As this post is being written, summer is coming to an end, reflected by the shorter days and colder temperatures that we’re seeing.
It’s not all negative, though. As we move into Q4, consumer spending will rise, driven (in part) by the abundance of celebrations and seasonal holidays across the globe (Diwali, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Hanukkah, to name a few) and the associated marketing campaigns, ecommerce strategy, and promotions (think Black Friday and Boxing Day sales) designed to boost sales and revenue across ecommerce apps.
So why is this important for you as an app marketer?
Q4 is evidently the time when consumers are spending and, in the world of ecommerce and shopping, more and more of these purchases are being made in apps.
So how can you as an app marketer ensure that some of this expenditure comes your way?
Luckily, the Yodel Mobile team has pulled together a list of the app marketing strategies you need to implement to make sure your Q4 ecommerce app strategy is a success – taken first-hand from our experience working with hundreds of apps across a range of seasonal holidays.
Adapting your onboarding & paywall for the holiday season
Your app’s paywall and onboarding screens are vital to its user experience.
If correctly optimised, users will be primed to navigate their own personalised shopping experience. They’ll be able to find their favourite products, and importantly, be informed on how and why they should keep returning to your app.
If you get these screens wrong, however, you risk the chance of users spending their money elsewhere because they have been delivered an app experience that did not fulfil their needs.
Thankfully, with tools such as RevenueCat, Purchasely and Adapty, you can seamlessly test this point of the funnel specifically for seasonal holidays.
We recommend that this critical stage of the users’ journey is adapted and tested to incorporate new offers and seasonal discounts (with bespoke messaging and CTAs) to help build a sense of urgency and compel users to convert towards multiple purchases throughout all seasonal holidays.
Using In-App Events to drive seasonal holiday engagement
Ever since In-App Events first launched, they have proven to be a vital tool for any app looking to boost its visibility and discoverability on the Apple App Store.
With bespoke metadata and creative, combined with the strategic placements across the Today tab and Search & Browse results, In-App Events are the perfect tool to boost your app’s visibility and highlight your seasonal product offering during the holidays.
You might ask what this means for users who have made purchases in the past.
Appsflyer’s State of E-Commerce For 2024 report noted that 60% of first-time app buyers will buy again at some point (it’s just a matter of reminding and re-engaging them!).
Thankfully, In-App Events can help. They allow app marketers to re-engage users who have your app installed on their device but haven’t opened it in a while, directly through the App Store.
This enables you to deliver targeted and specific In-App Events to this audience group, with content specifically designed to get them back into the app (and remind them why they loved it and used it in the first place).
Consider leveraging In-App Events to promote seasonal app updates, new features, or holiday content. A clear example is leveraging Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotions through In-App Events, to let users know you have relevant and enticing products and promotions. This is also a great way to build a stronger relationship with users in the lead-up to Christmas, another high-spend ecommerce period.
Boost holiday traffic with gifting and gamification features
Typically, for an ecommerce app, it is unlikely that a user will open your app 12 (or even 24) days in a row. CleverTap’s recent Ecommerce Engagement Benchmark Report highlighted that only 10% of users complete more than one purchase within the first 7 days.
However, by employing a clever play on the gifting and rewards element of seasonal holidays, you can encourage a change in this user behaviour.
One of the many associations with the holiday seasons is gifts, particularly the little gifts throughout the month in the run-up (think Christmas stockings and advent calendars).
A tactic that is growing in popularity is the use of “mini gifts” within your app. These are designed to encourage regular app usage and repeat app opens by playing on a user’s desire for repeat rewards and gratification.
Whether it’s taking an advent calendar approach and offering 12 or 24 consecutive daily chances to win prizes, rewards, discount codes or simply the opportunity to gift a voucher or subscription to a friend or family member, incorporating the gifting nature of seasonal holidays into your apps experience is a guaranteed app marketing tactic for success.
