Chiquita, the American producer and distributor of bananas, has released and expanded content-rich FanFun app that features numerous interactive games, customizable photos, fun quizzes, a sweepstakes and hundreds of recipes to engage users and reward them with loyalty points that can be redeemed for a variety of Chiquita brand merchandise.

The app includes a gamification rewards engine driven by “Chiquita Points” which can be redeemed at the Chiquita mcommerce store.  Small points are given for playing games, and large points are given for sharing content and visiting participating Chiquita retail locations like Safeway, Walmart, Sam’s Club and Target. The initiative exemplifies the process of interacting and engaging with users to convert them from interested visitor to paying customer.

“We designed the app to easily integrate into mobile advertising campaigns both pre and post click to drive ongoing demand,” said Adam Lavine, CEO at FunMobility, the developers of the app.

“The contest and rewards are a great pre-click call to action. Several features like the photo fun cardmaker can run as a post-click HTML5 engagement inside a rich media mobile ad, giving the user a ‘taste of the fun to come.’”

“In this way, brands like Chiquita cost-effectively and easily drive mobile brand awareness, post-click brand engagement and post-download re-engagement,” he said.

Multigenerational appeal
Chiquita drove significant engagement via the application during initial launch in 2012, with 20 percent of users checking-in at participating retailers such as Walmart and Safeway via the app.

Users were entered  into a sweepstakes every time they checked-in at a participating retailer. Initial results include that 40 percent of users created a Chiquita-branded Little League card and shared it on a social network and that users played an average of 10.7 Banana Trivia games and four Banana Shot games.

The expanded version now lets Chiquita engage with mobile CRM and message news, specials and new features to the consumer post-download.

This feature uses FunMobility push notifications, which can also include new features and mini-games through dynamic HTML5 engagement pages.

Banana shot game

It also similarly leverages Chiquita’s Little League relationship through the Cardmaker app and contest, a feature that lets users upload photos and convert them into authentic baseball cards.

Earn points for creating a sharing

In addition, the app now also offers a library of healthy and delicious ways to add bananas to a family’s diet, a variety of arcade games for all ages and quizzes that will test a user’s knowledge of bananas and the Chiquita brand.

Delicious recipes

Interacting with or sharing app content will earn users points that can then be applied to purchases of exclusive Chiquita apparel, toys and accessories at the online Chiquita Store. The app was also designed to be updated frequently with Chiquita’s most current promotions. Through a mobile location-based store locator, users will be able to find a Chiquita Banana retailer wherever they are.

Go bananas over merchandise

Message matching
Once users are engaged with a brand on mobile, it is time to start encouraging them to make a purchase.

With post-click marketing, brands can match the message that the visitor received pre-click and maintain it consistently throughout the path. This form of marketing rewards the visitor’s investment in the click or download by matching their needs with branded or incentivized solutions.

Research shows that 48 percent of users worldwide list mobile as a key media for impacting purchasing decisions according to Mobile Marketing Watch. Therefore it is critical to develop a robust post-click experience that leverages push and in-app messaging to surprise, delight and keep an audience coming back while making it as easy as possible for them to share content with friends and family.

A brand that truly maximizes engagement on mobile is The American Red Cross, which continues to take advantage of mobile’s unique calls to action, offering the ability to donate via SMS.

During a holiday campaign last year, they created three mobile landing pages to compare what type of content resulted in highest click-through to one of their donation pages, ultimately investigating how to making it easier for consumers to convert.

By running three pages simultaneously, they could evaluate whether showing a photo gallery, video or recent news articles resulted in the highest donation interest. This landing page experiment demonstrates how to test content and design on a mobile-optimized Web site in order to maximize user response and the conversion rate between engagement and revenue.

Chiquita does the same thing as its splash page runs three slides which feature different use cases for the app highlighting the rewards benefits through a list function, visual merchandising, and dollar prize amounts to appeal to different users.

List

Upfront reward values

Visual prize presentation

However not every app or mobile optimized site has the goal of generating revenue. If revenue is a goal, marketers should look at how each engagement metric such as time in app, screen views and retention correlate to revenue. Brands can also use engagement metrics for user segmentation means to piece together relationships between variable levels of engagement to levels of purchase.

For instance, Chiquita might try to increase in-store purchases by finding new ways to get users to be weekly app advocates. This could be through better app rewards, recipes or merchandise the app incentivizes with.

“Given the efficiency of mobile advertising relative to other forms of media, Chiquita can drive incredibly low cost-per-engagements while building their mobile base and awareness,” Mr. Lavine said.

“Chiquita Fan Fun is a clear home run for Chiquita and their brand.”

Final Take
Michelle is editorial assistant on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York