In the last few years, app usage has exploded. There is literally an app for everything. That’s because consumers are now using apps for tasks that they used to complete in person or over the phone.

No need to go to the bank if one can conduct all banking transactions via the app. And store visits and restaurant take-away trips have also moved to the app (and delivery services).

These changes are great because they’ve freed up some of the time spent waiting for the next available teller or in checkout lines. But as users become more accustomed to completing tasks in-app, they’re less likely to spend idle time browsing the app. Today, most users enter the app, click on the tab or link they need, complete the task, and exit the app.

This means that your users are less likely to see and engage with your in-app marketing messages. And this behavioral pattern makes sense. The first online banner ad generated a click-through rate (CTR) of 44%, but today most marketers are happy with a .44% CTR.

So how can marketers increase mobile user engagement? By going beyond the traditional app to the keyboard.

Today, marketers can offer customers a branded keyboard, available for download, that creates new opportunities for real-time and continuous engagement and monetization.

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Tap into engagement metrics

Imagine fan excitement if a game developer invited their highest-revenue users to be the first to play a new game. What if a sporting goods retailer could offer a discount on branded merchandise based on teams a user engaged with on days that that team played and won?

These are the kinds of engagements possible with branded keyboards.

Thanks to a branded keyboard, a marketer gains unprecedented visibility to customers who access the keyboard 80 times per day on average. This provides marketers many opportunities to engage with their customers through updates, alerts, and product suggestions which drive traffic to the app or store.

And branded keyboards also provide fun ways for users to engage with their friends and family by sharing branded stickers, GIFs, and social posts.

For some marketers, keyboards have a significantly higher retention rate and 50% more daily average users than the respective marketer’s app. These strong engagement metrics make keyboards a valuable addition to a brand’s arsenal of advertising tactics while simultaneously increasing the app’s engagement metrics, too, creating a win-win marketing opportunity.

Going beyond social and messaging, marketers also gain value from the search functionality embedded into the keyboard. Through search, marketers can engage with their users by serving relevant results to user intent-based queries.

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Benefit from monetization opportunities

The intent-based search functionality also provides marketers with an additional opportunity – a new monetization revenue stream. By enabling marketers to bid on anonymous and intent-based search results, marketers with branded keyboards generate revenue from the search feature.

To summarize, on-keyboard search provides marketers with branded keyboards with an additional way to engage with their users following intent-based queries. And these same anonymized search queries generate income via revenue share agreements paid by the marketers bidding on the relevant search terms.

With marketers seeking new ways to engage their users on mobile screens, branded keyboards provide new mobile real estate which complements in-app and mobile web marketing. Alongside existing mobile marketing tactics, a branded keyboard will power engagement and conversions while generating a new revenue stream.