By Mel Fox, Product Manager for Alchemer Mobile, and Vanessa Bagnato, Director of Product Marketing at Alchemer 

We’ve made some key enhancements to Alchemer Mobile (formerly Apptentive), which includes new features and improvements in the 6.0 versions of the iOS and Android SDKs. These new features are the direct result of customer requests and are available immediately when you upgrade to iOS SDK 6.1 and Android SDK 6.0.4 We continue to enhance our SDKs and will release new features and updates regularly.

New Customization Options in iOS SDK 6.1 

New for 2023, you can customize the user interface for both Love Dialog and Notes, in addition to Message Center and Surveys. Learn more about customization in our iOS UI Customization Cookbook.  

Upgrade to iOS SDK 6.1 today to start using these latest improvements. To learn more about our recent iOS SDK releases, visit the release notes here. 

Android and iOS 6.0 SDK Now Available for React Native Apps 

For customers using React Native, you now have access to the latest features and improvements we’ve made with the 6.0 SDK, including Accessible OOTB designs, Response Targeting, and additional layers of customization. To learn more and to get started with your migration, view the reference guide.

Updates to other Android and iOS cross-platform development frameworks, including mParticle, Flutter, Cordova, and Xamarin, will be coming soon in Q2.

As a reminder, all Android Native apps can now migrate to the Android Native SDK 6.0. The migration guide can be accessed here. 

Apptentive.com Has Moved to Alchemer.com 

Effective April 10, links to your Alchemer Mobile account login, help documentation, and developer guides will only be available by visiting Alchemer.com. The Apptentive.com website has been moved to Alchemer.com. Your Alchemer Mobile account login URL will remain the same – be.apptentive.com 

Available Today 

All these updates are currently available in the latest versions of the Mobile SDKs. For more information, contact your Customer Success Manager, or view our help documentation and developer guides. 

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By Amy Springer, Senior Digital Learning Content Developer

Alchemer University launches a new program on February 17th – Alchemer Workflow.

Alchemer Workflow is a no-code feedback workflow engine. It expands on Alchemer’s market-leading collection heritage by connecting feedback with your people, so they can create deeper connections with customers. In this course you will find:

• Introduction to Alchemer Workflow
• Tour of Alchemer Workflow
• Alchemer Workflow in Action
• How to Build Together!

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Identify what Alchemer Workflow is
• Define why Alchemer Workflow was built
• Identify how Alchemer Workflow allows you to collect and connect your feedback
• Navigate the Alchemer Workflow platform and identify the purpose and value of each feature
• Identify how Alchemer Workflow can be a solution for running an effective NPS program
• Identify how Alchemer Workflow can be a solution for running an effective Employee Engagement Program
• Use various features to build a workflow

New! Alchemer University Feedback Survey

We want feedback on your Alchemer University experience so far. The survey can be found here: https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6314076/Alchemer-University-Feedback

Since the first program was released in early 2020, more than 72,000 Alchemer users have successfully enrolled and participated in AU Courses to increase their knowledge and usage of the application.

Check out our other programs as well:

• Beginning Essentials Level 1
• Beginning Essentials Level 2
• Account Administration
• Building Advanced Questions
• Actions
• Logic
• Style
• Email Campaigns
• Distribution
• Managing Responses
• Reports
• Exports
• Tools: Translations and Quotas
• Passing Data
• Integrations
• Alchemer Workflow

The post Alchemer University Delivers New Course for Alchemer Workflow appeared first on Alchemer.

LOUISVILLE, Colo. – February 14, 2023 – Alchemer – a global leader in experience management and enterprise feedback technology – today announced the launch of Alchemer Workflow. Alchemer Workflow leverages Alchemer’s award-winning heritage to deliver the fastest, easiest, most effective way to close the feedback loop with customers and employees.

Alchemer Workflow is available immediately.

Independent market research says closing the loop is the biggest challenge facing CX and VoC professionals. 84% of those surveyed believe their programs are essential to their company’s success, but only 24% say their programs effectively address the feedback they collect. 

“When customers don’t hear back from organizations after sharing requested feedback, it destroys relationships, brand, and trust,” said Alchemer CEO David Roberts. “With Alchemer Workflow, our customers collect the best feedback and build on it to create deeper, more engaged relationships with customers and employees.”

Alchemer Workflow includes market-first features such as:

• Connected surveys, which trigger follow-on surveys to help organizations delve into customer feedback, providing precision on what actions to take
• No-code process and logic arguments to connect feedback to systems of communication and action
• Logic branching that allows organizations to differentiate their response based on their customers’ specific feedback and preferences

“Typically, employee engagement is a once-a-year type of conversation,” said customer, Kyle Burnam, CEO of Infosurv Research. “Alchemer Workflow can help us to transform that into more of an ongoing conversation, where we’re continually engaging employees based on how they respond to previous surveys and questions.”

