Question
Hi, I am a college student who developed this app with a friend because we got sick of stopping at the ATM to be able to pay our cash cover, much less pay those absurd fees. We charge a simple $.99 upcharge so our margin is about $.52. What are some effective ways we can get patrons on our app and engaging with it. We have built a lot of hype. Most students have heard about it and are very excited, but simply aren't using it (many do not know it is ready yet and others don't know how, I think).
Bonus: There are 12 bars in town, we started with 2 on our app, with 5 more that said they will be ready to sign when we say the word. That time has come and now they are hesitating. They want to see what other bars sign on, forcing a chicken and the egg problem. Advice?
We are looking to place a call with a Clarity consultant to build a plan. Thanks!
Answer
I'd definitely recommend offering some sort of incentive for users to share your app with friends. This will not only help you drive adoption, but also help increase usage if the friends you're going out to the bar with are the ones you just told about the app. (Hopefully it'll be top of mind for at least one of them when they do head to the bar.)
Which leads me to another suggestion - try driving up usage by letting the user input a time to receive a text or push notification that reminds them to use the app when they go out. (e.g. "Want us to remind you about this app next time you go out? Put in the time & date here and we'll hit you up.") Once you have better usage, you can start to look for patterns in days/times that people are using the app and send them push notifications at those times.
