Home Sweet Home - Targeting app users at home drives higher engagement and usage

19 April 2019

The context of a user’s home presents great opportunity for mobile applications. It is an environment in which a heightened availability is conducive to higher usage and engagement. Results from a new Connecthings survey confirmed this fact, clearly revealing “home” as mobile users’ preferred context. The concept of segmenting users based on context — not merely time or location, but what meaning that place holds to the user — is an untapped opportunity for mobile application developers and marketers. If leveraged appropriately, this advanced segmenting will lead to higher opening, engagement and retention rates.


Less distractions means higher mobile usage

For many people, home is the place where they are fully available to engage with mobile services, whether it be communicating with other people, seeking entertainment or making purchases. Unburdened from work or social engagements, they are more likely to award mobile applications their attention.

In our recent survey, we asked users what type of apps they use in what context. The graph below shows the proportion of users engaged with certain categories of mobile applications, clearly demonstrating a much higher usage at home than in any other context across the board. It is important to note that more than half of respondents use shopping/retail and gaming apps when they are at home, making this context particularly significant for mobile purchases.

Connecthings research also confirmed that “home” is where users tend to interact with their mobile apps for longer sessions: 41.5% of respondents declare using mobile apps intensively when they are at home. To put it in context, this is far above the second context with the most intensive usage of apps, which is “on vacation” with 19%, and the third which is “on passive transit (bus, subway, taxi, train)” with 11%.


Therefore there is a clear and natural fit between the context of home and marketing strategies that can tap into this breeding ground for user attention. As the next section will show, a user’s home is indeed a great opportunity for engagement.

Home is where mobile engagement skyrockets

Home is a context in which the availability and the attention of users make them particularly inclined not only to spend time on their devices but also to respond positively to engagement from mobile apps. When asked to choose in which contexts they prefer to be engaged by mobile apps, users overwhelmingly responded “at home.”


A massive 93% of mobile users selected “at home” as one of the best contexts in which to be engaged by mobile apps, largely ahead of the second preferred context “while shopping or running errands” at 46%.

When looking at various user segments, we have found this preference to be universal across generations, genders and urbanization levels. Apart from Generation Z that expressed a slightly lower preference (82%), users from all generations showed a high affinity with home as their preferred context: Millennials (93%), Generation X (93%) and Baby Boomers (94%). Similarly, both male and female users selected home as one of their preferred context for engagement (94% and 92% respectively). And this fact remains true whether users live in a rural (97%), suburban (92%) or urban (90%) area.


Increase engagement threefold by engaging with your users when they are home.

It’s no secret… key to improving engagement is reaching the right users at the right time and place. Insight from the Connecthings survey shows “home” is the most ideal location to target users, but with most mobile engagement solutions it is impossible to classify locations beyond pinpoints on the map.

Herow by Connecthings is a SaaS solution that allows mobile apps to engage with their users in particular contexts such as at transit hubs, at work but also … at home! Using our platform, mobile apps can create notification campaigns that target when users arrive at home, leave home or have been at home for a specified duration. By effectively communicating in the right context at the right time, mobile app clients have increased opening and engagement rates of their campaigns threefold!

Herow demonstration GIF


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