Alchemer Workflow helps brands visualize and build continually closing feedback loops. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to automate activities behind the scenes, freeing customer-facing employees to respond personally to people who have given feedback.

“Alchemer Workflow solves the biggest problem in our industry – how to respond and act on the feedback that’s collected,” said Alchemer SVP of Products and Services, Ryan Tamminga. “None of us believe ‘thank you for your feedback’ closes the loop. With Alchemer Workflow, you can inject feedback into your business in a way that allows for every voice to be heard and action taken at scale.”

Alchemer Workflow helps any team or department that collects feedback – customer experience, employee experience, UX research, business processes and operations, and market research – effectively close the loop with customers or employees to increase customer retention, adoption, advocacy, and growth.

To read Alchemer CEO David Roberts’ blog, click here.

About Alchemer

Alchemer offers the world’s most flexible feedback and data collection platform that allows organizations to close the loop with their customers and employees quickly and effectively. Our mission is to give every customer and employee a voice, and to make every voice matter. Alchemer serves more than 13,000 global CX, HR, and market research customers, including many Fortune 500 companies. Alchemer is a KKR portfolio company. For more information about Alchemer visit www.alchemer.com.

Contacts

Alchemer:
Jeannie Zaemes
Jeannie.zaemes@alchemer.com
(303) 250-2507

Connect Marketing:
Sherri Walkenhorst
sherriw@connectmarketing.com
(801) 373-7888

The post Alchemer Launches Alchemer Workflow – the Fastest, Easiest, Most Effective Way to Close the Feedback Loop with Customers and Employees. appeared first on Alchemer.

Today, Alchemer releases a product that changes the CX industry – Alchemer Workflow. For a few years, we have been committed to helping our customers drive action from feedback, and this new product brings us closer to the manifestation of that promise. When you engage with our survey product, you think, “collect valuable information.” When you engage with our workflow product, you will think, “what should I do with the valuable information that I collect?”

From the day I arrived at Alchemer, I have thought about how the industry moves beyond simple surveys and simple analysis. Analysis is important if it leads to closing the loop with the customers and employees who provide valuable feedback. Unfortunately, organizations have become consumed with tuning and adjusting feedback dashboards in hopes that increased precision increases a bias and direction for action. Mostly, these dashboards have not moved the needle in the organization they serve. Alchemer has always offered an amazing solution that allows customers to route feedback to drive action, but the survey metaphor hasn’t screamed “drive the feedback and data throughout the organization.” Alchemer has delivered on becoming the “central nervous system” of experience management, routing feedback to the right part of every organization.

Alchemer Workflow was conceived from this challenge. We wrestled with how to keep Alchemer as simple, intuitive, and easy to adopt, while also providing more power in closing the loop with customers and employees. We have achieved that goal with this product.

Originally, we called the product Alchemer Workflow as a placeholder while we began to design it, convinced that we would rename it later. In recent months, we have come up with different names that said, “take your feedback and act on it,” in various forms. Ultimately, we ended up back at Alchemer Workflow. Our customers may not call us asking for “workflow,” but they call every day asking how to drive action, close the loop, and integrate feedback into operational systems. They call us asking for Alchemer Workflow.

With this new product, we offer our customers a no-code solution that can listen to organizational events and initiate surveys to learn more in the context of their business. We enable customers to create follow-on surveys driven from answers to previous engagements or surveys. We encourage customers to route feedback, through logic conditions, to various communication or integration destinations. All of this leverages the existing Alchemer metaphors and is as easy to adopt and use as Alchemer Survey. Alchemer Workflow also provides a backbone for our “central nervous system” and will allow Alchemer to easily integrate new products (through either innovation or acquisition) into our experience management platform. Our customers won’t have to wait for long post-acquisition integration efforts to realize the benefits of our investment.

I regularly think about an industry colleague’s comment on the CX industry, calling it “marshmallow fluff.” For so many organizations, it feels good to hear feedback and to share summary results, but they don’t tackle the hard work that shows their customers and employees that they care enough to respond, engage, and take further action. In fact, 71% of our customers told us that closing the loop is challenging due to lack of resources and difficulty identifying feedback that requires a response. Alchemer Workflow makes this hard work intuitive and easy to manage and doesn’t require specific or additional IT or CX resources. Alchemer Workflow changes how our customers can engage their customers and employees – we hope you love the product!

The post Introducing Alchemer Workflow – the Fastest, Easiest, Most Effective Way to Close the Loop With Customers and Employees appeared first on Alchemer.

