Push Notification Marketing

Push Notifications, simply explained, are those little messages or icons that pop up on your mobile phone even when you’re not using an app. When used creatively and sparingly, they can really help drive customer engagement and increase sales.

On the flip side, push notifications can also drive customers away in a hurry if you’re not careful. Much like email spam, if your message copy fails to impress or just flat-out becomes annoying, customers will unsubscribe.

In today’s post, we’ll be outlining the best practices out there for a successful push notification campaign.

What are Push Notifications and how can they help?

Push notifications can widely be considered customized, brief messages that can reach audiences anywhere, at any time. A push notification is often sent out at a site or within a specific geographical location. In most cases, push notifications are independent of various sites when a mobile device reaches that area, they can also be directly linked with apps and web browser data as well.

 

Why should you use this type of marketing?

Enabling push notifications with your business can be an excellent way to drive consistent callback or front of mind for your products. Whether you are creating an application or trying to market a physical business, using push notifications can be a great way to reach people on their mobile phones.

So many consumers today actively check out businesses before they visit them. Having a push notification can give businesses a better representation and it can lead to a better type of marketing solution.

 

What works best in push marketing?

The process of push marketing isn’t necessarily easy to adopt however. There are certainly some mistakes that marketers can and do make every day employing this marketing tactic. So what makes up a good push notification? Making sure that your messages are:

• Age appropriate
• Set to the preferences of users
• Delivered without spamming users
• Delivered at a timely point in the day
• Easy to opt out of
• Valuable
• And delivered quickly

 

Push Marketing Fails :

Probably the most common fail lies in the timing of your message. Seeing a push notification about breaking news at 2 AM that turns into an advertisement for shoes could (and should) definitely draw negative feedback.

Sending out a push notification with the same information you just sent out in your e-mail newsletter 2 minutes later also won’t add any extra value to the customer. They like you (enough to subscribe anyways) but you’re still only dating so slow down there speedy! Timing these notifications and offering something new and most importantly of real value to the subscriber is paramount.

 

And Wins !

If you are trying to improve your returns with push notifications, here’s some pointers – from some of the best – you may want to consider.

A great example is the travel website kayak. The company allows customers to set up their own notifications for deal alerts based off of flight criteria on their website. You could set up a system where you can have your customers get an alert whenever your product goes on sale at a certain price. This is a marketing campaign that will draw people right back to your page and at a price point that they are happy with.

Ticketmaster – in order to deliver relevant offers to its audience, the event ticketing company uses geo-targeting combined with user history. By determining what types of events you like, Ticketmaster then segments its push notifications to send more personalized offers to their audience. This in turn, results in higher conversion rates. In plain English, they search for events they know you like and when one comes to your town, it’s a match so they send you a personalized push notification. Sweet capabilities right?

Discount codes like those you see on Groupon or alerts to a new product launch can all be items that customers find valuable.  That value and the resulting engagement is then considered high converting push notifications.

 

What about Privacy concerns?

There are definitely some privacy concerns surrounding your customers and push notifications. Almost every piece of marketing technology faces some of this from time to time. By making sure that you are alerting your customers on the way you are using their data for marketing, you can alleviate some of these privacy concerns.

 

How are they different from SMS / Texts?

Push notifications are widely considered less intrusive than SMS / Text Messages because they appear on the screen without interrupting activities. Users can also opt out of push notifications easily on their applications or within their smart phone settings.

 

How to avoid being considered spam?

In order to avoid the chance that you could be considered a spammer, it’s important to only deliver quality push notifications. Any push notification should only be delivered when there is a significant event or offer available. Sending out push notifications every hour on the hour is only going to have people unsubscribe from your content. Only send out notifications of true value and on a time / frequency schedule that you would appreciate receiving yourself.

 

How many notifications are too many?

The average phone is receiving roughly 32.3 push notifications per day – crazy right? Most modern smart phone users access roughly 50 applications on their smart phone. This means that most applications are sending out a push notification once a day to once every other day. Interacting with your customers and sending out a push notification a few times a week is considered fairly standard in marketing.

Campaigns that try interacting with customers 2 to 3 times a day, will likely begin to dilute some engagement. Diluted engagement equals lower effectiveness of push notifications. Short, timely, high value messages – that’s the way to succeed.

 

Final Thoughts

Push notification marketing campaigns can be very successful. Sending timely, high value messages to people who already have an interest in your business can be a win-win for both parties. While they may not be suited to every business model, the need for good, local mobile exposure certainly is. Push notifications connect directly with the customer on-the-go.

Hopefully, you’ve found some value in our post. Maybe we’ve even inspired you to plan your own push notification campaign? If you found this helpful, that’s awesome, why not consider sharing it along to someone you know?

Thanks for reading!