Push notification guide: Tips and best practices

2. Provide your users with actionable alerts

It is critical to understand why you are sending a particular push notification. If you cannot identify the value a push notification has to a user, this will not have a positive result for engagement, retention rates or the user experience. When sending a push notification, ensure that the alert tells the user exactly what action needs to be performed by them. Your call to action (CTA) must be effective in delivering this actionable advice.

Contact us to discuss your requirements of Message Notification Service for Improving Marketing Effectiveness. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.

When creating your CTA, remember that this is an invitation to perform a particular action or an update on something the user wants to follow. If you have a travel app, these notifications will include prompts to complete a boarding pass or an alert that informs the user of flight delays. With these examples, it is clear how this is useful to the user and how they should react.

3. Personalize your push notifications

It isn’t enough to know that your mobile push notifications are valuable – you also need to identify how they add value to each user. Personalized push notifications ensure that you are targeting the right users at the right time with the optimal creative.

Personalized push notifications include creatives, frequency, delivery times, location, and content type. This means you have to segment your audience into user groups. You should also address your user by name whenever possible and include other details relevant to your CTA. For example, you could include the flight number and time if you are reporting a delay, or include order numbers when updating a user on their upcoming delivery.

You also need to personalize push notifications depending on the user lifecycle. This means identifying when users are most likely to need a push notification in order to complete a desired action. If your primary goal is to keep users engaged for longer and boost LTV, it’s essential to personalize push notifications and successfully engage users at the right moments in their user lifecycle. Notifications around travel and ecommerce can be particularly time sensitive, and must arrive at the right time to have the desired impact.

4. Test CTA and call to value messages

While a CTA informs users of how to perform a particular action, a call to value is designed to show users what they can gain. For example, your CTA could be “Check in now” for a travel app or “add to watchlist” for an entertainment app, while a call to value could be “Get your summer look with 20% off all products”. It’s important to test which type of creative works best for your audience and each audience group. Your results may also vary depending on the purpose of your push notifications: a call to value isn’t going to be helpful when alerting a user that their flight is late.

5. Use push notifications sparingly

To avoid user negativity or fatigue, use push notifications sparingly and think carefully about the best time to send them. Always keep in mind your clear CTA or call to value and avoid the temptation to issue additional push notifications that don’t present users with important, relevant actions or clear value. A negative or fatigued user could resort to disabling push notifications for your app, or uninstalling it.

6. Utilize limited-time offers

You can encourage users to complete your CTA by offering limited-time offers. This type of offer has a clear value to the user and it is apparent as to why you are sending the push notification – giving the user a chance to benefit before it’s too late. Leveraging limited-time offers requires you to define what you have to offer that would be appealing to users and testing creative that gives you the best results. For example, a mobile game might offer in-game currency for a limited time in order to keep users engaged.

7. Location-based push notifications

A user’s geolocation can be used to trigger mobile push notifications and drive conversions. For example, these alerts can be used to direct a user to a nearby store. While this can be an effective marketing method, there are also pitfalls to avoid. It’s critical that you enhance your message with deep links and adjust your offering in accordance with local conditions.

8. Alert users to app updates

You can also use push notifications to alert users of app updates. This is useful to any user who doesn’t have automatic updates enabled, ensuring that they can still gain the best user experience possible from your product. When alerting users to a recent update, remember to detail the advantages and improvements they will miss out on without updating.

9. Use notifications to help users focused on their goals

Fitness and wellness apps can use push notifications to remind users of their targets. This can be a win-win scenario: users can set a routine without having to manually set alarms for various actions and you benefit from increased retention and app usage. This type of push notification can also be useful for fintech apps looking to help users with business management.

10. User power words in your creative

Notifications on a user’s lock screen requires your creative to be clear and concise. This can feel limiting, but you also have opportunities to enhance creative with images and other rich media. You will also want to research and include power words in your creative. To get started, CleverTap has a list of over 250 words and phrases proven to convert.

