An Expert’s Guide on Push Notifications: Why and How to Use Them

Keeping customers engaged with a brand is one of the most daunting tasks for a marketer. You need to keep them updated about your products, services, offers, discounts, and deals — without pressing the hard sales button.

Push notifications have emerged as one of the most effective techniques for disseminating marketing messages to your potential customer base. In fact, perfectly incorporated, push notifications can improve the customer retention capacity of a company by 20%.

However, a calculated approach in using push notifications is critical. Often, marketers end up annoying their customers by flooding their devices. Here are some detailed insights into push notifications, their benefits, and how to use them.

What is a Push Notification?

Push notifications, simply defined, are the delivery of information to a computing device from a software application. The sender does not wait for a specific request from the client when sending these notifications. This approach is proactive on the part of the marketer, who taps into potential customer bases or updates them with important information.

These messages are also known as server push notifications, and they can increase app engagement up to 88%. Here are some situations where companies have incorporated these strategies:

• Promoting products or offering special deals to boost short-term sales
• Enhancing the customer experience
• Delivering transactional receipts to customers instantly
• Converting app users to customers; selling products and services
• Driving the customers to social networks and other marketing channels

Push notifications generally appear on users’ mobile devices. From updating sports scores to downloading coupons, these notifications play a vital role in engaging customers with a brand.

Importance of push notifications for a brand

Over the last few years, companies have begun focusing on delivering personalized notifications to their customers through apps. This is highly effective for growing customer bases, as 65% of customers will likely return to an app within 30 days of the push notification being enabled. Here are some key points.

• The greatest benefit of these notifications is their ability to foster user engagement. Every brand strives to establish a direct line to their customer base. When you get your messages right to the fingertips of your customers, your sales strategy gets a boost.
• Push notifications help a brand retain its customers. Over the course of time, they help increase traffic to the website. Interactive messages sent through push notifications increase the use of the app. Also, GPS-integrated features in apps enable companies to send notifications based on their customers’ locations, streamlining the marketing strategy.
• Another important benefit of push notifications is that they provide insight into customer behavior. Studying users’ reactions enables a brand to gather the elements that appeal to their customers.

Well-targeted and friendly notifications can be an effective weapon for tapping into potential customer bases.

Using push notifications to their full potential

Here are some tips that will help you integrate push notifications into your marketing strategy effectively.

1. Build trust from the outset

One of the most common blunders that business firms make is bombarding users with notifications. Customers repeatedly receive notifications about access to contacts and photos, permission to use features of their phones, and so on.

From the outset, you need to ask them whether they are comfortable with receiving these updates. Proceed only when you receive the nod. This will help you build trust.

According to research, the opt-in acceptance rate for apps increases when users continue to use the app. The study revealed that the opt-in rate for users completing one to three sessions in 35%, which doubles when after four to six sessions. Building trust among users is imperative for any business.

2. Focus on the benefits of your products and services

After you have established trust, get right to the core of your purpose — sales. Focus on the benefits of your products and services. Your customers should understand the value of your products, or they might just uninstall the app after a week or so.

For example, take The New York Times. With breaking news, it gets 60% of its traffic worldwide through push notifications. This is applicable in other industries, as well. When you are able to convey your product’s benefits to potential clients, the popularity of your app jumps.

For goods and service-oriented companies, sending discount codes, exclusive offers, and attractive deals to customers with the app works well. Once they start using it, you can extend the range of services. Push notifications are an effective tool for keeping customers engaged with your brand.

3. Make the notifications customized

Generic marketing is not very successful. You need to develop customized notifications for your customers. These messages come with an inherent appeal that keeps users hooked. The Localytics study on push notifications revealed that 48% of customers expect offers to be made according to their preferences. Therefore, it is necessary to tailor these offers to customer profiles.

This personalized approach to sending notifications greatly streamlines a marketing strategy. Marketers need to do the necessary research to get a comprehensive view of customers’ needs. This includes how frequently the app is used, what users are inactive, where customers spend the majority of their time on the app, and so on.

4. Use location features for specific announcements

Location-based announcements and discount deals are very effective in sales strategies. For instance, you can drop a discount deal in your customer’s hands when you find that they are near your store. This can instantly result in sales, or at least be keeping the customer notified about product availability.

This feature is applicable in all market sectors, wherever customers come across retail stores or their outlets. For instance, the customers of the Bank of Ireland receive notifications through the app when they are in close proximity to any of the primary airports in the country.

The company assumes that their customers must be traveling, and this is an effective way to reach out to potential customers and send out marketing messages.

5. Stir emotions

Identifying customer psychology is important, especially when marketing your products. Make sure that your messages are appealing enough to stir the emotions of your customers. This can significantly increase your conversion rate, and can induce users toward a specified course of action.

However, you should avoid creating a sense of urgency. You need to focus on positive emotions, like joy, happiness, anticipation, surprise, and so on.

This can greatly enhance customer engagement. When you develop a favorable rapport with your customers, you can count on their confidence in your company as you market your product. Marketers are always looking for ways to understand how users think and how to influence them.

6. Some of the best push notification tools in the world

If you are ready to use push notifications, here are two tools that are highly recommended. These tools come with a wide variety of features, and you can seamlessly blend them into your marketing mix.

i. PushEngage:

PushEngage is one of the best platforms for these notifications. It comes with several sophisticated features, including user segmentation based on URL, geo category, product browsed, and so on. You can manage multiple users or sites from a single account.

And the automatic push notification feature ensures that your customers stay engaged. The tool also sends trigger notifications, based on customer activity on the site. You can send personalized notifications if there is cart abandonment as well, based on the customer’s product preferences.

ii. PushCrew:

PushCrew is another advanced notification tool that will enable real-time conversations with your customers. You can reach out to users anywhere in cyberspace and build your customer base.

This platform is known for its ability to generate more click-rates than emails, providing more page views. Marketers can send personalized notifications through it to increase revenue.

The role of push notifications is much more than just increasing product promotion. It helps customers to re-engage with an app. According to a source, in-app messaging through push notifications results in triple the user retention.

Over time, these notifications enable marketers to assess the demands of users and shape their products and marketing strategies accordingly. You can use the recommended push notification tools to significantly increase customer engagement.

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