Smart banners for smart marketers: The clever way to bring browser users to your app

It’s the classic mobile marketer predicament—great to have a customer browsing your mobile site, but how can you get them to reroute slightly to experience your intuitive and beautifully branded mobile app?

Smart banners are the clever way to bridge that gap between mobile site and mobile app. They are a direct yet subtle call to action (CTA), usually appearing at the top or bottom of the mobile web browser screen, both in iOS and Android. Crucially, smart banners are displayed whether or not a user has already installed an app. They will either prompt a user to move from the browser to the installed app, or prompt a user to install the app via the app store. In both cases, when the user gets to the app, they’ll land on a specified page (via a deep link).

Adjust’s Smart Banners solution is more than just a nice-to-have. By driving users—and not just users, users demonstrating an interest in your brand by browsing your mobile site—to your app, your brand presents a holistic user experience. On top of that, you’re supporting efforts to grow user acquisition (UA), in-app user engagement, and LTV.

The benefits of adding Adjust’s Smart Banners to your marketing arsenal include:

• Streamlined user experience: From a user’s perspective, they move seamlessly from your branded website to your branded app.
• User acquisition: Acquire new app users by converting existing mobile web users. This brings downstream benefits to marketing metrics such as engagement and LTV. As we know, user retention is less expensive than user acquisition—so targeting users already showing interest in your brand makes perfect sense.
• Deep linking: Ensure every converted app user starts their in-app experience where you choose. You have the ability to specifically promote a sales event or product, bringing users directly to the relevant page.

• Customizable banners: Design your banners to match your brand, and set their on-screen position. Create different banners for different audiences, and localize for different languages.
• In-app opportunities: Once users are in your app, you can engage them using push notifications and in-app promotions. It’s easier to engage and monetize users in the fully branded and customized app environment.
• User retention: Users who already have your app installed are important prospects. They may have forgotten about their previous install—this subtle prompt will shift mobile web activity of these existing app users back to the app environment.

Let’s dive into exactly how Smart Banners are set up in your Adjust dashboard. As always, our user-friendly interface makes it a clear and straightforward process.

1. Make spaces

Managing multiple apps and need multiple smart banners for each? Spaces has you covered. A “space” is a channel-level container for your smart banners. All banners in a space link to the same app and appear on the same website. They also share attribution settings and use the same SDK. Spaces make it easier to manage your banners, as well as making it much easier to interpret data when it comes to analyzing performance.

2. Integrate the Smart Banners SDK

As always, SDK integration will allow this solution to function. Integration is required once per space. This stage includes setting up dynamic deep linking too. Deep links can be page-based—if a user is browsing a striped jumper on your mobile site when they engage with the smart banner, they’ll be brought to the same striped jumper when they move to the app. A seamless user experience.

3. Create and customize your banners

Choose the pages your banner is displayed on, and manage settings such as language localization and banner dismissal period (the time gap between consecutive banner displays if a user dismisses your banner). Get creative and customize everything from your banner’s position and size to its imagery, text, font, colors, and button. You want your banners to be an extension of your brand, maintaining consistency across channels—to look the part and be presented to the user as an on-brand, trusted link to your app environment.

It’s as simple as that and you’re ready to go. Check out the full implementation instructions in our Help Center.

Once your smart banners are live, you’ll be able to track their effectiveness in Datascape, alongside all the rest of your Adjust data. Monitor performance in your dashboard and make informed decisions when it comes to implementing quick and impactful edits to banners. Analyze banner metrics closely and optimize your banner design and strategy to enjoy the greatest rewards—increased in user attribution, in-app user engagement, and LTV.

Ready to explore the potential of Adjust's Smart Banners in driving app growth? Contact your sales rep at sales@adjust.com, or request a demo.