5 Key Features and Attributes for a Mobile CRM

Before mobile era and particularly smartphones completely revolutionized customer relationship management or CRM, for years businesses all over the globe tried hard to utilize it to their advantage.

As per a latest report by Gartner businesses all over the world are spending each year $12 billion on CRM systems, but as far as the experience goes CRM still remained underused to a great extent mainly because of the challenge in respect of utilizing CRM across the diverse business fields.

Now third-party mobile CRM apps made it easy to leverage its potential in more ways than one. The mobile CRM app of your choice should have robust capability to contain all information about the users and interact in an automated and intuitive manner for fulfilling definite analytical and business goals.

Besides working as a hub of user information and analytics it should also be capable of running strategic campaigns for engaging users right from the CRM app. In present day, mobile CRM is viewed both as a tool of analytics and action. Let us have a quick look at the capabilities of Mobile CRM.

Tracking in-app user behavior and user statistics
Store all self-chosen information of the user like gender, location, preferences, interests, etc.
Creating profile-based user segments and according to the usage of different profiles presenting further insights on the user behavior and trends.
Gathering insights, sending them for business use and share and collaborate on these insights for business specific actions.
Collecting user information and interaction data from inside the app and outside sources.
Utilizing app analytics to shape and optimize strategies for user acquisition.
Utilizing app analytics for effective campaigns with messaging, email and push notifications.
From time to time showing various changes pertaining to user behavior, usage of features, user engagement, user retention, user lifetime value, etc.

1. Integrated app analytics

When it comes to utilizing integrated app analytics to the best of your advantage you need to draw a sharp line between the so-called system of point solutions that only offer open and click-through rate, and a robust closed-loop CRM solution that delivers actionable analytics produced by all types of user data. Your marketing campaigns would enjoy the power of actionable insights drawn from analysis of real user behavior and profile data.

Utilizing real-time analytics and right metrics is crucial for earning a better result. Let us show below the various metrics that you have to track for knowing the usage, engagement and retention.

Usage metrics

New user number
Time spent in app
Length of each use session
Duration of interval between sessions
Usage statistics based on different user segment
Usage of features and which features stand high in popularity
Flow of screen
In app events and completions of events

Impact and engagement metrics

User retention
Rate of leaving the app
Completed organic user conversion without push messaging
Click-through rate of push and in-app messages
Conversion achieved through push & in-app messages
Number of emails opened
Click-through rate of emails
Conversion rate of emails
Lifetime value of customers
Revenue earned per customer
Transaction rate per user
Business conversion per customer

Along with the above mentioned metrics typical user selected profile information and some custom data further add firepower to the analytics. Let us have a look at few of them.

Timeline of usage and engagement
Campaign achievement in improving user number and engagement
Sources of accessing potential users
Medium of communication used with potential users
Platform-specific user data
Operating system in use
User location
User ender
User age

2. Tracking Acquisition and ROI

Tracking user acquisition and return of investment for acquisition campaigns is one of the crucial roles of mobile CRM solutions. Acquisition of users can occur from diverse sources including paid advertisements on different publishing channels, organic source and referrals. Now after tracking the respective number of users garnered through these sources you can now measure the ROI of each campaign and user segment by lifetime value (LTV) figure. Instead of measuring the output by download numbers, tracking LTV of each segment of user and their respective campaign source that brought them in the app, you will know which marketing campaign is bringing you high-value users and which user segments are generating more revenue. According to these insights you can further concentrate more on the effective campaigns and user segments to improve your ROI.

Let us have a quick look at the list of information you need to track concerning acquisition campaigns, source of acquisition and ROI achieved through different campaigns, sources and user segments.

Total investment on acquisition campaigns
Budget for each campaign
Budget spent on individual campaigns by the advertisement partner
Number of new user achieved within a timeframe
Number of comebacks by users after the initial app use.
Average cost incurred by the company for each user
Revenue achieved by each different campaign
Revenue achieved by all the campaigns put together
Lifetime value generated by each campaign.
LTV of users generated by all campaigns

3. Collecting user data from inside and outside of the app

It is always important to give simultaneous attention to potential app users who are still not using the app besides just focusing on your user base. Actually a bigger volume of users still exist outside of your app that you need to address and interact with your marketing campaigns. For this you need to collect information about potential users still outside of your app as well.

Your CRM system should act like a robust tracker of all types of interactions from within and outside of the app so that utilizing relevant data you can target potential users from outside of the app. For example, by tracking interaction of someone on your website or by tracking communication and relevant information left by the customer on your physical store or by gathering information of some email senders, your CRM system can offer insights as to how to address them further with a message, mail or notifications.

Let us offer below some categories of information that you can collect about users remaining still outside the app.

Categories as per user interest like interest in sportsmen, teams, sporting events, interest in artists, singers and performers, interest in news on technology, current affairs, finance, global news, interest in hobbies like traveling, instrument playing, vocational interest like marketing, nursing, writing, etc.
Static user data birthday, gender, user location, user profession, user income, family members, etc.
In-app information about the user like subscription type, linked social media profile, registration status, etc.
Information concerning user status in app store like frequency and rate of app purchase in app store, in-app purchase information, membership as frequent buyer, reward status of the potential user, etc.

4. Actionable push notifications, in-app message and emails

Your mobile CRM app is not only a reserve of user information and corresponding insights into user behavior but it is at the same time a platform for launching actions to rope in more users and create better user experience. Through push messaging you can venture to make app retention better and create more ways to interact with your users. In-app messages on the other hand, facilitates more engagement with users who already are using the app. Emailing helps you address a broad base of users across different channels of business interaction including Web, business store, mobile app and other points of contact. A mobile CRM app with effective targeting by the use of push notifications, in-app messages and email marketing will give you an edge to grow and retain user base.

5. Enhancing productivity through automation

Finally it is the automation that saves you from manual work and vulnerability of human error while running targe- based marketing. Modern mobile CRM apps are equipped to incorporate change in marketing campaigns as per change of user behavior in real-time. Mobile automation based on CRM offer great marketing advantage by ensuring supply of relevant information and insights for each target interest group and profiles of users.

Here below we are going to mention a few important things that you should look for in an automation tool of a CRM.

Repeated push messaging and user segmentation
Ensuring that in-app messages are sent on the basis of real-time user behavior and responses.
Ensuring email or notifications sent to the user after every business conversion or purchase.
Determining timing, frequency rate and type of content for various campaigns conducted by the CRM automation tool.

Lastly, it is the continuous innovation and excellence that would make a great mobile CRM solution ahead of other standard ones. Incorporating more granular level business specific information categories and product based tracking tools such excellence can be reached upon.