How mobile apps fit into your marketing channel mix

Every ecommerce brand has multiple marketing and acquisition channels working concurrently. Paid ads in social media, SEO, email, SMS. Each channel is there to do a specific job. Some drive new sales, some are built for retention and driving higher LTV from people who already know about your brand.

But most brands have a gap in their channel mix. MobiLoud’s analysis found that only 4.5% of seven-figure ecommerce brands have a mobile app. This is important because an app is the ideal channel for a small, yet hyper-valuable slice of your customer base.

The reason most brands don’t have an app usually isn't budget or technical complexity. It's that operators aren't sure how an app fits into their marketing channel mix, or because of the misconception that an app will step on the toes of other channels.

If you’re in this boat, keep reading and we’ll explain the functional purpose of launching your own app, and how a mobile app is the missing piece of your channel mix.

The channels you’re already running (and what they do)

The canonical DTC ecommerce brand has multiple channels working simultaneously to drive revenue (some directly, some less so).

A useful way to think about any channel is: which slice of the customer base does it reach, and what job does it do for that slice? Channels overlap, but the healthy ones each do at least one job nothing else in your stack does as well.

Paid social and paid search

These channels are built for net-new acquisition. They reach cold and warm prospects, mostly through unattributed first touches, and convert them on a first paid impression. 

Brands also use the same channels in reverse, running campaigns against customer-list audiences (or lookalikes built from those lists) to put new launches, win-back offers, and category expansions in front of people who've already bought. 

That works, but obviously comes at a cost. Ideally, you’ll keep paid ads for reaching new customers, then use low-cost channels to re-engage them.

Retargeting

Retargeting recovers warm-but-unconverted intent. It reaches site visitors who left without buying, across display retargeting, paid social retargeting, and on-site exit-intent prompts (same job, different surfaces).

SEO

SEO is a high-intent inbound channel. It’s built for new customer acquisition, reaching customers who are actively searching for a solution. It’s extremely valuable when it comes off; but difficult to fully control.

Organic social

Organic social is a passive brand surface. The reach is whoever the platforms decide to show your posts to, which usually skews to a mix of existing followers and a thin lookalike audience around them. 

The job it does best is brand affinity: telling people what kind of brand you are before they've bought, and keeping existing customers engaged with the brand between purchases.

Email

Email handles structured retention and lifecycle marketing. It's the workhorse of ecommerce retention systems, running flows, broadcasts, and segmented campaigns that bring customers back.

The channel has the widest reach of any owned channel: your list is composed of customers who purchased from you before, as well as people who opted in through site popups.

While it has a wide reach, and a high ROI (due to the low operating cost), it’s not guaranteed that each subscriber will see each email. So it’s more of a general-purpose tool; low-cost, wide reach, not the kind of thing for high-importance or high-value communications.

SMS

SMS plays a complement to email. It has much stronger visibility and attention, with a similar (if a little smaller) reach to email.

The tradeoff is a higher cost, particularly at scale, and a higher level of intrusiveness, which means SMS is used specifically for high-value, time-sensitive messages.

Your website

A brand’s website isn't a channel in the same sense as the others. It's the home base every other channel routes the customer to: where new customers learn about the brand and buy for the first time, where existing customers come back to buy again, where the brand's content and product pages live, where account management happens, where their loyalty program lives.

The missing channel: why many brands don't have an app

The missing piece in many brands’ channel mix, as we’ve established, is a mobile app.

Apps are a serious channel. Most of your customers are on their phone all day, and when they’re on their phone, they’re using apps. Often, they’re buying on apps too, from the likes of Amazon, Sephora, Shein, Temu.

So why don’t more brands have their own app?

Part of it is cost perception. Many operators assume that apps are only viable for huge brands with huge tech budgets. 

That’s not true anymore; not with the range of low-cost app builders available to independent ecommerce brands, as well as managed services like MobiLoud that give ecommerce stores a way to launch their own apps without the tax of building and running an in-house development team.

Yet the more common reason brands don’t have an app yet? They just don’t know how to use it.

When you don’t know what an app is supposed to do, and how it plays a different role to other parts of your channel mix, it’s hard to justify launching one.

The role mobile apps play in your channel mix

Mobile apps reach a specific segment of your audience, and play a specific (and important) role for those customers.

A mobile app is a hub for repeat customers. Unlike your website or email, it’s not doing double duty. You’ll get very few (if any) first sales through your mobile app. The audience is clear, focused, and while it’s likely smaller than all your other channels, it’s a more valuable segment: because these are your most engaged, most loyal buyers (they self-selected as such, by downloading the app in the first place).

The stats back this up: mobile app users contribute 3.5–7x more revenue per user than web-only shoppers.