LOUISVILLE, Colo. – January 4, 2023 – Alchemer – a global leader in experience management and enterprise feedback technology – announced today the acquisition of Apptentive, the industry leader in mobile feedback technology. This acquisition provides Alchemer customers with a more in-depth method of collecting feedback from mobile customers and gives Apptentive customers access to survey and workflow functionality across communication channels and within platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

Founded in 2006, Alchemer helps businesses collect, analyze, and leverage customer and employee feedback to proactively drive better engagement, retention, and user experience. Apptentive manages millions of consumer interactions every day on hundreds of millions of devices for the world’s biggest brands, helping drive twice the actionable feedback and 70% higher retention than the average mobile app achieves.

“This acquisition creates an incredible opportunity for our customers to better reach their customers and employees where they are engaged – in mobile apps,” said David Roberts, CEO of Alchemer. “This is the next step in Alchemer’s journey to democratize experience management and becomes the foundation for Alchemer’s digital engagement strategy. Alchemer is excited that the Apptentive team shares our vision to make every customer and employee voice matter.”

Alchemer and Apptentive will offer their combined set of solutions to customers effective immediately and will soon launch new, integrated solutions for the market. Apptentive provides customers with the ability to reach consumers and employees within their mobile experience. Alchemer’s broader experience management platform allows those same respondents to provide deeper feedback. By leveraging Alchemer’s workflow and integration capabilities, customers can put this feedback to work, closing the loop with their customers and employees who take the time to provide feedback on their experience.

“Alchemer provides the perfect platform to help us realize our vision for Apptentive – to give every customer a voice,” said Robi Ganguly, CEO of Apptentive. “Coming off a year when we broke records in feedback volume and released Version 6.0 of our mobile SDKs, I am excited to combine our best-in-class mobile capabilities and our talented team with the Alchemer team and offering.”

About Alchemer

Alchemer offers the world’s most flexible feedback and data collection platform that allows organizations to close the loop with their customers and employees quickly and effectively. Our mission is to give every customer and employee a voice, and to make every voice matter. Alchemer serves more than 13,000 global CX, HR, and market research customers, including many Fortune 500 companies. For more information about Alchemer visit www.alchemer.com.

About Apptentive

Apptentive’s mobile customer experience platform empowers companies to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across their mobile customer journeys. Using proactive mobile communication tools, Apptentive enables companies to deeply understand their customers in order to manage their brand reputation, create seamless customer experiences, and validate product roadmaps. Through intelligently timed surveys, messages, and prompts, the company powers millions of customer interactions every month on hundreds of millions of devices worldwide for companies including FanDuel, eBay, CNN, Capital One, JetBlue, Arby’s, Zillow, and Safeway. For more information on Apptentive visit www.apptentive.com.

Media Contact:
Jeannie Zaemes
(303) 250-2507
Jeannie.zaemes@alchemer.com

The post Alchemer Acquires Apptentive, Market-Leading Mobile Feedback Platform appeared first on Alchemer.

Today we announce Alchemer’s acquisition of Apptentive to customers and employees. It’s an exciting time for us and for our industry.

Our industry is incredibly important and yet not well defined. People call it customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), voice of the customer (VoC), feedback management (EFM), survey software (SS), or experience management (XM). Regardless of its label, our customers know what they are trying to accomplish – to engage their customers and employees, to hear from them, and to respond to serve them better. In short, customers want to connect with customers and employees so they can respond and close the loop. Closing the loop empowers companies to find and keep their best customers and employees – something every organization must do.

Something else is clear too — our industry is consolidating, driven by software-industry economic factors and by the maturation of experience management. With KKR’s backing, we have an amazing opportunity to bring new products to our customers and new talent to our team. Our customers should expect Alchemer to continue to innovate and improve our core products, and to acquire new products that fit with our vision and philosophy.

We were interested in Apptentive for a few reasons. Right from the start, Robi Ganguly (Apptentive CEO) and I were aligned on the vision for our combined company – to give every customer a voice and, importantly, make every voice matter. Alchemer has always provided industry-leading survey software and has enabled our customers to engage their customers and employees by inviting them into that survey experience. With Apptentive, we extend the platform to engage customers and employees where they show up; in the mobile applications and experiences that they love.

Apptentive’s mobile business is exciting and only the start for Alchemer digital engagement strategy. We will leverage Apptentive’s technology and expertise to expand the existing mobile experience, and to show up in websites, gaming platforms, voice-enabled devices, and everywhere people engage with companies online. By leveraging Alchemer’s workflow and integration capabilities, our customers can put this feedback to work, closing the loop with customers and employees who take the time to provide feedback on those experiences.

This is an exciting leap forward for Alchemer and a new horizon for Apptentive. We’re grateful that you’re with us on our journey to engage the world’s customers and to prove to them that we are listening.

The post Alchemer and Apptentive Together appeared first on Alchemer.

