logo
logo
Sign in

Removing Friction from Social Media-to-App Journeys

avatar
marcion
Removing Friction from Social Media-to-App Journeys

Over the last decade, social media has emerged as a crucial driving force for lead generation, installs, and business.

Social media apps generate billions of app installs annually, enabling marketers and app developers to grow their user base and engage with existing customers. And apps provided by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and other social platforms offer versatility in the ways they help brands achieve goals across the funnel stages – from awareness to acquisition to engagement and beyond.

Given the importance of social media in any brand’s marketing mix, it goes without saying that any user experience spanning the social media-to-app journey must be exceptional and that all pre- and post-install activities must be measurable.

But, alas, things aren’t always so simple; mobile marketers, product managers, and app developers aiming to move prospects and customers from their social media properties to app experiences — especially those seeking to route (or deep link) into the app itself – run into obstacles.

When Links Break, so Does Attribution

Why is this happening? It’s simple and even logical. Social media platforms work hard to ensure that users stay in – and don’t stray from – their apps. So in some cases, when users try to leave, they face a less-than-ideal user experience, typically in the form of broken journeys and friction points.

This is what frequently happens when social media posts include deep links, especially when (Apple’s deep linking standard deployed on iOS 9+) are involved. When users tap on these links, they often break; this leads to points of friction in a customer’s journey, in the form of error messages, dialog boxes, and users finding themselves in unexpected destinations. In turn, this friction sets off a chain reaction of frustration, abandonment, lost opportunities, and lower conversion rates.

This situation is obviously unacceptable for users. But it is equally undesirable for a brand since it cannot broken journeys result in misattribution and non-attribution.

AppsFlyer’s Landing Pages to the Rescue

What is someone focused on acquisition and growth to do? This is where AppsFlyer’s new Landing Pages feature comes into play.

With Landing Pages, app marketers have a simple way to ensure excellent user experiences by providing a smooth path for customers from social media apps into a brand’s app.

The Landing Pages feature seamlessly transports users that tap on a deep link from social media posts and / or stories in Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and WeChat directly to a landing page.

This mobile web landing page can display a “preview” — for example, product discounts, holiday sales, etc. — of in-app content. Showing in-app content is a proven way to deepen engagement with customers by giving them a “preview” or taste of what they will see in the app. Why is this so? When people know what to expect, they are more likely to engage with content when it reappears later in a customer journey.

Landing Pages include a which routes users on the appropriate path:

  • Users with the app will be directed to in-app content.
  • Users without the app will be directed to the App Store.

What else can Landing Pages do?

As shown above, Landing Pages help marketers provide a smooth user experience as well as accurate attribution metrics. But they can do much more:

  • Design creatives for experimentation agility: A/B tests are predicated upon agility and iterations. Landing Pages empower marketers and product managers to rapidly design and release creatives to test and hone based on performance.
  • Compare social media platform performance: Creating different links for each social media platform enables marketers to understand and contrast the performance of different social media apps, landing pages, and campaigns.
  • Customize and personalize: Marketers can rapidly create distinct landing pages for different sources, segments, and campaigns and can then easily monitor the performance of the various landing pages.

How Do Landing Pages Work?

With the WYSIWYG editor tool, designing and customizing landing pages is a cinch. Marketers and app developers can gain newfound agility, deploying landing pages rapidly without having to request development resources to design and launch content.

collect
0
avatar
marcion
guide
Zupyak is the world’s largest content marketing community, with over 400 000 members and 3 million articles. Explore and get your content discovered.
Read more