11. Measure your results

Just like with every other aspect of your marketing strategy, your push notification campaigns should be measured and optimized over time. You can set KPIs that link back to your company goals, such as LTV, engagements, and ROAS. Your campaign measurement can then be analyzed to find ways your mobile push notification strategy can be optimized. You can also request user feedback to find out how well your notifications are received.

App marketers can track push notifications with Adjust by integrating our SDK and creating unique tracker URLs. This enables you to track and monitor the metrics of your push notification campaigns within a single dashboard.

Push notifications are still a successful marketing method, increasing app retention by 3-10 times. According to conversion rate optimization experts Invespcro, push notifications triggered by user data can result in in-app purchases by 48% of that audience. By using the best practices in this push notification guide and successfully testing what works for your audience, push notifications can be a powerful tool for reaching your most ambitious targets. This marketing method will also become more sophisticated over time. That means more opportunities to personalize and richer content for better results.

Summarize this articleHere’s what you need to know:

• Personalize notifications based on user behavior and preferences to avoid annoying them and drive engagement.
• Time your notifications strategically, like after a purchase or app use, to maximize their impact.
• Leverage location-based targeting to deliver relevant notifications based on the user’s current location.
• Use push notifications to re-engage users with abandoned carts and incentivize them with exclusive discounts or deals.
• Continuously track and analyze the results of your push notification campaigns to optimize your strategy for better results.

Push notifications have been touted for quite some time as the key for brands to distinguish their app from the sea of apps on a user’s phone screen. They have been praised as a fresh way for marketers to increase user retention and drive re-engagement. As mobile usage continues to rise at an unprecedented rate, push notifications seem to be the glass slipper marketers have been waiting for.

So why hasn’t everyone jumped onboard?

There has been much debate around the effectiveness of push notifications and push marketing in general. How effective are push notifications? Do people really find them useful?

The argument against push notifications goes as follows:

1. Push notifications will interrupt and distract the user from whatever they are doing.
2. They’re intrusive—users who want push notifications will enable them on their own.
3. The expectation of an immediate response can drive users away from an app rather than back into it.

However, although push marketing may initially come off as invasive and unwanted, the stats tell a very different story.

According to this study, 61% of new app users receiving push notifications launched the app within the first month—more than double the 28% of installers who did not receive push notifications within that timeframe. eCommerce apps, in particular, saw a 278% increase in launches among users with push notifications enabled vs. disabled.

In fact, Facebook has seen a dramatic increase in visitation from launching push notifications.

When done right, push notifications can boost app launches, engagement, and retention. But much like our research indicates, do them wrong and you will increase app uninstalls, opt-outs, and you will create a very bad association with your brand.

The question we all want to be answered then is: how do you create push notifications that are beneficial— both to your customers and to your business?

If you are looking for more details, kindly visit Voice Batch Notification Service.

High-impact tactics to drive retention and engagement from app users

The marketing minds behind some of the most beloved apps out there have figured out how to leverage push marketing to their advantage. But many of these apps—like Netflix, Waze, and Uber—enjoy the advantage of a high-frequency user base. What if you’re in an industry with low push engagement rates? Retail apps, in particular, are struggling to generate more app engagement using push notifications. According to this study by Mixpanel, eCommerce apps only have a 13% retention after 1 month.

As an marketer, how can you tackle the push notification problem?

Start by getting personal.

Market to people, not devices

People want personalized, relevant push messages. They can easily sniff out generic, blasted messages that are part of an obvious re-engagement campaign. Getting a meaningless push message is an annoying distraction, and getting too many of them can lead the user to stop buying from you altogether.

Personalization of push notifications, however, can deliver a 4x lift on open rates. One very effective and unconventional approach to personalizing push messages is to serve recommendations based on the products the user has shown an affinity for in their browsing and buying history.