2022 was a difficult year for customer experience (CX). Forrester reports that “US companies have lost the vital focus on customers that they gained at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.” And consumers felt it.

But there is little need for CX doom and gloom. In fact, we predict that 2023 will be a boom year for CX with companies coming together in new ways to solve problems. We predict that software will make the CX job easier no matter which department has ultimate responsibility.

We are confident about these predictions because we are big believers in a trend that we share with Alchemer customers and that we’ve heard discussed by CX industry thought leaders: collaboration and data sharing across departments will be key to CX success. We believe that owners of customer experience in different departments will initiate conversations to build collaboration and data sharing. These department owners will find ways to share CX data and jointly problem-solve to truly diagnose factors contributing to positive and negative customer experiences throughout a customer’s journey.

We need to improve on 2022

While true that CX reached new heights in 2021, 2022 has seen CX quality scores fall back to pre-pandemic levels in the U.S. Forrester reports that the average CX Index score declined “across all 13 verticals that we study…from an all-time high of 72 in 2021 to 71.3 in 2022 on our 100-point scale.”

These numbers may sound small, but each 1-point improvement in a company’s CX Index score can be worth billions of dollars in revenue or assets on average. For example, one point could mean $22.5B more in assets under management for the average investment firm to $1.2B in revenue for the average mass-market auto manufacturer. Little changes count for a lot, and we can do better than in 2022.

We need to collaborate in 2023

Some large companies have centralized ownership of their customer experience programs within a single team or department. However, even if ownership is centralized with a CX team, that team still needs to collaborate regularly with other departments.

More commonly, many companies distribute CX responsibilities among customer-facing disciplines like marketing, customer service, sales, and more. This distributed responsibility makes it difficult to collaborate, but that’s the challenge for companies in 2023. CX professionals need to figure out how to work with different teams for the shared end goal of improving customers experiences, which is good for business.

Whether a CX department, or a shared-responsibility model, companies that value CX can and will thrive this coming year to the benefit of their company’s bottom line.

Software needs to facilitate collaboration

CX leaders — no matter the department — will need a CX platform that facilitates collaboration. Here are five capabilities your CX platform needs to offer in 2023 in order to collaborate best with other departments.

1. Behind-the-scenes automation: Reduce manual labor and enhance a personalized customer experience.
2. Integrations: Push or pull data to and from the business systems that each department uses every day.
3. Loop Closure: Ensure that customer feedback is responded to in a timely and personal manner by routing data to different departments that are empowered to follow-up on customer feedback (thus closing the loop).
4. Business Metrics: To facilitate collaboration and success tracking, push feedback data into the business systems where key business metrics are tracked.
5. Deep Analysis: CX teams will need to dig deeper into customer feedback to discover what can be improved, beyond just acknowledging customer sentiment and moving into gathering real insights.

Whichever platform they choose to manage their CX program, CX leaders will want to balance back-end automation so they can more easily personalize the experiences delivered on the front-end. Integrations will pull or push data into the business systems they already use. And pushing that data into BI systems will facilitate the correlation of feedback data with key business metrics. And that platform will nudge departments and people to close the loop on customer feedback, ensuring that customers receive a personal response.

One story of collaboration

Different departments collaborating on CX projects today is not a myth. Malwarebytes is a shining example of collaboration done right. Executives there created an NPS Council, a collective of Malwarebytes executives in various departments like customer marketing, HR, customer service, and user experience, dedicated to responding quickly to customer feedback.

Composed of representatives from various customer-focused departments, the NPS Council is a successful means to solve complex challenges requiring multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary responses.

Malwarebytes uses Alchemer to send the first NPS survey 28 days after a customer signs, and then every six months from purchase. The NPS Council reports back on a rolling basis in order to identify trends and assign fixes to various challenges. And once a quarter, they publish overarching trend documents with their insights to executives.

Software underpins this collaboration, but the collaboration only truly works because different team leads pull together to solve CX challenges jointly.

Collaboration will drive successful CX outcomes in 2023

Despite the downturn this year, we predict that 2023 will be a great year for CX. Software supports various organizational methods — single CX teams or disparate groups working throughout the organization.

But collaboration will be the key to success this year. Department heads will need to initiate that collaboration and data sharing. Groups will need to work together to truly diagnose customer issues and resolve them. In short, CX and data silos can only hurt your CX in 2023.

But in those companies that value CX and if those CX groups can prove their ROI, Forrester predicts that one in ten CX programs will be stronger than ever at the end of 2023. In fact, the leaders of CX teams at companies that “embrace great CX as part of their brand identity” will “gain direct control of teams to which they previously had only dotted-line connections — like customer success or the contact center — and earn larger budgets for personnel, technology, and project work.”

