A good mobile messaging strategy certainly inspires everything from tap-throughs to purchases. However, lots of activity doesn’t necessarily mean your brand is growing stronger and more profitable.

For that, you’ll need a thorough understanding of the various mobile marketing metrics that have rightly become favorites of mobile marketers. Plus, even the best mobile messaging strategy will need a tweak every now and then. If your brand doesn’t change, chances are that, over time, your customers will. You won’t know when it’s time to adjust, or if those adjustments are working, without the ability to properly measure your progress.

Measuring Your Mobile Messaging

Here are the tried-and-true metrics that every mobile marketer needs to have at their fingertips:

  • MAU and DAU. The number of monthly active users and daily active users provides marketers with important baseline information. Are you giving users a reason to download and open this app? And is the app appealing and effective enough that are customers will turn to it repeatedly?
  • Engagement. In mobile as in other forms of marketing, engagement leads to loyalty, which leads to conversion and sustainable revenue. So what counts as engagement? Tap-throughs, opting in to push notifications, direct open rates, and event conversions. All good stuff.
  • Uninstalls. Every marketer should watch this metric closely, just as they would watch their email for signs that the unsubscribe rate is becoming unhealthy. In some ways, engagement is easy to measure: marketers can see as soon as it happens. But uninstalls are the outcome of a longer process. Dissatisfaction tends to simmer for a while before a customer actually uninstalls an app. A mobile messaging strategy might be driving decent engagement in one portion of a customer base, but could also be simultaneously irritating another group of customers.
  • Revenue. If mobile is properly integrated into a cross-channel marketing effort – as we believe it always should be – then revenue per customer should be increasing as your mobile communications strategy matures. The bottom line in mobile, as everywhere else, is profitable growth.
  • Revenue per mobile user. It can pay to measuring revenue specifically by mobile user, especially if you’re looking at revenue as a guide to the effectiveness of your mobile strategy. Focusing on revenue per user also allows you to use timely engagement and A/B testing as tools to help reach your conversion goals. Look to optimize each message for copy, time of send, and segmentation.
  • Lifetime value. You probably already know how important it is to track customer lifetime value. In addition, you’ll want to measure the customer lifetime value specifically of customers who have downloaded your app. These should be your most lucrative customers–overall, mobile users spend 40 to 50 percent more than customers who don’t use shopping apps. You want to make sure you’re getting at least this much value out of your app. If not, be prepared to make changes.

For more details on how to improve your mobile messaging strategy, download our guide to mobile personalization.