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Developers to the Rescue: Improving App Retention for Mobile Engagement

Mobile devices have replaced yesterday's radio and TV, taking the notion of productivity and entertainment in our professional and social lives to a whole new level.

Yet, successfully engaging mobile users requires two ingredients:

First, to enable indoor location-based services, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons need to be up and running. Just like GPS for mobile apps like Google Maps during outdoor navigation, healthy beacons are an essential component for indoor location. For more information regarding our unique technology, Aruba Meridian and Beacons mastermind Nick Farina explains in great detail how our algorithm works.

The second ingredient is your audience. Whether visitors or employees, if they do not like the way the mobile app for your brand looks, behaves and consumes battery, then they will uninstall it – shattering your dreams of mobile engagement.

For my perspective on what businesses should consider as they try to address this second piece of the puzzle, read on. Or, for a 6-min audio summary, hit "play" below.

If you are part of an IT organization, it's probably not your forte to come up with engaging apps, create the viral marketing tactics to draw attention to them or perform the tasks necessary to influence retention. It's just not part of your daily job description.

At Aruba, we're on the same page: creating a viral marketing loop for mobile apps is not part of our job description either. Hence, I proclaim that any successful mobile engagement initiative demands participation from mobile app developers. These very intelligent and highly talented individuals spend hours thinking about how to create engaging experiences between a mobile device and its user, by way of a mobile app.

Since we all love charts, here is how we collaborate with different functions of your business and your app developers in delivering a successful mobile engagement solution for your organization.

CADA ISV Aruba and IT.png

For public-facing enterprises, marketing departments look at what can result from successful mobile engagement and, for obvious reasons, get quite excited. They now realize that custom app development agencies (CADA) play a crucial role and are asking CADAs to partner up with infrastructure vendors like Aruba. Good news: we've already onboarded countless app developers to join our partner program. You'll find more details here.

Also, within enterprises, business and IT leaders are now looking at IoT as a way to reduce the cost of doing business and gain a better understanding of their operations.

The benefits within the enterprise can extend all the way to better utilization of expensive real estate. Our partnership with Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Robin highlights an interesting use case: automated conference room booking or what we sometimes to refer as "Uber for meeting rooms". As you'll read in a forthcoming blog, enterprises are already realizing significant savings and productivity improvements with the Robin app. Take a quick look and see what's possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDEb-_ShRjI

As mobile devices and IoT can combine in powerful new ways, it is clear – from a security and corporate policy perspective – that there is a need to identify which mobile apps can interact with what type of IoT devices and when. Of course, the "where" question is answered with indoor location powered by BLE beacons. We see increasing demands for indoor location-based services in today's employee facing mobile apps and look forward to welcoming many more ISVs like Robin to our partnership ecosystem.

Until next time... stay mobile Airheads.