The challenge for the coming year is figuring out how to collaborate and really pull it off. An NPS Council is a great example of different departments coming together for a shared CX goal. So is taking the time to review your CX program and develop a process for closing the loop on customer feedback. What will your company do to make 2023 your best CX year ever? How are you planning to use software to collaborate even more effectively?

[Read more about the Malwarebytes NPS Council.]

The post CX Suffered in 2022, but Alchemer Predicts Software Could Help Make the Difference in 2023 appeared first on Alchemer.

It’s important to figure out what your goals are with your app first, then your top KPIs accordingly. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of the most popular KPIs that mobile app developers are using to measure (and solidify) their apps’ success. Depending on your app category and goals, some of these will be more applicable for you than others.

Downloads, new signups, and uninstalls

In 2021, mobile apps were downloaded more than 230 billion times globally. Downloads are the starting metric for most developers. It’s easy to understand, a great benchmark that many other metrics rely on, and a key stage of your app’s growth. It’s simple: the more frequently an app is downloaded from the app store, the more popular it gets.

Similar to downloads, tracking new signups can yield interesting insights. It indicates if your user base is growing or shrinking. This metric can be impacted by bugs, ad campaigns, recent events, and more. On the other hand, make sure you’re also tracking uninstall stats. This number can give you a more accurate picture of how many users are potentially using your app at any given time. When you see this rate grow uncomfortably large, you can start investigating the root cause: is it a feature that stopped working? Maybe your newest ad campaigns are sending the wrong message? Whatever the case, getting to the source of this issue is of paramount importance, and uninstall stats can shine a light on this matter and act as a starting point to help you investigate app health.

Customers don’t keep apps forever, so it’s important to track your app’s popularity with an accurate picture of the number of installs happening concurrently. At the same time, users often gravitate back towards their favorite apps, so don’t despair!

Retain, but don’t churn

Retention rate is the percentage of customers who visit or use your app at least once every 30 days. It is typically measured over the course of a 90-day period (one business quarter). It is an indispensable KPI because it indicates how many of your users have stayed loyal. 

A high retention rate means your app is providing value for people, a great sign you should start monetizing your app. This metric is difficult to grow organically; therefore, retention numbers should be a major KPI from day one.

Churn rate is the opposite of retention rate. It tells you how many people stopped using your app. If your retention rate is 25%, it means your churn rate is 75%. You’ll want a low churn rate and a high retention rate, but that’s not always possible since mobile apps have high churn rates in general.

Customer engagement numbers

Research shows that mobile customers use nine apps a day and 30 a month, and the average U.S. consumer spent almost five  hours on their smartphone every day in 2021. Sticky users are those who open your app frequently, sometimes even daily. They can be measured by app open rate (AOR) or session metrics.

You can also track daily active users (DAU) alongside AOR. These people form your core customer base, and if they start dropping off, you probably messed up somewhere. Active interest is shown when these customers go out of their way to tap on your app icon every day or interact with your app in another way. This is a strong indicator that you’re doing a great job with your app’s targeting and UX design.

Similarly, tracking monthly active users (MAU) shows how many unique visitors opened your app on a monthly timeline. This isn’t the same as monthly sessions, which will include returning users alongside new ones. Both DAU and MAU should measure the same, specific actions so they can be compared. A strong MAU means you can start monetizing your app with success.

Session statistics

Session length is a good KPI to use as a baseline for app engagement. It indicates how much time someone spends in your app per visit. The more time, the better because getting a customer’s attention is difficult enough as it is. Keeping their attention? That’s even more difficult to achieve.

While session length depends on the type of app, mobile consumers spend an average of about five minutes in a given app. But make sure you determine the averages for your particular app category. For instance, the average time spent in a payment app will differ from time spent in a shopping or meditation app. Session interval (SI) measures the time between sessions; shorter intervals are better, but it can depend on the nature of your app and whether your goal is to keep your customers coming back frequently. Often, app revenue, user retention, and advertising success are linked to SI rates. You can improve your SI numbers with better UX or more value for frequent visitors.

Sharing and rating your app

When people are passionate about an app and its impact on them, they’re more likely to share and rate it. It’s important to track sharing across social media, even if it means building a custom data pipeline to grab data from the major social networks. Track the context and reason for why the customer shared your app; sometimes, you can ramp up your efforts in the high-performing areas of the app.

With ratings, you really only need to track the app stores you’ve listed your app in. Don’t overlook any problem or complaint, and use this candid customer feedback as an opportunity to improve your app. Experts mention that it takes more time to write a review than rate an app, which speaks to the value of qualitative feedback. It can help you prioritize which suggestions to tackle first.

