App invitations are one of the many pet peeves in the digital world. There’s nothing more irritating than being invited on Facebook to join Farmville for the hundredth time or opening up your email inbox to find invite requests for every mobile application under the sun.
The current method of inviting potential users on a mobile device consists of tapping into their phone books to find those already on the service, then sending out a bulk email invitation en masse. This isn’t ideal as most people have learned to ignore such invitations. How many times have you actually bothered to respond to the barrage of invitations that clog up your device every day?
The primary reason that these types of services don’t work is because they can’t personalise their invitations according to the demographic. There’s no way to differentiate between someone who would be interested in the application versus someone who has no interest in it whatsoever.
Google has come up with a service called “App Invites” which can actually recommend which contacts to invite based on their interaction with the user. The service suggests relevant applications based on interactions within the Google ecosystem. This could be an email exchange about food or something else specific. Cooking app Yummly is already an early tester of these capabilities and can use the service to find those who love to cook before sending out an invitation.
Invites are sent out over SMS or email and include an install button directly in the body of the message. On Android, the process is even easier – users click the “App Invite” link and get immediately taken to the Google Play store without any intermediary. The invitation process also allows developers to link directly to specific pages within the application, meaning new users can be directed to discount codes or other adoption incentives. After the system is set up, developers can then use Google Analytics to monitor the effectiveness of their invites and view various report charts which depict the adoption rate.
This new service is available for both iOS and Android devices as part of Google’s larger Play Services 7.5 rollout. It’s currently in beta but is available to any developer who is interested in trying out the new service.
For more on Google, visit What Mobile’s dedicated Google page.
