Whose users — iOS or Android — engage the most? Turns out it’s Android customers by a 2-1 margin.
Urban Airship, a leading mobile engagement platform, just released its second “Mobile Engagement Benchmarks” report, which confirms this. The report analyzes notification engagement rates for both Android and iOS apps.
Interestingly, medium-performing Android apps have an average notification engagement rate of 20 percent versus 8 percent on iOS.
When it comes to high-performing apps, notification engagement rates grew 24 percent on iOS and 13 percent on Android YOY.
“Similar to Urban Airship’s first benchmark report on notification opt-in rates, analysis discovered a significant and widening gap between the notification engagement rates of high-performers versus the medium — it’s a bigger difference than what separates the medium-performers from the low,” notes Urban Airship. “High-performing apps on iOS get six times more engagement with notifications than medium performers; on Android, it’s nearly four times more than medium rates.”
The answer for medium-performing apps? Urban Airship’s analysis suggests better targeting, rules-based automation, and more message optimization to garner better notification engagement rates.
“Apps in the 10th percentile of notification engagement rates — 5 percent on Android and 2 percent on iOS — should consider re-architecting messaging strategies immediately before users generally tune out, or, at worst, delete the app,” notes the report.
Interestingly, a primary reason that Android notification engagement rates lead iOS is due to the fact that it’s easier to retrieve notifications at a later time, since notifications are easily accessible from app icons in the “Notification Status” bar on the home screen.
“A core advantage of apps is the ability to reach out beyond their confines to engage people on device home screens and smartwatch faces—the only always-on screens that are never more than a glance away,” said Brett Caine, president and CEO of Urban Airship. “Data shows the difference between good and great mobile engagement is only getting bigger, making it critical that brands treat mobile engagement as a personal experience for their users.”
