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A Gilt Groupe executive speaking during Mobile Marketer?s webinar yesterday said that the most loyal users of its applications are iPhone and iPad users.

During the "Understanding post-download app engagement and transactions" webinar, the executive said that while it has many more iPhone users than iPad users, both types of users have a high lifetime value. IOS provides the majority of the flash sale site?s mobile revenue with a 50/50 split between iPad and iPhone revenue and mobile contributing approximately 30 percent to the company?s overall sales volume.

?We definitely see a difference where smartphone users are much more transactional,? said Yonathan Feldman, vice president of mobile and global engineering at Gilt Groupe, New York. ?They want to come in when a sales starts, get to the cart and check-out.

?Tablet users also do that but they are also using the app in the evening to peruse our products and spend a lot more time looking through our merchandise, investigating and doing discovery,? he said.

?We have a lot of users that go across both devices and use the iPhone at noon in one way and in the evenings, a tablet in another way.?

Strong mobile app experiences
The numbers point to the importance of delivering a strong mobile app experience.

Consumers are increasingly wanting a better experience when it comes to apps and will uninstall an app immediately upon encountering something they dislike. Therefore, it is crucial for marketers to understand how apps are used so they can continuously improve the experience and minimize uninstalls.

Analyzing app behavior can also help marketers better monetize their apps, determine who are their most loyal users and the best ways to retain them as well as uncover the marketing activities best new customer acquisitions.

?Users want to be on mobile and they are moving there very quickly. If you don?t have mobile apps and solutions that meet their needs, it?s not like they are going to wait until they are in front of their computer and go to your Web site," Mr. Feldman said.

?People are very loyal to their devices, more so than your business, and will download another app and shop from a competitor, so it doesn?t matter if the sales are incremental or cannibalizing, because your users want you to be there," he said.

Analyzing app behavior is fundamental to understanding how users are using apps, what issues they are encountering and what works well.

Defining loyalty
Since different apps can have different definitions of a loyal user, it is important for marketers to identify what a loyal app user is based on their goals and what actions are directly tied to their ROI.

?Gilt is all about a new sale starting every day. Our most loyal users come back and use our app every day and purchase," Mr. Feldman said.

?We use push notifications to drive daily engagement,? he said.

?We define our most loyal customers as those who subscribe to push notifications, open our app everyday and purchase.?

To insure that it is not turning off customers with too many messages, Gilt Groupe limits the number of push notifications it sends to one a day.

Once marketers have determined the loyalty metrics that work for them, the next step is assigning a value to loyalty.

?We take lifetime value down to how much we are going to make off this user on a per month or lifetime basis,? Mr. Feldman said.

?The value of the user after all net costs against that user and essentially the profit we are making," he said.

Doing such calculations can help marketers figure out which sources are new customers are delivering the most valuable customers so they can allocate their marketing dollars appropriately.

Marketers need to plan their marketing efforts to attain attributable conversions from advertising and optimize ad spend based on the ad networks that provide the most loyal users.

At Gilt, the marketing spend supports user acquisition and activation with acquisition spend focusing on ads to drive users to download its apps. Activation spend focuses on promotions to get existing members to purchase.

The platform dilemma
One of the issues many marketers face in apps in deciding which platforms to invest in.

At Gannett's USA Today, the company is in the process of pulling its core apps off of a variety of vendors and rebuilding them in-house. The publisher selects platforms to develop on based on the potential audience and the strategic value of that platform.

?The iPhone app is completely rebuilt in-house,? said Matthew de Ganon, vice president of mobile product and operations at Gannett's USA Today, McLean, VA. ?We are doing the same with Android.

?It is very hard to control your destiny when you are tethered to multiple proprietary vendor platforms,? he said. ?In order to be able to leverage our 130 properties across broadcast, newspapers and digital, we had to have consistency.?

Beyond iPhone and Android, the question of which platforms to invest in gets tougher.

For example, while Gilt is taking a look at Microsoft?s Windows 8, it probably will not make any decision about developing for this platform until it becomes available.

However, Gannett developed its first Windows 8 app last year and is already in its sixth version in beta testing.

Once marketers decide which platforms they are going to be on, the key is making sure to provide a strong user experience for the ones that are a priority.

?I really believe that you have to create the best experiences that you can for the platforms that you are strategically going after,? Gilt Groupe?s Mr. Feldman said.

Organic downloads
When it comes to driving post-download app engagement, Gilt tracks post-download behavior extensively via analytics, constant communication with its members, store comments and through customer service. It prioritizes all customer pain-points and focuses on creating the best mobile commerce experience.

Gannett is getting ready to bring online a mix of proprietary systems and vendor technology to track and analyze usage, which will be used for cross-platform and systems analysis.

?One of the easiest, lowest hanging pieces of fruit is reading store comments,? Gannett?s Mr. de Ganon said.

In terms of strategies for boosting download volume and reducing user acquisition cost, Gilt Groupe recommends leveraging Google, Apple and carrier promotion to highlight how a brand is taking advantage of their platform and creating excellent experiences for their users.

Gannett recommends optimizing to achieve optimal rank and drive downloads from organic users ? who download without marketing influence.

?Anything to build up organic downloads because those are the most efficient and they will end up reducing your overall acquisition costs when blended in with your paid campaigns,? Mr. de Ganon said.

Best-practice tips from the participants for driving app performance include looking for ways to take advantage of the platform and solve problems for that platform. For example, marketers can take advantage of push notifications to communicate with their users in a way that they cannot via email.

It is also important be obsessive about data and check it several times a day to uncover more opportunities to improve the experience.

It is also important for marketers to move from a volume-based download acquisition model to an ROI-based loyal user acquisition model and test different creative, per Christopher Shuptrine, senior client development manager at Fiksu, Boston.

?Don?t compare mobile app users to Web users,? Mr. Shuptrine said. ?Your mobile user is going to behave differently than your Web users.

?The mobile user is more engaged over a period of time,? he said.

?The inclusion of push notifications where you can actively access users is something that the Web doesn?t offer, and there is a lot of potential in reengaging these users that the Web doesn?t offer.?

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