Contrary to popular belief, 50% of mobile users see Push Notifications as helpful! Survey
Push notifications are great to engage and re-engage. Take a second to ponder this – how do you decide, during your busy schedule, which app to engage with? Which is the screen on your phone that you view the most? Your mobile’s notification screen! Push notifications are a powerful form of mobile marketing and communicating the relevant content to users.
Problem
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
If you get too “pushy”, you will get booted. On the other hand, if you under utilise push notifications, both you and your customers lose out on value. We all know people who uninstalled an app just because too many notifications kept flooding their phones. So let’s look at how push notifications can be used smartly and made more helpful and user-friendly.
Personalised notification
Push notifications need to be targeted at the right user groups at the right time. The key to this is to make them ‘Personalised’. No one wants to read a generic ‘broadcast’ message – not every day! Talk to your consumers, use your analytics to learn their needs and behaviour. Present them with benefits to choose from. For example, do they need a reminder of the session they RSVPed? Do they want recommendations based on interests?
Interactive notification
As important as it is to make it personalised, your notifications need to drive your target audience to take action. Traditional notifications alert the user when a message comes in, but you couldn’t do anything without leaving your current activity. With upgrades to Android & iOS, users can reply or take action on a message within the banner. For example, when you push a poll as a notification, attendees can answer it from the notification screen itself, even if they might be reading news on another app.
Image notification
A picture speaks a thousand words. This age old saying stands true, as humans are visual creatures who tend to comprehend and respond more to visual stimuli. Send notifications with an eye grabbing image and you will hit the bull’s eye.
Deep-link notification
How many times have you received push notifications and on-tap, they take you to a screen that has no relevance to the message? Start deep-linking your push notifications. Deep-linking takes users to a specific area within the app instead of simply loading the app. For example, if you want to inform your audience about an exciting poll, make sure that once they click on the notification, it takes them directly to the poll, not the home screen. This will ensure a higher number of people participating in the poll.
In conclusion
Studies have shown that on average, push notifications are two times more effective than email campaigns. They can help you bring back users to your app, increase engagement, sales and retention. But don’t over do it. It is critical to utilise analytics to evaluate effectiveness of your notifications and iterate. Make sure you create messages that hold value to the end user. Leverage advanced techniques as listed above to create an impact and ROI for your brand. With the latest updates on both Android and iOS (Apple), brands have immense power to increase their lifetime value with their customers.
So next time, don’t just “PUSH” a notification, go beyond it!
About us
The AidaIo platform is focussed on driving engagement and getting you up close and personal with your audience. We have built a suite of features to create interaction and engagement. Contact us to know more.
Follow us @teamaidaio
