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December 5, 2016
PC

Reengage your customers with UWP ad campaigns and push notifications

We’re pleased to announce that all developers can now use new features in Windows Dev Center to engage with customers of their UWP apps.  Developers can build segments of their customers and use them to create custom retargeting and reengagement ad campaigns for their UWP apps or send push notifications. Until recently, these powerful monetization and engagement capabilities were only available to Windows Dev Center Insiders.

What are retargeting and reengagement ad campaigns?

A retargeting ad campaign is type of advertising campaign that helps you reach a specific group of your customers who have taken a certain action with your UWP app.

For example, if some portion of your customers have spent more than $10 on add-ons, you could retarget that specific group of customers with a custom ad campaign that drives them to a unique page within your app that offers them a special discount on a premium add-on. This helps you target high-value customers.

A reengagement ad campaign is a type of advertising campaign that helps you reach a specific group of your customers who meet a certain level of engagement with your app.

For example, you can create an ad campaign to target users who installed the app in the past three days (new users) with a special offer to WOW them in the first week. This will help decrease the customer churn rate which is usually high in the first week after app install.

Both types of campaigns enable you to deliver the right message to the right set of customers, at the right time. This helps you better achieve your campaign goals and make the most of your advertising budget.

What are segmentation and targeted push notifications?

Engaging with your customers at the right time and with the right targeted message is key to your success as an app developer. With our customer segmentation feature, you can send push notifications to all of your customers or only to a subset of your Windows 10 customers who meet the criteria you’ve defined in a customer segment. With a push notification, you engage and encourage your customers to take an action, such as rating an app, buying an add-on, trying a new feature or downloading another app.

Why should I use these kinds of campaigns?

Studies have shown that acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. That’s why once you’ve acquired a customer it’s important to reengage with him or her regularly so you cultivate a loyal fan base that uses your app frequently and that’s open to making additional purchases.

How do I get started?

At a high level, there are two steps to creating an engagement campaign.

  1. Use the Windows Dev Center dashboard to create a customer segment that includes the kinds of customers you want to target.

You can choose from a variety of customer criteria, such as Acquisition source, Acquisitions, Demographic, Rating, Store acquisitions, Store purchases and Store spend.

Note that for privacy reasons, the Windows Dev Center doesn’t show developers any personally identifiable information about the specific customers in a segment.

  1. Use the dashboard to create an ad campaign for your app. In the Campaign objective section, be sure to choose the Increase engagement in your app

Give it a try and if you’ve got suggestions for how we can make these features even more useful to you, please let us know at Windows Developer Feedback.