As a mobile developer in 2013, you are faced with more challenges than you are qualified to overcome. There is the development itself, which, let's assume for a second is under control. Then the app is out, you crack open the champagne in honor of the millions you are about to make... until you realize there are 300 other apps in the App Store / Google Play / Windows Marketplace / BlackBerry App World that offer similar functionality and already have users. Oh yea, there is that.
However, the topic of this post is not app discovery. There are enough ways to overcome this challenge, organically and non-organically (although, the faster you go up, the fast you'll come down.). There are endless services to increase downloads of your app and there is also the old-fashioned PR/marketing route as well. But even after you have accumulated hundreds of thousands or even millions of downloads, what now? How do you keep your users happy and interested in your app with all the distractions on their phone's home screen? How do you rise above all the noise?
Meet Appoxee, a startup founded back in 2010 that is about to release a new version of its platform intended to increase the "stickiness" of your app and boost your user retention.
So how does this all work? Well, the bad news is, if you are an app developer, you are going to have to integrate Appoxee's SDK. Why is this bad news? Not because it is a difficult task or one that won't pay off, but in my experience, mobile developers who have spent years developing their "baby" are somewhat reluctant to add anything external to their code. Besides, if you are a successful mobile developer, you surely get 100 SDK pitches a day between your discovery, monetization, and retention needs. But, this one is different. Yes, i know, they all say that....
So what's the good news? The good news is that Appoxee has developed quite a suite of awesome features to enable you to engage naturally and effectively with your users. Now, I am no psychologist, but something tells me, people like to be acknowledged. Someone downloads your app, they want to know that you are paying attention to them, recognizing their existence, and yes, willing to reward them for doing so.
Appoxee does just that. You can send your users targeted messages based on their usage patterns, their time zones, and their preferences. You can send those messages in simple push notification format, or you can leverage some rich media formats to increase engagement even more. Offer exclusive promotions to your users, encourage them to update the app, and most importantly, incentivize (has become a dirty work in mobile) them to open your app and not just ignore it or even worse, remove it from their device. See some examples below.
You can launch and maintain campaigns using the new Appoxee including scheduling your messages, analyzing the results, and a whole lot more. Sounds perfect, right?
Well, how well has Appoxee done in the developer community? Hundreds of millions of app installations with the Appoxee SDK (not to be confused with integrations, just the downloads of apps using the Appoxee SDK.), thousands of SDK integrations and billions of messages sent to users by developers.
It is important to mention two things about Appoxee. First of all, it is obviously not alone in this space and other companies are attacking the same problem, including Appsfire, which is well known for its app discovery capabilities, but has also made its way into the retention space.
Speaking of app discovery, Appoxee's platform can also be used to solve the other two big problems of discovery and monetization by cross-promoting your app to users and serving relevant mobile ads to your users.
The new platform focuses primarily on offering advanced campaign features including campaign level management, the ability to set goals for your campaigns, message scheduling that automatically adjusts itself based on the user's time zone, increased targeting, a cross platform simulator, and more. Yes, it is a pretty comprehensive solution for developers who want to reach their users in the most accurate and timely manner.
You can read more about Appoxee on Slideshare here but I am fairly certain you get the point. If you have a mobile app and want to keep your users coming back for more, Appoxee might become your best buddy in no time.