Reviving your userbase: how to reengage inactive users

In this blog, we’ll touch on the nature of inactive users and what you can do to bring them back in the fold. How do you reengage inactive users gracefully and effectively?

Businesses sometimes assume that their inactive users are lost forever. This can’t be further from the truth. When you think about it, these are the users that have shown interest in your product. But for some reason, they stopped using it at some point. The best course of action here is to re-ignite that interest. This means finding ways to reengage inactive users again.

From a business standpoint, this makes sense: it’s expensive to acquire new customers. According to the Product-led Growth Collective, it’s roughly 8 times cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. And it is 2 times cheaper to upsell to an existing customer.

Naturally, it’s cost-effective to reengage inactive users and relatively easy to revive than starting from scratch to acquire new customers.

What are inactive users?

Inactive users are the users that were active in the past but have stopped using your app or service. They may not delete your app from their phones outright, but they are not using it anymore. So what can you do to reengage inactive users?

The life of an average app after its installation on a user’s device is usually short-lived. An average app loses its users within the first 3-7 days. This is understandable: people try out a lot of apps to find something they really like, and given the abundance of choice, they drop the ones they find unappealing or boring very quickly.

This may be why reengaging inactive users matters, as the users have already shown interest in your app. If you can spark that interest one more time and convince them to give you a second chance, you might turn them into loyal customers. And once it’s done, you can keep them loyal by adopting a positive attitude in customer service.

4 tips to reengage inactive customers

1- Identify and segment your dormant users

Identifying and segmenting inactive users should be your first step. Different demographics may require different approaches and their interest in your app may differ. Segmenting them is the best first step to reengage inactive users.

Identifying dormant users: Determine a time frame and make a list of the users who haven’t opened your app in that period. If you’re using an attribution provider, you can make this list easier as they might track events and uninstall data. This list could include users that downloaded your app but haven’t opened them yet or opened it once and never came back.

Segmentation: Depending on the nature of your app, determine which demographics are more likely to come back to your app. This could take geographic location, age, education, interests, and occupation into account.

2- Send them personalized content

Because they’ve shown their interest in your app before, you might have an idea of what your users are interested in. Depending on the nature of your app, you might want to look at their past behavior in your app and show them relevant content. That why, you can easily reengage inactive users.

For example, let’s say you have a streaming app and there’s new content that your users might find interesting based on their watch history. Let them know about the new additions to your catalog. If you have a game, tell them about your new levels and the updated UI. Likewise, if your offering is a productivity app, tell them about the new features and services.

3- Offer discounts and special offers to reengage inactive users

Who doesn’t love discounts? If your app has a paid component, you might catch the interest your inactive users by offering them a discount or give them a taste of your premium membership for a short time.

Offering special offers and discounts is nothing new. Think of cart abandonment in shopping sites: e-commerce sites have been using reengagement tactics to remind people of items left in their shopping carts. Sometimes they send a reminder email to their users and offer them a discount if they check out within a limited timeframe, or they offer to throw in a couple of goodies for free. You can borrow a page or two from their books and employ the same method to reengage inactive users.

4- Remind them that they can reach out to you anywhere

Whether you’re reaching out to your inactive users through push notifications (this goes without saying but don’t overdo it) or emails, let them know that you have a presence in social networks. Social networks are a great way to reengage inactive users. If they need any help or want to give you some feedback, they can do it on their choice of platform. We’ve touched on the importance of social media customer service in our blog before, which you can find here.

Giving choices to your customers to suit their specific needs and preferences is always a good idea. Basically, it communicates the idea that you are always willing to go the extra mile to make their lives easier.

With Desk360’s multichannel customer communication platform, you know it’s going to be a breeze. If you don’t know about Desk360’s omnichannel customer service platform, be sure to check it out here.