2021 Mobile App Engagement Benchmark Report

2020 reset the mobile app engagement playing field. In response, teams across all industries need to rethink their mobile feedback and engagement strategies to meet rapidly-shifting marketplace changes. Today, we’re thrilled to release our 2021 Mobile App Engagement Benchmark Report.

Apptentive’s annual mobile app engagement benchmark report serves as a baseline to help you understand your app’s engagement strengths and areas for improvement. Our 2021 report includes data from 1,000 iOS and Android apps with 5,000+ active users, with over a billion app installs evaluated.

Key Findings

Almost all apps in our study experienced significant change in consumer engagement, customer retention, daily active usage, emotion-based feedback, consumer interactions, ratings and reviews, and more. These changes were driven by a variety of unprecedented factors due to the coronavirus epidemic, which catapulted mobile app downloads, usage, and corporate investment.

Key findings include:

• Companies who proactively engage with consumers at the right time and place see their 90-day retention results double the industry average, which is between 20-30%.
• Brands shifted focus to improving long-term retention. 63% of consumers who were proactively engaged in Q1 were still seen later in the year (Q3-Q4).
• There was a 50% year-over-year increase in the number of surveys sent, with an average response rate of 16% (industry average for survey response rates is 1%).
• Simply giving customers the choice to opt into or out of surveys resulted in survey response rates of 60% (again, industry average for survey response rates is 1%).
• 13% of consumers shifted their emotions to move between Fan and Risk audience segments. Brands only lost an average of 4% of consumers in this group thanks to precise segmenting and proactive, personalized outreach.
• Almost all apps experienced significant change in their DAU due to COVID-19. Three main trends took place: massive drops, huge spikes, and higher frequency of app usage.

Consumer app usage has never been higher—and for many industries, the opportunity to win market share has never been greater. There are three focus areas for brands to prioritize in order to win in 2021 and beyond:

1. Focus on retention, not acquisition. Prioritizing retention allows teams to lower marketing costs, improve loyalty, and save resources.
2. Turn apps into listening channels. Mobile has become a primary—if not the only available—listening channel. Understand customer emotion by gathering, measuring, and acting on feedback to make product decisions.
3. Go all in on personalization. Allow consumers to direct their own journey within your mobile experience based on individual preferences.

Download the report for a more comprehensive look at how your app performed compared to the marketplace.

What’s New in the 2021 Report

This year, we expanded the number of app categories included in our data to give an industry-specific point of view to mobile app engagement strengths and weaknesses. App categories include Media and Entertainment, Finance, Food and Drink, Healthcare, Personal Services, Shopping, Travel, Utilities, Business Services, and Education. We’ve also added 20 subcategories to go even deeper into the data.

Annual impact on MAU was driven heavily by COVID-19. To help mobile teams better understand engagement fluctuations, we’ve added month-over-month breakdowns across our macro averages, individual categories, and within subcategories. Focusing on when fluctuations occurred will allow readers to take away a more holistic view of their engagement strengths and weaknesses.

See the Report

This year’s data fascinated us in many ways as the effects of COVID-19 shook every inch of the mobile marketplace. Brands quickly pivoted to respond to rapidly changing consumer behavior due to pandemic-driven lockdowns. In return, consumers turned to brands in new, intimate ways as the mobile channel became a primary method of relationship building.

Download a complimentary copy of the report now to see how your app performed against the marketplace and to help set new, data-backed engagement goals for 2021.