Mobile Geo-targetting

You're excited because you just launched a killer app and thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded it. You realize that these downloads are from your biggest brand fans but what's your plan to keep people engaged? Did you know that most people stop using an app after a month or so?

To combat this inertia, Urban Airship developed a push notification system with the ability to deliver rich media content and allow in app purchasing and subscriptions. Until now, this was a great but rather blunt instrument. Today Urban Airship announced the launch of "Segments", an enhanced geo-targeting add-on to their existing push notification system. This service allows you to slice and dice audiences by location, time context and preferences to improve the relevancy of messages and offers.

So let's walk through a couple examples. Let's say you are a grocery chain and just received a huge shipment of ripe organic mangoes at a certain location, you could send out a geo-targeted notification including a coupon to drive traffic and purchase.

Or perhaps you are a coffee chain and have just opened a new store. You could geo-target your users with a special offer to create awareness and traffic to your new location.

According to Scott Kveton, CEO and co-founder, he doesn't yet have data on the effectiveness of the Segment service. But Kveton said customers using push notifications are seeing a 540 percent increase in daily app opens and a 30 percent increase in social sharing.