Marketers spend a lot of time refining and testing certain things. The content of a specific push campaign, for example, or exactly which creative to use in an in-app message. We even worry ourselves about when the right time to send these campaigns might be, which is a redundant question: the right time to send them is whenever suits the individual user.
Refining and testing is, of course, a good thing. But there’s one aspect of push campaigns in particular that is sometimes forgotten in all the excitement: deep linking. That’s a shame, because research from our own customers suggests that smart deep-linking can more than DOUBLE the revenues associated with push campaigns.
We saw this in effect recently when a major retailer - who shall remain anonymous - decided to carefully test the effect of deep-linking straight to the relevant area of the app, as opposed to simply sending users to the home screen. You would expect this to have some impact of course, as users are less likely to lose the thread when they don’t have to navigate through the app themselves.
The results were extraordinary however. Between the two competing campaigns engagement rates (in terms of click-through) were essentially identical, with the deep linked campaign showing only a 0.7% increase. That stands to reason, as the content was the same in both versions.
However, when it came to actual purchases and revenue delivered, deep-linking delivered a 102% uplift over the standard ‘home screen’ alternative. That is a doubling of revenue from a single campaign, an extraordinary result that reminds us just how important simple steps like these can be.
The lesson - unless you have a very good reason not to, always ensure you deep-link your push and in-app campaigns. And when doing so, think carefully about exactly what the optimal target page will be. Back to testing and refining again!
