Your fans have adopted your mobile rewards platform. Now comes the biggest challenge: keeping your users engaged on the application. One of the most important things you can do is leverage and revamp your platform to best engage and communicate with your fans. After many years of experience, we have a few ways you can keep your engagement platform fresh so your fans stay engaged and involved.
Platform Updates
In today’s mobile world, technology is rapidly changing. To stay relevant to your fans, you’ll want to be up to date with new mobile trends. As other platforms are in constant change, your fans will expect your platform to adapt, and therefore will be more inclined to use it. Anything you can do to switch things up, whether it’s changing your home screen each year or switching up your features, helps your users to be more interested and coming back. Implementing native ads throughout your app to sell select products, like student group memberships or prom tickets, will incline your users to come back and make purchases. Adding these features makes the platform more interactive while simultaneously generating revenue.
For example, SuperFan offers products to be advertised throughout your app, including RevPass, RocketJar, and sponsors. These help build your credibility and boost your reputation amongst the community. See more about these opportunities here.
Engaging Content
It’s easy for an application to become abandoned and ignored overtime if users are not actively engaged. Provide your fans with reasons to keep coming back to your platform. We’ve found a few different ways that have worked to get users interacting with their platform.
With the use and execution of push notifications, your fans are made aware of games, events, and special promotions coming up without even being in the app. Users must see a value in opening the app from the push notification, so incentivizing them with a benefit or reward, such as an exclusive uniform announcement or a special game day theme like a whiteout, will draw them in. As you schedule push notifications, consider the messaging your users will react to best. You can even test different ones to see what works by segmenting your audiences.
Motivate your fans by driving competition. Your platform opens the door for opportunity to create friendly school, class and individual competition, whether in school, at pep rallies or at games. Have Fan Cam competitions or check-in competitions on the Leaderboard between rival schools, class levels, or students. Think about resetting your Leaderboard back to zero so competitions are fresh each semester or year. You can also do random drawings for people who have checked into an event. This allows fans low on the Leaderboard to be rewarded by taking action or participating at a specific event.
Utilize your social media channels to keep fans up to date. Since your social channels are accessible through your app, your fans will come to you first to get game stats, updates, and announcements. Give your fans the latest news so they are inclined to check back in.
User Experience
It’s important to keep your fans motivated to attend games and events. It may be time to switch up the rewards or announce new ones so that your fans don’t lose interest. The more creative you get with the rewards, the more likely your fans will react.
Rewards will differ depending on your organization. For high schools, try rewarding your students with pizza parties, homework passes, free dress days, and cut the lunch line passes. For universities, try rewarding fans with gift cards to local businesses, school swag, free textbooks, and VIP game experiences, such as lunch with their favorite coach. For pro teams, try rewarding your fans with a team shop gift card, front row seats, or signed memorabilia from a player. Your mobile rewards platform is completely customizable, so think about what your fans really want.
With the flexibility of your mobile rewards platform, you can also switch up your events. This means that not only can you add sporting events, but you can add anything from pep rallies to student council meetings. The variety of these events gives everyone a chance to earn points for events they’re interested in.
No matter the lifetime of your mobile rewards platform, it’s never too early or too late to change it up. We are confident that if you utilize platform updates, release engaging content, and revamp your user experience, you will retain and engage your fans.