In-app messaging is a crucial component of a strong user engagement strategy. The mechanism is at its best when it reaches users at the right place, at the right time, across all channels. It delivers contextual, personalized messaging for maximum engagement and is a successful means of improving user engagement and product-led growth.

What are the In-app messages?

In-app messages are native content that appears within your app as a pop-up or full-screen overlay or banner. In-app messaging tends to have a higher response rate than push notifications or email messages. 

Differences between in-app messaging and push notifications 

Push notifications and in-app messaging are direct messaging channels, but in-app messages encourage more in-depth usage while interacting with the app. Push notifications appear on the user’s home screen, notification menu, and usually explicitly opt-in to receive these messages. In-app messages appear to users while they’re active inside the app to enhance the user experience by helping users with personalized product or content recommendations, new feature announcements, or special discounts and promotions.

Here are some common in-app messaging use cases:

1. Onboarding: You can leverage In-app messaging to optimize your onboarding user experience, helping users learn how to use the app after downloading it.
2. Sales and Promotional Highlights: Employ in-app messages to share promotional offers, benefits, and incentives with your users. These messages can be personalized by segmenting your audience.
3. Transactional Information: Sending confirmation using in-app messages for a new purchase, registration, or any other essential in-app action improves user engagement.
4. New Feature Announcements: You can notify your users when you update your app with new features to keep existing users informed with up-to-date app’s latest features and explain new functionality with fresh content.
5. Company Notifications: You can share and update users about essential updates related to your company leveraging in-app messages. 
6. Ratings and Reviews: Identify the right time to nudge users to give your app a good rating and reviews using in-app messaging

Getting started with in-app messaging strategy-best practices

Segment and Personalise Messages:

Instead of sending generic messages to your entire user base, firstly, segment users based on their behavior, geography, psychographics, and create campaigns for each segment. Secondly, send personalized messages to improve user experience as well as engagement rates.

Write Powerful Headlines:

Much like an email subject line, compelling headlines and subheads seize a user’s attention and inspire them to read the entire message. It’s advisable to use a larger font size than the rest of the text to grab attention.

Keep Copy Concise:

In-app messages don’t offer a ton of space, so keep the message original, clear, and to the point, especially when you’re adding an image.

Add Visual with Images and Emojis:

Spice up your messages with photos – or even emojis. Visual posts with pictures and emojis drive higher engagement than text-only messages.

Get the Timing Right:

It is critical to know when your message should appear. The best time to leverage in-app messages is when a user launches the app or shortly after an event like creating a profile, earning loyalty points, or navigating out of the purchase process. 

Provide an Accessible Exit:

Provide users a way to exit the in-app message. If users can’t find an accessible way out, chances are they’ll end up closing the app instead.

Testing and Iterations:

You should always test in-app messages to check which messages are delivered with the most success and iterate message versions based on performance. Therefore, Running A/B tests to gauge the effectiveness of multiple versions can help you zero in on the most impactful ones.

Create Consistent In-app Messaging Experiences across all Channels:

Provide straightforward and consistent messaging across all channels. Leveraging consistent messaging will provide a top-notch user experience and engagement. 

Targeted, thoughtful in-app messaging can deepen engagement and drive product-led growth. Employ Upshot.ai to send personalized, relevant, and timely in-app messages based on user actions to improve user engagement and transform CX. Sony integrated our in-app messaging and behavior tracking capabilities to drive success. Leveraging upshot.ai has led to a massive increase of 36% in the sony app’s user engagement. 

Also read : The Ultimate guide to decode customer loyalty

About Upshot.ai :

Upshot.ai is an omnichannel, user engagement, and gamification platform that helps digital product owners and marketers improve their product adoption and conversions. Fortune 1000 companies such as GE, UHG, Puma, Sony, ITC, Tenet healthcare are using Upshot.ai and observed a massive increase in product adoption YoY increment in revenues.

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