How Brands Are Effectively Using Push Notifications To Boost Engagement

Generic marketing is losing its appeal. According to a study by Autopilot, 72% of consumers are frustrated when they receive a generic marketing message which doesn’t resonate well with their interests.

Digital marketers, e-commerce entrepreneurs, SAAS entrepreneurs and online content publishers are doing their best to develop and deliver timely, knowledgeable and personalized content. With email marketing no longer yielding impressive results, brands are using push notification services to their advantage.

Done right, desktop push notification campaigns can increase customer engagement by 4 times. Here is a brief run-down on how brands are effectively using push notification services to boost engagement:

1. MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is a smartphone diet tracker app which uses gamification tactics to keep users motivated about fitness and healthy lifestyle. It has a built-in calorie calculator. This app is popular among fitness enthusiasts.

So how does MyFitnessPal motivate its target audience? Before going any further, let’s talk about reverse psychology. According to psychologists, when you tell your prospects to not read something, it’s possible that many more prospects are likely to get curious and delve into details. The trick is to not use this tactic too often.

Done sparsely, reverse psychology can cook magic and yield wondrous results. HubSpot used (read uses) this technique intelligently to grab the attention of its readers. It published one of its posts with this title – Don’t read this!

That particular post by HubSpot garnered quite a good number of impressions.

MyFitnessPal brilliantly applies reverse psychology in its web push notifications. Of course, reverse psychology isn’t applied every time. Here is an example:

Hmm. Looks like these reminders aren’t helpful. We’re going to turn them off.

This notification triggered all the fitness enthusiasts, and unsurprisingly, opt-in rates increased.    

2. Netflix

Netflix is trying to stay ahead of its competitors- Hulu, Amazon Prime etc. It’s investing BIG money to acquire and produce content. And of course, the VoD (Video-On-Demand) giant invests a fortune in Data Analytics.

Netflix sends web push notifications based on the viewing history of audiences. Its comedy-drama web television series – Orange Is the New Black Season 1 was received well by the US viewers.

Are you done binge-watching the first season? Netflix will hit you up with a simple, clean and neat reminder about the second season.

3. Flipkart

Both Flipkart and Walmart have been in news for their high octane $16 billion deal. Their strategic alliance is likely to change the ecommerce landscape of India. India is a price sensitive market.

India is an amazing country. Indians love good deals. The Indian e-commerce major has understood the expectations and purchase patterns of its audiences and hence, most of its app notifications focus on sweet deals, discounts, and festive offers.

Here is an example:

Here is another example:

Flipkart’s push notification campaigns focus on maximizing sales, retaining customers and improving customer engagement. For all intents and purposes, Flipkart doesn’t want to lose its audiences to Amazon, another ecommerce giant. Amazon is known for its exceptional customer service. Flipkart is trying to level up its ante by using push notifications.

4. Goibibo

Goibibo is a reputed online travel aggregator (OTA). The Indian OTA landscape is cluttered with too many participants. More often than not, online travel aggregators lure audiences with tawdry and tacky offers. There is often little differentiation and zero elegance in their methods. Goibibo is the first-class exception though. There are finesse and elegance in its methods.

In e-commerce industry, shopping cart abandonment is a huge challenge. In case of OTAs, search abandonment is a huge problem.

Folks at Goibibo dig into the search history and profile of those users who don’t complete the transaction within 30 minutes. Goibibo folks encourage the users to complete transactions by delivering personalized recommendations through push notifications.

The travel aggregator witnessed an upturn in conversions by 11%. 11% is a huge number and is definitely a matter of millions!

Goibibo has mastered the art of acquiring new customers by sending personalized and tailor-made mobile push notifications. Its hotel bookings increased by 5 times in 2015. It’s noteworthy to mention that nearly 70% of bookings were made through its Goibibo app. For your information, Goibibo also owns India’s online bus ticketing platform redBus.in.

5. The Bump

Pregnant mothers are mindful of their unborn children. First-time moms are extremely curious about the growth of their kids and developments. They are a little worried about stretch marks too.

The Bump is a gorgeously designed mobile application which keeps pregnant mothers informed on week-by-week developments. Pregnant moms who sign up for push notification often fall in love with articles which throw insights on aspects such as the size and weight of the unborn child, things to expect, right diet regimen etc.

Rather doing a shoddy job of promoting irrelevant baby products, the app does a wonderful job of delivering valuable content to its target group.

Online content publishers should avoid common pitfalls. Too many notifications per hour can impede opt-in rates. In other words, batch notifications do more harm than good. Generic notifications have little relevance. Segmentation based and location-based browser push notifications are known to yield better click-through rates.

Also, it’s important to choose the best push notification service which has features such as A / B testing, drip campaigner, analytics dashboard, geo-targeting and segmentation, etc.

Found this blog useful? Keep watching this space for further insights on browser push notifications, desktop push notifications and push notification services. Cheers!

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