Leverage in-App stories for your marketing campaigns

Stories have been one of the most interactive formats of marketing content in recent years. If we know that over 2.5B people watch stories everyday, it’s easy to understand why all the big brands include this engaging format in their marketing & UI strategy.

What are in-app stories?‍

Since the introduction of web stories, app developers were eager to start implementing them in their apps, seeing how beneficial web stories can be. It didn’t take long for in-app stories to pave their way as a preferred format for user onboarding, user engagement and even user acquisition.

‍Benefits of in-app stories‍

Since we know that users pay attention to story content, in-app stories became one of the most used formats for in-app user onboarding. It is preferred among marketers and designers alike, due to its combination of interactive elements, rich media visual elements and text, available with no additional time from their development teams. This means that marketing & design teams can easily test, edit and update user onboarding without having to worry about development time, while providing the best experience for their users.

Let’s go back to the user onboarding for a sec: having in-app stories allow you to give step by step explanations, feature any product or message in your app and build custom user flows in a visual, snackable format.

The sooner you start using in-app stories in your app, the easier it will be to optimize them for your marketing campaigns.

‍In-app stories as a part of your marketing strategy

‍In-app stories can be used as an effective way to present your users with news regarding your brand. If you offer discounts, special offers or new collections you can easily present it via an in-app story, without any additional help from your development team.

The other way you can use stories is to send visualized product descriptions and personalized thank you notes together with your products and reduce the buyers remorse. By attaching a small QR code to each of your products before sending it out to your customers you can ensure that once the QR code is scanned, your buyers will be reconnected to your brand.

In-app stories on their own are powerful enough, but why stop there?
Stories can serve as a very effective way to visually present your message and engage your audience before converting them into your buyers, and what’s even better is the fact that you can distribute them almost anywhere.

‍Connecting your app with your online presence

Knowing that omnichannel presence is necessary for every Brand, marketers worldwide have been trying to create an aligned omnichannel experience for quite some time. The most common issue is the amount of time needed to create a similar visual experience for each audience segment, for every marketing channel.

That’s where in-app stories get to shine the brightest; once you create your in-app stories you can use them as landing pages for your marketing campaigns or share them on your social media. The best part is that you can create dynamic and even personalized landing pages and thus align the user experience from channel and your landing page to your in-app experience.

In-App stories can serve as landing pages for your marketing campaigns ALT: In-app stories

‍What makes in-app stories so effective

So far we've mentioned quite a few times that in-app stories are quite effective as both marketing, and UX tools. But, what is it that makes them so effective in what they do? Well, truth be told, we cannot say for sure if it is the preferred format or the engaging elements that enable warming up leads through engagement and click-to-buy features, or the mix of it all. All we know is that e-comm stores with in-app stories convert up to 2.5 X better than stores without stories.    

Another potential reason why in-app stories are so effective is that they allow you to mix different rich media & customization options. A single story can contain:

• Photo/Video content
• Audio content
• Written content
• Interactive elements
• Click-to-buy, add to cart and click-to-call features

With all of these available at your disposal, you can gather customer info, share valuable information, present your brand and direct your users anywhere you need, all with ease.

How to start leveraging in-app stories?‍

Now that we’ve outlined all the benefits stores with in-app stories hold, you must be thinking it has to be hard to add stories into your app. Truth be told, coding a custom solution for stories is very expensive and there’s a chance you won’t be able to cover all the omnichannel potential.

Luckily, Vajro’s seamless integration with StorifyMe made it possible to add story widgets to your app in a few clicks, without having to spend much time and resources. Once the widget is added all you’d need to do is to connect your StorifyMe account with your Vajro account and you can start showing stories in no time.
As for the story creation process, you can rest assured that even if you don’t wake up with the inspiration, thousands of templates will get you going pretty fast. Your first in-app story can be live that same day and shared on any channel that works for your business, from social and SMS, to Email and even paid ads.

This is a guest post by Isidora Pahula from StorifyMe.