Retaining these customers is more important than for any other segment. The mobile app is an always-on reminder of your brand, a semi-permanent touchpoint that keeps these high-value customers close, as long as the app is installed.

It also gives you a direct line to these customers. You can reach them with notifications that land on their lock screen, with near-guaranteed visibility and no cost per send. And since these customers are already more engaged, with higher intent, they’re the easiest to sell to, and app-driven marketing campaigns typically have a stronger ROI.

An app is a hub for your VIPs. It doesn’t need to appeal to new customers, and while the overall reach may be lower, it reaches these customers more effectively than any other channel you have.

How apps and your other channels work together

A common misconception (and another reason why a lot of brands don’t have an app) is that it’s going to cannibalize sales, or compete with other channels in your stack. The fear is that launching an app basically means shifting buyers from one channel to another, without adding anything.

The reality? A mobile app works in harmony with your other channels, not in competition with them:

Email, SMS and push notifications

These three channels aren’t fighting for attention. They’re reaching different customers, at different times. One customer might check their email every day. Another might ignore email, but notice a text message. And your highest-value customers, those easiest to convert (if you can just reach them) get push notifications: reaching them instantly, for free.

You leave fewer gaps in your messaging stack, which means more revenue, more repeat buys.

Owned retargeting and re-engagement

The app makes it easier to reach existing customers with retargeting, product recommendations and re-engagement campaigns.

You’re less reliant on “rented” retargeting channels (like Meta ads), increasing overall contribution margin (and LTV).

You’ll still run paid retargeting; your app reach won’t be wide enough to make this channel totally obsolete. But just shifting some of your audience onto a cheaper channel, which you have full control over, makes a huge difference.

Other channels feed the app

Getting someone to download the app is the main goal. It gets them in the channel with the most reliable reach, the closest connection, the surface most optimized for long-term, repeat sales.

The value of your emails, SMS campaigns, social posts or retargeting ads is not limited to the direct sales contribution. If you send an email that gets someone to download your app, you unlock additional value, through the extra revenue you can expect from this customer having the app installed.

The app feeds acquisition; acquisition feeds the app

The app drives more revenue per customer, and stronger profits (due to lower share of sales coming from paid ads/SMS).

This gives you more to reinvest into acquisition. You can afford to spend more on ads, bid higher, test new channels.

It becomes a flywheel:

• Customers spend more in the app
• This gives you more budget for acquisition
• This brings in more customers
• Some of these customers get the app, spend more through the app, and feed back to the first step of the flywheel

This is the kind of self-perpetuating system that helps you break through plateaus, and build a more sustainable business.

A customer journey through the full channel mix

Picture a mid-market DTC beauty brand at around $30M in annual revenue, running the canonical channel stack (including their own mobile app).

This is what the ideal customer journey could look like, all the way from the first impression, to becoming one of your best customers.

• Stage 1: First impression (cold prospect). The customer sees a paid social ad in their feed, or stumbles on the brand through an organic post.
• Stage 2: First site visit (warm prospect). They click through to your site (likely on mobile). They browse, add something to their cart. Maybe they check out then, or else they get a retargeting ad and convert a few days later.
• Stage 3: Post-purchase (new customer). Order confirmation arrives by email. Shipping updates go out by SMS. The customer is now in your email and SMS lists.
• Stage 4: Second-purchase trigger (returning customer). A key inflection point for long-term retention. An email, an SMS, or a retargeting ad gets the customer to come back and buy for a second time.
• Stage 5: Loyalty milestone (repeat customer). The customer has now bought two to four times. They're enrolled in your loyalty program. They get a pitch for your app via email, social media, a website popup or a post-purchase screen, and download it.
• Stage 6: Power-user behavior (loyal customer). The customer opens the app weekly, sometimes just to pass the time. They redeem loyalty points in the app, check their phone when they see your push notifications, and order six to ten times a year. The app nurtures them into becoming one of your best customers.

Each channel comes to the fore at a different stage in the customer journey, and each stage is about progressing the customer through to the next step up.

The app is about maximizing the last stage; the one where repeat customers turn into VIPs and brand advocates.

The final takeaway

If you’re thinking strategically, you’ll realize that each of your channels has its own niche in your marketing mix.

An email reaches a different customer, with a different role, to a text message or a paid ad. A mobile app is the same. It’s a powerful asset that speaks to a specific customer segment; one that happens to be your most valuable segment, contributing up to 7x more revenue than the average customer.

Yet for most brands, this is a gap in their channel mix. They may have a fantastic acquisition engine, a beautiful website, and the best email game. But there’s always going to be money left on the table without a direct line to your most valuable customers, which is what you get with a mobile app.