Yes its Working: Why Using Push Notifications Is An Evergreen Mobile Strategy For Engagement

Remember when Facebook was a slam dunk for organic marketing buzz? Go back even further and think about the golden days of email when you could get someone to open up just by putting “Re:…” in the subject line?

Here’s the thing: your newest market doesn’t remember a world where the Internet didn’t exist, and your customers have become jaded to all the noise in the online marketing space.

So how do you get their attention? Using push notifications could be your best bet. Let’s take a look at why using push notifications should be an integral part of your evergreen marketing strategy.

What are push notifications?

Push notifications nudge users to take action. They appear even when the user isn’t on an app, and when used correctly, can spark greater mobile engagement. More importantly, they boost your bottom line by increasing customer retention through better engagement. As much as a 10% bump in retention could spell 30% more business value.

Push notifications arose from the concept of nudges, gentle encouragement to make decisions. With all the noise of the internet, it’s easy for your customer to forget to take action, not rating their new purchase, for example, or missing that travel deal they were waiting for.

Nudging gently influences an individual to make a particular choice. For example, as much as 80% of online shopping carts are abandoned each year, costing companies dearly. Companies are using crafted push notification strategies to encourage customers to complete a purchase. A reminder, discount notifications, or expiring cart notices can go a long way.

Benefits of using push notifications

43.9% of iOS users and as high as 91.1% percent of Android users have push notifications enabled on their smart devices. Push notifications can create excitement and help you disseminate time-sensitive information in a world of declining email open rates. For example, you can:

Alert your customers to new sales
Provide early access to beta releases of new services within your SaaS offer
Send check-in notices and status updates for flights
Invite customers to special events
Let users know when their food has been picked up or arrives at their door
Prompt users to finish registration and onboarding processes

Even better, segmentation allows you to create personalized experiences through your push notifications that could significantly raise your conversion rates. These experiences are of high value and convert better than traditional marketing methods – as much as a 20% increase in sales in some cases with real companies seeing numbers like 15% increases in click-through rates with relevant notifications.

Push notifications blend well with traditional email or paid ads, for example, and (when done correctly), foster a connection between you and your target customer.

How to build an effective push notification strategy

Here are some best practices when it comes to creating push notification campaigns.

How many are too many?

When everyone jumps on the bandwagon and consumers are bombarded with push notifications, they may opt-out of notifications – or uninstall the app altogether. Two push notifications per day may seem reasonable, but when measured against the mobile ecosystem, customers are bombarded.

Imagine a customer has just ten mobile apps with push notifications enabled. Everyone sends two push notifications per day, and that customer ends up with 20 messages in their queue. What do they do? Delete the entire string, most likely. With 16.2% of users uninstalling because of excessive advertising and 12.2% uninstalling for excessive notifications, it’s vital that you get your strategy right.

Personalizing your pushes

Push notifications shouldn’t be pushy sales pitches – they should deliver value and help develop a more meaningful relationship with your customers. Here’s how:

Use preference-based push notifications – Consumers want a choice. They’re more likely to open notifications tailored to their specific needs. Delivering once a week or once a day should depend a lot on how the customer chooses to receive notifications.
Segment your audience – Rather than one generic blast-out, companies see far better results with customization. Consider time zones. Use first names. Sound like a human.
Keep it brief – Consider how many other push notifications your customers are getting. Focus on one key message -prompt a user to finish registering for your site or notifying a fan that a favorite band is coming to town – and don’t try to throw in others to upsell.
Look at the data – Keeping a close eye on your analytics helps provide a dynamic insight into your customer behavior and the efficacy of your push notifications. If you aren’t sure how to use these analytics, it’s a great idea to invest in expert help. Push notifications done right are a boon to business. Done wrong, and you’ll lose your customer base.

Industries that are nailing push notification strategies

One of the biggest success stories with push notifications lies in the travel industry. Companies like JetBlue are encouraging customers to come back to shop by alerting them to price drops on flights and newly available times.

Push notifications also help solve some of the biggest travel frustrations. Disrupted or delayed flights strand people at the airport. Push notifications alert travelers before they get stuck, allowing them to plan ahead. Check-in can happen right from a traveler’s phone.

These notifications help smooth a traveler’s end to end journey, alleviating some of the most common frustrations people have, especially with airports. As commercial airliners struggle to keep up with a variety of rising costs, these notifications could provide an edge.

Other examples of best use cases are happening in eCommerce. Companies are using this form of communication to create demand, drive sales conversions, and alert customers to changes in stock numbers.

Getting started with push notification campaigns

Mobile marketing is a proven strategy in the face of changing email marketing. Thoughtful push notification strategies that consider user choice, personalization, and privacy can bring engagement to a new level.

Your push notification strategy must include careful analytics because they’re too bold to do incorrectly. Your users might ignore too many emails from you but interfere with their daily mobile activity, and they’ll delete your app.

With a proper mobile marketing platform, you can send personalized, perfectly-timed push campaigns that deepen customer relationships and increase brand loyalty.

Guest author: Apoorv Bhatnagar is a Digital Marketing Manager at CleverTap. He is a power user who writes about marketing automation and everything about the customer engagement sphere. He previously worked as a Digital Marketing Analyst at Freshworks

The post Why Using Push Notifications Is An Evergreen Mobile Strategy For Engagement appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.