What is a push notification? It is a small message that appears on your mobile home screen. This message is sent from a mobile application notifying the user of something important without needing to open the app. These opt-in alerts can be in different forms. It can be a simple text message or rich media, such as buttons or images that will help you take a particular action. Of course, the mobile app can only send the notification to those who have installed it.
These notifications are typically delivered for product updates, personalized offers, reminders, and distributing breaking news and information, which the app feels is vital for its functioning and needs the immediate attention of the users. The notifications may also include health reminders, information on upcoming events, and even sports results.
A white circle may appear on the top of your app icon on the screen when you receive the notification. This will tell you that a message from the app is waiting for your attention.
Mobile push notifications are more effective than emails, which often get caught up in filters and can only reach the spam folders. Emails often become obsolete too as they scroll down the inbox or the spam folder quickly. SMS messages are also not effective because most receivers will ignore them. Push notifications, on the other hand, are concise and brief. It is almost impossible to miss them, which is why they are so effective. They are ideal for time-dependent and targeted communication.
This study has revealed that mobile push notifications can increase the app retention rate by as much as 190% over a 90-day period. It was also revealed that out of 30% of Android and 15% of iOS users who didn’t receive any notification in these 90 days after downloading only 5% kept using the app after this period. So, it is clear from this study that push notifications can help the app retain its customers.
What Does a Notification Look Like?
The push notifications come in all forms. They may have a title, an image, a message, and a URL. There can also be emojis, animated GIFs, logos, and other elements. Marketers and apps are always trying to make them more creative and unique to grab the eyeballs and make the app users take notice and the desired action. But remember, the notifications may look different across operating systems like Apple OS and Google Android.
Types of Mobile Push Notifications
The app may send various types of mobile push notifications to engage its users and make their messaging strategy more effective.
1. Informative Notifications –
These messages deliver timely and important information to provide significant alerts, updated, and reminders to their customers. For example, banks and financial institutions can send notifications regarding recent account activities. They are also useful for ecommerce and travel apps that want to inform customers about the latest deals or new products.
2. Geolocation Notifications –
Location-based mobile notifications inform customers about local promotions and events and weather forecasts. These notifications often get triggered when the subscriber either enters or exists from a geographical region. For example, the Air Matters app issues notifications regarding weather and air quality index in many countries. Studies have revealed that users are two-times more likely to open them. They also convert three times more.
3. Catch-Up Notifications –
Also called re-engaging notifications, they are sent to motivate or nurture customers and encourage them to user the app. They can be a gentle reminder or a congratulatory message on an accomplishment. The message often contains personal data on the use of the app and its tone can be warm or generic. Such messages can deepen or strengthen the bond between the customer and the app. It creates a stronger attachment.
4. Promotional Notifications –
These messages convey information like sales offers, special discounts, and exclusive deals to encourage purchases. iTunes, for example, sends behavior-based notifications informing users about discount offers. These notifications may also work well when used together with promotional emails.
4. Recurrent Notifications –
They get triggered only at specific days and times. The Headspace app sends personalized notifications recurrently reminding their users that it is time to go to sleep or to lead a healthy lifestyle to achieve personal health goals.
5. Survey Notifications –
Survey or rating push notifications are effective in gathering feedback from the subscribers to make the user experience better. According to a report by Apptentive, 60% of mobile users will check the reviews before deciding whether to download the mobile app. Thus, mobile push notifications for getting reviews will aid in the development of the product, which will eventually lead to more downloads. The app may also ask for ratings, which will help in improving the usability and thus a better customer experience.
Why These Notifications Are So Important For the Advertisers
Push messages can be an influential marketing tool. The benefits can even go beyond the best expectations. Recent data shows that 60% of all mobile users enable these notifications on their mobile phones. A survey that tried to find their utility discovered that 57% of the respondents find them useful. On the other hand, for web notifications, this figure was almost half. Only 30% users thought that browser-generated alerts were useful.
A second study showed that the results are even better when the mobile push notifications are personalized. The users admitted to using the app more frequently when the notifications are location specific (42%), based on what they prefer (49.2%), when they contain actionable words (37%), and when they address the user directly by their name (26.8%).
The Many Benefits of Mobile Push Notifications
They have many benefits, such as –
1. Better Customer Engagement
When done efficiently, the push notifications will have a huge impact on improving customer engagement. They can be pushed into using the app. They can open up a communication channel with the customer. Studies have revealed that up to five app notifications in a week can reduce churn. This means, the customer will slowly get more open about receiving them and become more engaging. However, if done incorrectly, they can antagonize the customers making them opt-out of the service. This is bad publicity and can be disastrous for the app.
37% of mobile app users say that they will disable the notifications if they get more than five messages in a week. Another 33% of the respondents said that they will completely stop using the app if they get anything between six and ten notifications. It is thus important to hit the right spot.
2. Better Customer Retention
The modern-day users have many options, thanks to improved mobile technologies and so many mobile and web services. This is why many people will visit websites and download apps, but will completely forget about them. We are always looking for new things.
Studies carried out on push notifications and user behavior has shown that these messages can increase customer retention by 3-10 times. And, of course, strong retention will increase brand loyalty because it shows that the business cares about its customers. This also impacts the ROI positively, which is critical for the success of the business.
3. A higher Conversion Rate
Prompt messages in the notification tab can also impact the conversion rate positively. This works particularly well for ecommerce but it can be effective for other industries too. They trigger guaranteed impressions as the users feel like seeing the notifications whenever they have them.
Online shops notify their customers about time-limited offers to create a sense of urgency. Mobile push notifications can communicate such deals very well because these messages can be sent in real time and the customer can take action before the deal expires.
These messages are even more effective when the app makes them personalized. The client feels that it is a personal offer that is compatible with his or her interests.
4. Audience Segmentation
For marketing success, a business must first identify the preferences and desires of its customers and then create a strategy that will meet the needed. The clients can be divided into groups based on so many factors and this information can be collected from push notifications.
Segmentation will allow the business to adjust the content of the message. Various versions of a single notification can be sent to different target groups.
5. Better Customer Care
They can also improve the customer care strategy. They are less intrusive than emails and SMS and the open rate is also higher. Pop-ups containing vital content personalized to the expectations and demands of the customer have a higher chance of having a positive influence.
6. Upselling and Cross-Selling
Online stores frequently use these strategies to increase sales. They are very efficient internet marketing strategies that many businesses employ to get good results.
Upselling refers to recommending a more expensive or valuable product than what the customer originally selected. On the other hand, cross-selling is referring an additional related item to increase the total revenue.
Cross-selling and upselling can be integrated within push messages and the results are very good. As a customer browses through the store, instant pop-up messages can recommend a more expensive but a similar item. If an item is added to the cart, a further message can be sent notifying the customer of a matching product. In this way, the store may make more money by sending mobile push notifications.
These notifications can help a business immensely. The app can stay closer to the customer than most other channels. They are very effective in sending promotions, product updates, and work very well in re-engaging inactive users so that they can be pulled back and made to use the app. Mobile push notifications can improve engagement and retention. These push notifications can certainly help all types of businesses and campaigns.
Just remember to personalize the messaging, send the notifications in the right time, and focus on the content to make the optimum use of these notifications. For example, you can research and collect data to determine the best day of the week and the best time to send them to your customers. Don’t overdo this because it may antagonize the customer, urging the person to unsubscribe from the service altogether.
These messages will give you a lot of power to reach your customer directly. But you must also respect the customer. Use them smartly and strategically to promote the business, improve the user engagement, and boost your customer retention and conversion.