No missed opportunities

As important as it is to track engagement rates, retention rates, and actions, it’s all useless if you haven’t set up your app and tracking correctly. For example, if you’ve designed a slide-out menu that mistakenly contains unusable links, your customers will become frustrated and uninstall the app (or worse, leave a negative review). Make sure you’re tracking unresponsive gestures; these are gestures that people are attempting but not seeing any results from. Most developers aren’t thinking about customer frustration in this way, so you can set yourself apart from your competitors quickly by tracking unresponsive gestures with heatmaps.

On the other hand, crashed sessions are also incredibly frustrating. Customers will abandon your app if it keeps abandoning them. By tracking crashed sessions, you can nail down the cause and push a solution quickly. Crashed session metrics include how frequently crashes occur, when, and where in your app.

Mobile KPIs to monitor your competition on

APP DOWNLOADS BY REGION

There is no way to 100% accurately track competitors’ downloads by region, but you can gain a general idea through research. For instance, your competitor may announce their numbers in press releases (remember to take the brag factor into account). Use those numbers in partnership with their app ranking and compare the data with your own numbers and app ranking to form an idea of their downloads.

This information can help you define success for your own company.  How many downloads is a realistic goal? 1,000 or 10,000 downloads per month? Use your competitors’ numbers as a starting point, and then focus on how to outgrow them.

APP PRICE IN REGION

There is a question that every company designing a mobile app must ask: free or paid? This is a tricky decision that competitive intelligence can help to answer. What are your competitors doing? If you plan to sell your app while the competition is offering a similar product for free, you must be sure that you are providing significantly more value.

APP RANKINGS BY REGION AND CATEGORY

It is useful to track your competitor’s rankings and their relative positions. Has your ranking dropped while their rankings remained the same? This data is useful for analyzing customer feedback and marketing strategy. Of course, you could track this by hand, but we use and highly recommend Data.ai, which shows you app rankings for free.

UPDATE CYCLE

Understanding the update cycle is critical. You should know when your competitors update, and the purpose for each release. Was it a major revision or were they fixing bugs? If you detect a pattern, then you may be able to infer other information, such as the number of employees working on the app. This, in turn, could signal whether the app is a top priority, which could assist in deciding which resources to dedicate to your own app.

If you know the timeframe that their new features will be released, you can release your app with updated features first, even if it isn’t perfect, in order to get more downloads.

NUMBER OF CUSTOMER REVIEWS & AVERAGE CUSTOMER RATINGS

The number of reviews, average rating, and tone of reviews are all important, but even more interesting is how these values change over time. If the number of reviews increases greatly in a small period of time, or if their rating changes significantly, this can signal key strategy changes. If the ratings do not affect their position in the app store, it may mean that the reviews were purchased.

Conclusion

The bottom line? If you’re not tracking any KPIs, or even if you’re tracking the wrong ones, you could be hurting your own bottom line. Think of it this way: If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get where you want to go?

It’s not enough to have a great app anymore. To have a successful mobile app these days, you must be constantly refining it for current and new customers. If you don’t, your competitors definitely will. On the other hand, if you do, you’ll be much more likely to achieve long-term success and customer loyalty.

If you would like to learn more about key marketing metrics and KPIs check our guide “6 New App Marketing Metrics.”

The post Mobile App KPIs: The Top Metrics to Measure App Performance appeared first on Alchemer.

And based on the response to our recent panels webinar, there is a lot of interest surrounding how to reach the right audience with surveys. So we want to make it easier for you to understand the panel process and get started with your own panel sooner.

The webinar is available on-demand on the Panel Services page. Watch it at any time to learn the basics about panels.

During the webinar, we answered a few of your questions, but did not have time to cover all of the questions that came in. Keep reading to learn the answers to those questions and more.

Q: How many people are in a panel?

A: Through our technology partners we have access to over 100 million respondents in over 100 countries. You define the audience you’d like to reach and we provide you with data that meets your requirements.

Q: Are panel contributors compensated in any way?

A: Panel respondent compensation varies based on length of survey and respondent demographics required for each panel study. This is the main driver of the costs to Alchemer customers for panel study fulfillment.

Q: Which sample provider do you use?

A: Through our technology partners we have access to most major sample providers.

Q: Can you find survey respondents in a certain state or city?

A: We can use any geographical parameters to find your ideal audience, including state, city, and zip code. Audience depth will vary proportional to the population of the defined geography.

Q: How does random sampling occur with a targeted population, e.g. adults with over $100K in assets?

A: Respondents are randomly chosen across our mix of trusted suppliers and always sent in a census balanced way for the given country. Sample can also be sent in a way that mirrors a particular market (in which case this may deviate from gen pop census).

Q: What is your criteria for accepting a panel company into your portfolio of panels?

A: Through our technology partners we have access to scores of panel sample providers. They are vetted for quality and continually monitored.

Q: How often do you clean or update your panel? How do you prevent “gamers” — people who rush through a survey?

