also use email campaigns to highlight specific features or content based on profile information or user behaviors.

For best results, be sure to include a call-to-action (CTA) link that brings users to the most relevant section of your app, instead of the home screen.

8. Add a social component

Users who can talk with friends in your app are more likely to engage repeatedly. Research shows that fostering an in-app community can help you increase user retention by 2.7x.

For a community to grow, you just need to provide a space for users to connect and share experiences. You could build a community section in your app, or add in-app chat functionality and let the community grow itself.

Sports betting apps, for example, provide 1:1 chat and group chat so users can form their own communities inside the app. Complete with features for friends lists, content moderation, and group invitations, in-app chat allows users to carve out a space in the app that’s just for them.

This way, users can discuss bets, player statistics, and follow the game together — all of which fosters feelings of belonging that helps to increase mobile app engagement.

9. Consider omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing is about reaching your audience on all their preferred channels. The goal is to deliver a consistent experience across all touchpoints—in-app, website, SMS, social media, email—to more effectively drive user acquisition and engagement.

Omnichannel marketing increases your reach, but also provides a consistent experience that shows potential users you’re trustworthy and detail-oriented. For example, a new feature announcement that appears in users’ social feeds, email inbox, and in-app notifications all at once with a consistent message is more likely to get results than if it only appears on a limited set of channels with a different style and content.

To achieve this coverage and consistency, you must understand your customers' journey and identify their preferred channels at each stage. Then set KPIs to measure user engagement across channels, and optimize towards where you’re seeing the most success. To learn more, you can read our blog on multichannel vs omnichannel marketing.

10. Focus on your value prop from the start

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Your value proposition is your chance to grab your audience’s attention, show them how your app will solve their problems, save them time, or improve their lives. 

As the pillar of your app marketing strategy, your value proposition is key to increasing app engagement and retention.

For example, the value proposition of the meditation app Headspace is: “Your lifelong guide to mental health.” 

This promise is a hook for the audience, so Headspace features this messaging on its website, social accounts, app store listing, and onboarding flow to give prospective users a reason to engage.

11. Ask for feedback

One of the best ways to increase app engagement (and re-engagement) is to ask customers what they like and dislike about your app, and how to improve the experience.

This will give you actionable insights into your app experience and help you understand users—who will appreciate you asking for their opinion.

A common way to gather in-app user feedback is by incorporating surveys into the customer support process, whether during in-app chat or from an AI chatbot with a feedback form.

You can also collect feedback after relevant moments like milestones, in-app purchases, or new feature releases. Calls for feedback can appear in the UI as embedded forms or interstitial pop-ups, as shown below.

Gathering feedback is half the battle. It’s also crucial to act on the feedback you receive by replying to individual user concerns, regularly updating your app with new features or bug fixes, and informing users you’ve acted on their feedback.

Increasing app engagement: It’s all about the user

The proven way to increase mobile app engagement is improving the user experience, giving users more of what they like and less of what they don’t. This means you must adapt to changing user expectations and put their wants front and center.

In combination with the strategies we talked about today, asking for feedback, analyzing behavioral data, and tracking mobile app KPIs will provide insights that guide development and optimize the app experience to be more valuable and engaging for users.

If you want to increase app engagement with in-app communications, Sendbird can help.

Our omnichannel business messaging platform offers developer-friendly APIs for in-app notifications, push notifications that increase app engagement, plus SMS, WhatsApp, and KakaoTalk. You also get easy-to-use software for creating messages, templates, and campaigns, plus robust messaging analytics.

Create a custom in-app notification message center in your app using our UIKits for Sendbird Business Messaging or chat UIKits. Or build a bespoke version with our SDKs for iOS, Android, Flutter, and JS.

If you want to start increasing app engagement, you can build them all for free if you sign up for a 30 day free trial of Sendbird.