Leveraging historical data for your paid user acquisition
During seasonal holidays, everyone ramps up their advertising. Seasonal ad spend figures reached 9.5 million in the UK alone in 2023.
Whether it’s your competitors or your counterparts, every ecommerce app will be fighting for your potential customers’ attention and a share of their planned spend.
So, how can you ensure your app stands out from the crowd?
The best approach is to consider a more bespoke strategy, focusing on areas of incremental gains and by leveraging historical performance data around what did and didn’t work well in the past.
A good example of this may be utilising sales data from the previous Q4 to plan your promotional calendar (and corresponding advertising campaign) months in advance of your competitors. This way you can get a head start on customer acquisition and potentially acquire these customers at a cheaper cost.
Consider how you can leverage audience targeting during these seasonal holidays. Instead of shopping around for highly competitive (and expensive) “new” users, can your first-party data point you towards users who have previously indicated high interest and shopping intent for your app?
Retargeting this cohort will increase the likelihood of a download and a purchase, as you’ll be showing products of relevance to customers with high intent.
This tactic can be taken further by pulling a high-value customer list from the last 6, 9, or 12 months to create Lookalike Audiences on Meta or Google. You can then serve these lists with app acquisition campaigns that should, in theory, have a lower CPA and CPP.
Take advantage of the advancements in Custom Product Pages (CPPs) and Custom Store Listings (CSLs)
For every ecommerce app, one of the biggest pain points is tailoring the app store listing for conversion to install.
It can be a struggle to design one store listing (across iOS and Android) that successfully caters to all different types of potential customers—whether male vs. female, over 25 vs. under 25, or even just shoppers from different countries.
With the launch of Custom Product Pages on iOS 15 in 2021, app marketers can now create bespoke store listings, which is great for ecommerce apps. This allows you to tie bespoke app store listings back to specific advertising campaigns, creating a tailored user journey from impression (i.e., an advert for men’s fashion) all the way through to the app store (with bespoke metadata and creative tailored to men’s fashion) and finally through to install.
Google launched a similar product on the Play Store shortly afterwards (Custom Store Listings) however both did come with some limitations. Happily, in 2024, new updates to these features have enabled ecommerce apps to better cater to their customers.
The image above displays an example of custom product pages for the men’s fashion app Mr Porter.
Custom Product Pages have developed rapidly over the last few months. Ecommerce apps can utilise deeplinks for their Custom Product Pages and direct users to relevant products or sections within the app. This creates a streamlined user journey which minimises any chance of drop-off and drives a customer towards a purchase quickly and efficiently.
The second exciting update was the ability to create Android Custom Store Listings (CSLs) specifically for organic search keywords. Roughly 70% of app installs come from an organic search (excluding gaming apps) and organic search & browse traffic is naturally going to be of higher intent.
Now, app marketers have the ability to optimise their ecommerce app store listing to match specific search queries, and directly connect with users who are specifically interested in certain products or areas of interest.
With up to 50 CSLs available to use at any one time a shopping or ecommerce app can now focus on visitors who are actively looking for the specific product ranges, styles or types – ensuring relevance and engagement for their customers.
Timing is everything
A bonus tip for anyone reading this – Q4 and the end of the calendar year is not only a time for increased B2C spend, the same is true for B2B.
Vendors will be vying for a spot within your app and ecommerce tech stack, and Q4 could be the perfect time for you to take on some B2B shopping of your own.
Whether you’re looking for a new, world-class app marketing agency, trying to get a more favourable deal on your Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) of choice, or just upgrading your data stack, don’t miss the opportunity to shop for a better deal for your app.
Wrapping up: prepare your ecommerce app for holiday success
As seasonal holidays approach, the opportunities for ecommerce apps to capitalise on increased consumer spending are immense.
By utilising some of the tactics above, you’ll ensure your app attracts more shoppers and also keeps them engaged and spending. Now is the time to adapt your app marketing tactics and make the most of this holiday season!
For more app marketing insights, have a look through our blog and find more ways to take your app marketing to the next level.