A: Through our technology partners we have access to hundreds of panel suppliers worldwide. We only work with suppliers with a proven track record of high data quality. Respondents who are either reported as providing a careless session, or fail an automated attention/competency check in the survey (recommended) are reported back to our suppliers. Suppliers with a low quality score are subsequently removed from our network. ReCAPTCHAs, red herrings, and survey timers are all automated methods we can use on the survey level to catch respondents who rush their session.

Q: Can you give examples of cost? What factors contribute to it?

A: Panel respondent compensation varies based on length of survey and respondent demographics required for each panel study. This is the main driver of the costs to Alchemer customers for panel study fulfillment. High incidence (high percentage) consumers typically start at $2 per complete (with bulk N count discounts available). Business professionals start at $9 per complete, with specific pricing for decision makers, certain industries, etc. Please note, there is a project minimum cost (not a project management fee, simply the N count multiplied by the cost per complete). Prepaid agreements are available that provide a discounted rate, priority access to the fulfillment team, and a lower individual project minimum.

If you have additional questions about panels, please get in touch.

The post Answers to Frequently Asked Panel Questions appeared first on Alchemer.

Now, it might sound like common sense to say, “just retarget your customers to boost engagement,” but let’s break down what this actually means. The concept of retargeting mobile customers is not a new idea by any means, but few brands practice it successfully.

We’re going to walk you through three specific ways to effectively and efficiently retarget customers to boost mobile engagement.

1. Retarget using demographic factors such as age, gender, location, etc.
2. Retarget using behavior and mobile customer engagement history
3. Retarget based on shifts in sentiment

Then show the importance of targeting your customers with mobile surveys, and provide tips on how to effectively use them to drive mobile customer engagement and feedback.

Let’s jump right in.

Three retargeting methods to boost customer engagement

1. Demographic factors

Obviously, in order to start segmenting on demographic data, you’ll need a system and CRM to collect this information.

Here are examples of a few demographic data categories:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Nationality

Next, in order to engage these segments effectively, find out how they’re spending their time online. This takes some basic research but tools like Statista can help you quickly gather high-level data. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but these generalizations are a great starting point to make informed decisions.

If you work in mobile marketing or advertising, demographic information is critically important. You can create hyper-specific and personalized in-app ads that speak directly to the interests of your target demographic.

Truly powerful mobile customer engagement comes from hyper-specific brand interactions. The secret sauce here is not just targeting your ads or your messaging toward one demographic at a time, but finding ways to target even smaller combinations. For example, young Hispanic adult women who live in California have very different interests, behaviors, and buying habits than white elderly men who live in Maine.

The more personalized and specific you can get with your outreach, the higher your mobile customer engagement will be.

2. Past behaviors and mobile customer engagement history

You don’t want to reach out to first-time customers and dedicated loyalty-club members in the same way. Communicating with both through the same message does neither group any good.

Instead, split your customer base into different sections based on past behavior like these:

• One-time buyers, who purchased something once and haven’t returned
• Seasonal buyers, like those you see every holiday season and then not again until next year
• Semi-regular buyers, who appear every two or three months
• Dedicated customers, who are the backbone of your customer base

These groups all respond better to different engagement strategies, so you’ll have more success after splitting them up. You don’t have the same goals for all of these different groups, so why would your engagement strategy be the same?

When you segment by your consumers’ previous histories of engagement, you can more effectively inspire mobile engagement and increase customer retention.

3. Shifts in sentiment

Customer sentiment is the emotion behind customer engagement. When you monitor sentiment, you try to measure the tone, context, and feeling from customer actions. Whether a customer completes a purchase, leaves a review, or mentions your company socially, there is always an emotional state connected to their action.

In short, tracking customer sentiment helps you understand three major metrics: Overall customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement intent. The more you know about a customer’s current emotional state, the more you can tailor your marketing campaigns to provide an engaging, helpful experience and adjust your product roadmap to meet customer needs faster. Customer sentiment analysis gives you insight for your mobile marketing and product strategy, helping your dollars stretch further and your ROI increase.

• Identifying and utilizing your fans (directing them to leave reviews, encouraging them to share on social media, etc.)
• Winning back unhappy customers (closing the loop on their negative feedback, following up with them via one-to-one messaging, offering them exclusive discounts if they stay, etc.)
• Creating more fans by targeting neutral customers (offering them special discounts, driving them towards more engaging experiences, etc.)

But the magic happens when you track these data points over time. Tracking sentiment over time allows you to identify and act on shifts in sentiment. In other words, you can understand why certain people feel the way they do about your brand, and therefore take action to win them back.