If a user’s behavior demonstrates that they are in the market for specific items—e.g., they viewed and interacted with women’s sneakers and workout apparel— then they can be served those items in the notification itself. What’s more, deep linking to these products within your app enables users to act on the push notification instantly, and drive increased conversions. Instead of opening the home-screen, users will find the push notification to be increasingly relevant when it lands them directly on the product displayed.

Timeliness and location-based push notifications

If you’re like most people, the last thing you want is to be woken up your phone buzzing at 2AM by a push message from an eCommerce app. The stories of badly-timed push notifications abound. 63 percent of marketers completely miss the mark on messaging, timing, and the frequency of their push marketing efforts.

This usually happens in two ways:

• The times marketers send push notifications and times users are actually opening and engaging with them are out of sync, often resulting in out-of-date messaging. (source)

• Marketers often totally miss with time zones — e.g., in EMEA, marketers are sending pushes at midnight, when most users are sleeping — as they focus on hitting peak times in North America instead of creating local campaigns. (source)

The solution to the timeliness problem is to customize delivery time according to demonstrated behavior. As Andrew Chen puts it, this means sending the push notification at the time each user is most likely to engage with your app, based on the actions they have already taken within your app.

When is the right time to send the message?

You can start by creating conditions to send the push based on the user’s most active or last active period. For example, if a user has a history of launching the app at 6 PM but purchases around 8 PM, then marketers can create conditions to send the push message at 8 PM when the user is most likely to purchase.

The solution to the location problem is to geo-target users and send messages according to each user’s local time zone. Marketers can even tailor specific promotional messages based on user’s local weather conditions.

It’s also important to point out that location-based notifications do not have to be limited to online shopping: retailers with brick and mortar stores can encourage physical store visits by triggering an incentivizing push notification to users that are nearby.

Reduce shopping cart abandonments with targeted push notifications

Combating shopping cart abandonment is a major challenge for all online retailers, and this is especially true with mobile. It goes without saying that mobile shopping cart abandonment rates are horrendous, at 97%.

Shoppers abandon their carts for a number of reasons (be it high shipping costs, more affordable alternatives, window shopping etc.) and while sending cart abandonment emails is an invaluable tactic to recover sales from abandoned carts, open rates for push notifications are 50 percent higher than for email, and click rates are up to twice as high.

You can proactively increase mobile conversions by pushing notifications to a segment of users who abandoned your mobile website or app after beginning checkout.

Most apps don’t have a cart abandonment strategy in place and have no way to nudge users to complete their purchases. Reminding users that they have unpurchased items in their carts is a critical tactic to win back those lost purchase opportunities.

Lure offline users back into the app using limited-time offers

Data from Responsys shows that 50% of users enable push notifications to gain access to special deals or exclusive offers. Offering limited-time or offers discounts can be a highly effective way to lure latent users back into your app.

As always, the decision to offer a discount needs to make sense for your business. Don’t just send discounts to everyone—we recommend starting with latent users.

For example, you could create a promotional push campaign that is scheduled to run once a week targeting anyone who has not been on your mobile website or app for more than 10 days. If the individual uses the discount then they should automatically be removed from that segment of latent users receiving discounts. If the user ignores the notification, they can receive it again next time your automated campaign runs. To ensure users aren’t receiving endless amounts of discounts, marketers must leverage automation solutions that cap the number of messages each user receives.

Conclusion

Push notifications are one of the most effective ways for eCommerce marketers to incentivize re-engagement with mobile apps and drive retention. Perfectly-timed and personalized push notifications delight customers while irrelevant and spammy push messages will drive them away.

It’s critical to keep in mind that push notifications — like all 1:1 messages — are an ongoing interaction with your customers that must be tested and optimized. Make sure to monitor your customer data over time to understand the effect each push notification has on different user segments and the role push messaging plays in your overall marketing strategy.

The company is the world’s best Sip Termination Provider supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.