How to Promote Your Ecommerce Mobile App (Sustainable Acquisition Strategies)

Your top 5% of customers are responsible for 40-60% of your revenue. If you're not giving them a faster, easier, frictionless way to shop - like a mobile app - you’re leaving money on the table.

A good app turns casual buyers into loyal fans and makes it easier for your top customers to keep coming back.

And with platforms like MobiLoud, launching and maintaining an app typically costs around $500/month - and at $500/month, you only need 20-40 customers using the app consistently to break even. We’ve seen brands hit that in an afternoon.

But here’s the catch: the ROI only kicks in once people actually download and use your app. Too many brands launch an app and then assume customers will just find it. They won’t - unless you promote it.

Here’s how to do that, sustainably and effectively.

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Sustainable Acquisition for Ecommerce Apps

At MobiLoud we’ve launched over 2,000 mobile apps, including hundreds of apps for DTC and B2B ecommerce brands.

From what we’ve learned, here’s a simple guide to promoting your mobile app, to ensure you come away with a positive ROI.

Step 1: Get Free Installs from Your Owned Channels

Start by tapping into the audience you already have. These are people who already know and like your brand - they’re your lowest-hanging fruit.

These channels are also the easiest to start with, because they come with zero cost. Every install you get is all profit. You don’t need to worry about whether or not you’re “cannibalizing” website sales (moving people into your app who would have bought on your website), because you’re not losing anything if that is the case.

Don’t jump ahead to paid acquisition until you’ve covered these bases first.

Optimize Your Website for App Visibility

Your mobile website is your most important touchpoint. All your customers funnel through here - so it should be easy to know you’ve got a mobile app.

Think: if someone is wondering whether you have an app, how easy is it for them to find it?

Put CTAs and App Store badges on your homepage, in your site footer.

On mobile, use smart app banners to let mobile shoppers know that you’ve got an app. These are great for app downloads, as they make it very easy for shoppers to download.

Leverage Email and SMS

Next, leverage your email and SMS lists.

Include subtle mentions in email footers, and more direct app promotions in your welcome and post-purchase flows. 

You can also send dedicated messages to your top customers, who are most likely to download and use the app. Let them know the app is out there, and explain the benefits of using it.

Post-Purchase & Welcome Sequences

Automated email sequences are a highly effective, low-friction, low-cost way to grow awareness of your app.

Add a simple “shop faster in the app” call-to-action in your welcome and post-purchase emails. This way, everyone on your list will be aware that you’ve got an app.

Post-purchase sequences are particularly powerful for driving app downloads; they let you get in front of engaged buyers, and tout the benefits of a smoother shopping experience (pre- and post-purchase) if they make their next purchase through the app.

On the physical side of the post-purchase experience, consider package inserts - a small card with a QR code linking to your app, and a message like 'Next time, shop in the app and get X benefit.’ is an inexpensive way to turn first-time buyers into repeat customers through the app.

Use Social Media

Your social media audience is another great (and free) acquisition channel. 

Post about your app on your organic channels, especially if you already have an engaged following.

Social media isn't always the most reliable way to promote your brand (organically, at least), but it’s low effort, low cost, and can reach a wide swath of loyal customers.

Optimize Your App Store Listings

Finally, make sure your App Store listings are optimized.

This isn’t likely to be a major new user acquisition channel, but it still matters. You need to make sure your existing customers searching for your app can easily find it.

Ensure your app is easy to find, not hidden under the wrong category, or the wrong name.

This is particularly important if your app happens to be a different name from your brand - hypothetical example, let’s say you've got a streetwear brand called UrbanThread, and the app name is StyleDrop.

Whether or not this is a good idea, you want to make sure people searching for your brand name can find your app. 

Include your brand name in the title or description so customers searching for you can find it.

And, while the App Store is probably not going to drive a lot of completely new customers, make sure you’re optimized for discovery regardless, with keywords in your listing copy describing what you sell.

Step 2: Use Incentives to Drive More Downloads

Your first objective should be to get as many free downloads as possible, utilizing your existing channels, and simply transferring people who already use your mobile website into the app (where our data shows they become higher-value customers).

But once you’ve tapped into all your free channels, you can layer in incentives to drive additional downloads.