At Alchemer Mobile (formerly Apptentive), we have Fan Signals which looks at expressed sentiment based on mobile actions and feedback. In measuring expressed sentiment, we segment customers into four categories:

• Fans Shifted to Risks: Customers whose expressed emotion has shifted from positive to negative, or from Fan to Risk.
• Risks Shifted to Fans: Customers whose expressed emotion has shifted from negative to positive, or from Risk to Fan.
• New or Repeat Fans: Customers who have expressed positive emotion for the first time by answering “Yes,” or who have expressed positive emotion at least twice in a row.
• New or Repeat Risks: Customers who have expressed negative emotion for the first time by answering “No,” or who have expressed negative emotion at least twice in a row.

Now, just imagine the incredible power you’d have if you could retarget customers based on these shifts. The opportunities to drive revenue and increase mobile customer engagement are endless.

The connection between retargeting and mobile surveys

One of the best ways to retarget your customers is with mobile surveys. Mobile surveys are proven to drive higher response rates and increase customer engagement. Let’s dive into mobile surveys further:

Why you should use mobile surveys

There was a 9% increase in the number of surveys sent in 2021 from 2020. Brands are talking to more consumers and are more comfortable engaging with them over longer periods of time, particularly when around closing feedback loops by telling consumers their voices were heard. Over the past four years, we’ve seen the volume of in-app surveys grow exponentially.

The more consumers you hear from, the more holistic your feedback will be.

On average, most brands only hear from less than 1% of their customers surveyed. Our research shows the average response rate for in-app surveys was 13%. While 2021’s response rates were slightly lower than in 2020 (16%), they’re an off-the-charts comparison to the industry standard of 1%.

The more consumers you hear from, the more holistic your feedback will be.

Here a quick summary of why you should use specifically mobile surveys:

• Higher response rates and engagement: You can get higher response rates than traditional feedback channels like email. Our customers are seeing  high response rates for in-app surveys because they set events to trigger a survey at the most opportune time (i.e. when the item is picked up, if they open the app the next time, or maybe when they check in that they’ve arrived). This reduces friction in the customer journey because you’re removing steps they have to take to give you feedback such as replying to a long, irrelevant email survey. Asking questions at the right time and place to the right people will help you gather far more feedback.
• Real-time feedback: With in-app surveys, you can reach customers in real-time when the experience is still fresh. It’s the perfect time to take advantage of that captive audience within the mobile app experience.
• Wide reach: Surveying customers won’t impact your business if you only hear from a small percentage of them—or just the unhappy ones. In-app survey tools like Alchemer Mobile (formerly Apptentive) allow you to proactively hear from up to 90 percent of your consumers.
• Location-specific feedback: We know that the customer experience can vary drastically from location to location – especially now with how quickly the world is changing around us. It is more important than ever to be able to identify gaps in the customer experience down to the individual ID. When you can quickly identify and analyze issues by passing through custom information like this, you will ultimately save valuable time and resources.

How to create mobile surveys

Whether you are a seasoned survey writer or are surveying your customers for the first time, writing effective surveys for mobile devices can be challenging. To ensure the survey is successful, the first question to ask yourself is, “Why am I writing this survey?” Understanding the goal of the survey will help you write effective, concise, and goal-oriented questions that benefit both you and your customers

Nobody likes taking a long survey—especially on a mobile device. That means all of your questions need to be extremely relevant. Keeping surveys short and simple makes it easier to analyze the data and make informed decisions.

There may be many questions you want to ask your customers, but focusing on a specific goal will ultimately get you better data. Keep your surveys targeted on a certain feature or event.

When to use mobile surveys

There are many great ways to use surveys to better understand your customers. Here are some examples of how Surveys can be used to drive your business and product plan forward:

• Product feedback: You would like to know what your customers thought about a recently released feature or would like them to share their thoughts about new features they’d like to see built.
• Customer research: You’d like to better understand the demographic of customers who continue to use your app 20, 30, or even 40+ times.
• Investigating issues: If you notice abnormal customer behavior or a lot of bug reports, you can deploy a survey to understand exactly what’s going wrong in the customer journey.
• Customer satisfaction: If you’re proactively deploying surveys and requesting feedback, you can hopefully course-correct before unhappy customers leave. However, surveys can also help understand why customers are happy or make repeat purchases.

Conclusion

No matter your business model, industry, or company size, the key to driving mobile customer engagement is to target the right people at the right time and in the right place. And no, simply targeting customers in your app rather than on the web isn’t enough of a strategy. Your targeting, specifically with mobile surveys,  can be so much more sophisticated and effective with minimal effort or extra resources.

If you would like to learn more about customer engagement, check out our 2022 Mobile Customer Engagement Benchmark Report for engagement benchmarks specific to your industry.

The post How to Drive Mobile Customer Engagement and Increase Product Feedback appeared first on Alchemer.