Someone just downloaded your app? Hooray! But wait it doesn’t just stop there. Acquiring a new user should not just be a one-time exchange unless you want to join the majority of other apps who lose 75% of users within 3 months.
You have to keep engaging with your users so a) they remember you and b) understand how to get the maximum value out of your app. After building a relationship where you provide most of the value, you may be able to make some ‘withdrawals’ from the user goodwill bank by asking them for small favors once in awhile.
Find below a series of emails you can send to remind your users you exist (sounds sad but you’ll be surprised how quickly you can be forgotten, sometimes right after the download!) and show users how they can benefit from your app. All done through gentle nudges and friendly reminders so you don’t annoy your users.
Confirm Their Email Address Email
This is more of a necessary email but every stone can kill two birds at once. While your email should focus on getting users to click that all important Confirm email button, it can also include one of the biggest benefits of using your app to give new signups that extra push. Something short and simple works the best here since your primary goal is to get new users to verify their email:
Welcome Email
Don’t be high-fiving members of your team as soon as your download counter goes up 1. A download only marks the beginning of the courtship. All it means is a casual “I’ll check this out.” There are no guarantees the user will regularly use your app. That’s why it’s vitally important to send a welcome email to:
- Make them feel like they’re joining a community of like-minded people using your app to achieve similar goals
- Remind them the biggest benefit they can achieve from using your app
- Suggest them what steps to take next to start seeing results right away
All these elements are designed to entice your user to set up their accounts and start using your app right away before you lose your status as “shiny new object”.
Here’s a great welcome email from Airbnb that tells the new user exactly what steps to take next with a brief explanation of why they should do it.
Reactivate Dormant Users Email
Accept the harsh reality now: no matter how helpful, how addictive, how fun your app is, some of your users will forget about it after a while. Know all those colorful grids you see when someone else opens their phones? That’s how many apps are vying for their attention, in addition to the other demands of their daily life.
But there is hope! You can bring back some of those inactive users by simply checking in with them. Remind them why it was so great to have your app in their lives. A lighthearted tone works best for a “please come back?” plea. Don’t be too salesy or pushy or you’ll just annoy someone who’s already losing interest:
Weekly/Monthly Summaries Of What Your User Has Been Able To Achieve With Your App Email
Don’t it feel good to get a pat on the back? Harking back to the time when we used to get gold stickers for behaving well in kindergarten? Weekly or monthly summaries of your users’ accomplishments within your app remind them the value they are getting out of it. Also given the rising popularity of self-tracking, your users may welcome being provided additional insights to their behavior patterns.
Ask Your Users To Refer Their Friends Email
What if you could tap into the social network of all your users instead of just relying on marketing channels to get the word out? Well you can! By providing incentives for your existing users to share your app. A referral from them is also much more powerful than you talking about how great your app is. You can also set up the referral system so it’s win-win for your users as well. They get to let their friends know about something cool and get rewarded for doing so:
Notify Your Users Of Important Updates Email
Keep your users in the loop about important updates by sending it to their inboxes. Make sure you only send these type of emails for very important news. Otherwise, some users may get annoyed and unsubscribe from all your emails.
What constitutes important? Ask yourself: would knowing this piece of information possibly affect a decision the user makes in an important aspect of their life? This email doesn’t have to be fancy. It only needs to plainly state all the relevant information:
Ask Your Users For A Favor Email
Uber sometimes asks its app users to sign petitions, usually against proposed policies that would affect the company. Asking your users for a small favor can actually strengthen their commitment to your app because according to Cialdini’s famous book on influence psychology, the brain rationalizes favors by telling itself “I’m doing them a favor therefore I must like them.” Asking for favors also reminds users the value they get out of your app.
Ask Your Users To Upgrade Email
“Ask and you shall receive” is not just the name of a popular self-help book, it’s an effective way boost your sales. If your app has premium paid tiers, periodically ask your users on free plans to upgrade! Some users may not even be aware they can unlock more features. Make the upgrade compelling by listing a few of the biggest reasons why your users’ lives would improve if they do:
Announce A New Feature Email
Added a new feature? Don’t just expect your users to discover it on their own. Tell them about it! Send them an email announcing it with screenshots showing them how to set it up if necessary. In these type of emails, it’s appropriate to include social share links so your user can spread the word to their network if they feel so inclined. Make sure you include a big call to action with a colored button to get people to try out the new feature immediately.
What Action To Take Next Email
Periodically, you can also send out emails recommending what steps your user can take next to extract more value out of your app or to elevate their experience. Ideally, you have the technology in place to send personalized recommendations to each user based on their profile and past behaviors inside your app (learn more about how Moengage helps you do that here):
Informative Transactional Emails
If your user made a purchase or performed an important action within your app, don’t just send them a boring ol’ email with a matter-of-fact summary of what they did. You’re sending an electronic receipt, you don’t need to provide the shortest one possible to save trees. Instead, use it as a way to show users how they actually benefited from this transaction.
Uber does this really well. Instead of just showing you how much money you spent, they provide you other interesting details like how far you traveled, a map of your journey and how long the trip took. All of this subtly and elegantly shows you how little you had to pay for the distance you traveled, making it more likely you’ll use Uber again. And soon.
Ask Your Users For Their Valuable Opinion Email
Whose opinion matters the most? Your users. If you’re launching a new feature or overhauling an existing one, an effective approach is to invite a portion of your users to a beta trial of it. Then ask for their opinions in a survey afterwards. Not only will most of your users feel honored at the invitation to shape the future of your app, asking for their opinions shows you care about your users.
Why is user opinion so important? How your users actually use an app feature may be very different from how you envisioned they would since you’re often too fully immersed in its nuts and bolts to retain much perspective.
What Milestones Your Company Has Accomplished Email
Sometimes, it’s ok to humble brag, as long as you limit it to only a few times a year like on the day of your launch anniversary or at the end of each year. In it, you can present all the major milestones your app has reached, making your users feel proud to be part of your success. The key to making people excited to receive these “celebration time c’mon” emails is all in a snazzy design:
What do all these emails have in common?
- Each email is focused on encouraging your user to take one specific action. One. As the paradox of choice shows us, the more options you give your users, the more overwhelmed they feel and the less likely they are to take any actions at all.
- They all provide a compelling reason why your user should take this action. Briefly explain the biggest benefit your user will derive from doing something and they’re much more likely to give it a try.
- They all use HTML to present the information in an engaging way. From colored large CTA buttons to spiffy images, high converting lifecycle emails use strategic design to hold a user’s interest, organize the information in an easy to digest format and to push users down to the call to action.
Good places to get inspiration for your lifecycle emails is to browse curated collections of HTML emails on sites like:
- http://reallygoodemails.com/
- http://www.htmlemailgallery.com/
- http://beautiful-email-newsletters.com/
You can also consider signing up for similar apps to see what emails they send out (and perhaps get a little motivation to create something even better than them!)
*Featured Image Source
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