The key here is to offer a compelling reason for someone to shop in your app rather than on your website (ideally without eroding your margins too much).

Light, one-time offers can work well, like a 10% discount on their first in-app purchase. Promote these through website popups, dedicated emails or SMS campaigns, and organic social posts. 

These incentives help overcome inertia and get more people to try your app. After all, it’s free money for them - downloading an app costs them nothing.

Ideally you don’t want to rely too heavily on discounts as your main lever. Over time, this can train customers to only shop when there’s a promotion (and, obviously, it costs you). 

That’s why it’s important to lead with your free install strategies first. But when used well, incentives can kickstart adoption and bring in higher-LTV users.

Build Value Inside the App

The best incentives are not discounts -  they’re the intrinsic value of the app itself.

Give people a reason to download and use the app:

• Offer exclusive products, early access, or app-only deals.
• Explain the benefits of using the app for order tracking and faster reordering.
• Connect your loyalty program to the app.

Any major brand with a retail arm has a clear path to providing value with the app - brands like Uniqlo, Muji, Starbucks, Sephora, and thousands more use their app as the hub for their loyalty program, and to facilitate in-store activities.

By offering clear utility through their app, it gives their customers a reason to use it - and keep it installed.

Step 3 (Optional): Scale with Paid Acquisition

Many brands with an engaged customer base never need to pay for app installs. You can grow just fine with the earlier steps.

But if you want to scale faster, paid acquisition can work.

Start by retargeting high-value customers - people who’ve purchased from you before, especially those who’ve made multiple purchases or have high order values. These customers are more likely to see the value in your app and convert quickly.

Other paid tactics could include:

• Partner with influencers to promote your app.
• Run UGC-style ad creatives focused on app benefits.
• Use lookalike audiences of your top customers.

The key is to measure your return, and only do paid acquisition if you can work out a clear system to get app users for cheap enough to make good business sense.

Based on a collection of our users, we found the average app user was worth a little over $21 - though obviously this will be different from brand to brand, depending on AOV and purchase frequency.

But work out the average value of an app user for you, and if you’re able to get users for a low enough cost through paid methods, go for it.

You Don’t Need a Million Installs to Win

A common misconception is that you need a ton of downloads to make building an app worth it.

Once upon a time, brands were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for custom apps that cost another 5-6 figures per year in upkeep and maintenance.

If you’re investing this much, then you do need massive adoption of your app to make it worthwhile.

But today, there are much more affordable ways to build a mobile app, like MobiLoud, which costs you only around $500 per month (and a low upfront cost).

When you’re spending this little on your app, your brand only needs a small percentage of all your customers to use the app to turn a nice profit.

Just roughly 5-15% of your customers downloading and using the app can easily result in $10k+ in new revenue per month, through app users shipping more often (we find app users shop around 2.5 times per month on average), shopping for longer, converting at a higher rate, and spending more in each order.

Once you understand the unit economics of modern ecommerce app development, you’ll realize how much of a no-brainer it is to launch your own app.

"We couldn’t find another company that could offer the same features at the same price point, same time to market, and make it as easy as MobiLoud could."
- Svend Hansen, Product Owner at Bestseller

Final Thoughts: A Straightforward App Download Strategy

Promoting your app doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking.

Most brands succeed by simply:

1. Making sure existing customers know the app exists.
2. Using light incentives to encourage downloads.
3. Building real value into the app experience.
4. Running smart paid campaigns (if they want to scale faster - but many don’t need to go this far).

Focus on getting your top customers onto the app - the ones who love your brand and want to shop more. 

Don’t worry if 85% of your customers don’t use the app. That’s fine. It’s not for them.

As long as you’re not spending hundreds of thousands on a custom app, you don’t need a million downloads to win.

Just a small group of engaged app users will be enough to make this an effective growth channel for your brand.

That’s what MobiLoud is here to help with - we’ll turn your website into an app, with no rebuilding, no expensive overhead, no operational complexity. Just a smooth, optimized shopping experience for your best customers that drives a positive ROI - with expert support from a team who have done this before.

Want to see what your app could look like in 30 seconds? Get a free preview now - no devs, no rebuild, just ROI.