Table Of Contents:
1. What are Push Notifications?
2. Top 5 pitfalls to avoid while using Push Notifications
- Using generic content
- Ruthless customer targeting
- Improper timing of notification
- Ignoring personalization
- Message bombardment
3. A few qualities of a good Push Notifications
We live in a highly competitive business ecosystem, where a customized, creative, and unique business approach pays off very well. The custom application development, custom marketing campaigns, and the custom business solutions are a few notable examples to name.
The push notification is a powerful digital marketing channel for developing a custom marketing campaign to improve the business outreach through effective customer engagement. According to the Campaign Monitor research, it is 50% more efficient than the email marketing channel extensively used in the present day marketing campaigns.
This article is going to provide the managers, marketers, and entrepreneurs with a deeper insight into the effective use of the push interactive notifications by avoiding the top 5 mistakes the marketers make. It will also show a few examples of a good push notification useful for improving the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and user experience.
What are Push Notifications?
The short messages that pop up either on your mobile screen or on the mobile app interface to alert you about any useful information like weather update, sports scores, sale promotion, news feed etc, are known as web app notifications. In most of the cases, these messages are of promotional nature customized through the personalization of the content, which is targeted for a particular segment of the users.
This new marketing channel has surpassed many of its counterparts in achieving the effective customer engagement because it does not depend upon the online and active presence of the user on the browser to reach out.
Types of Push Notifications
The push notifications can be classified into multiple categories based on the ways they are used to create effective customer engagement by improving the user experience and the customer satisfaction. The main types of push notifications are listed below:
- News update notifications
- Call to action (CTA) notifications
- Promotional notifications
- Order update notifications
- Customer support notifications
- Feedback gathering notifications
- Public service notifications
- And many others
Top 5 pitfalls to avoid while using Push Notifications
The impact of push notifications on online sales the retail stores is gigantic. According to the latest research, more than 48% of the people made the in-store purchase after they received the web app notifications. Similarly, the app engagement is boosted up to 88% with the help of push notifications.
To improve the effectiveness of app notifications, you should avoid the following top 5 major mistakes.
1 # Using generic content
It is a big mistake to use generic, long and uncurated content in a push message, which can overwhelm and irritate the receiver. Such notifications can result in the uninstalling of the mobile app associated with that particular push message. So, always avoid long and generic content in the message. The use of rich media in the push notification is considered as the best in the market. The generic content is the one that is used repeatedly for all people and purposes. For instance, the Duolingo generic information push notification.
2 # Ruthless customer targeting
Sending out ruthless push messages without any proper business intelligence (BI) and behavior analysis of the customer can result in a bad user experience. Always, use the proper customer segmentation with help of some proper business intelligence (BI) tools to analyze the in-app behavior of the user in choosing the right messages that really matter for the users. In sending out the call to action (CTA) messages, always choose the custom CTAs to improve the conversion rate.
3 # Improper timing of notification
Bad timing of sending push notification is one of the worst mistakes the marketers use while using the push notification. It is not a good idea to send out messages either in the busy work hours or during the night time. This may aggravate the users; consequently, he/she may discontinue using your application. So, always choose the right time by analyzing the real-time user behavior before sending out the desired notification. The best time to send a custom message is when a user is very responsive on the app. The late evening and afternoon are also the best timings to send out the notifications.
4 # Ignoring personalization
In many cases, the marketers make this mistake by sending the general notification without any proper behavior analysis of behavioral attributes, personal data, location knowledge, and the interest of the customer. According to the Hosting Facts research, a properly personalized push notification with an effective thrust of business intelligence improves the conversion rate by over 5.5%. There are different types of users that respond to the notifications in different patterns. A huge majority of about 57% of users read and open the app to respond immediately if it is properly personalized message. But, a small ratio (34%) of the enterprise use the proper personalization for their push notifications.
5 # Message bombardment
The number of push notifications sent out after a baseline is directly proportional to the rate of the application discontinuation. So, always remain very careful about the number of push messages sent to a particular user. Many studies suggest that sending out 3 to 4 push notifications per week is sufficient for creating a positive marketing impact. The bombardment of push notifications results in the discontinuation of the mobile application.
So, any desired push message should be triggered with proper information about the time of the earlier message sent to that particular user; thus, every triggered message should be properly spaced from the earlier one as well as from the next one.
A few qualities of a good Push Notifications
The push notifications are used in almost all domains of the businesses like eCommerce, education, traveling, news, system performance, customer support and many others. Let’s have a look at the qualities of top push notification examples now:
1 # Short & accurate notifications
The short and precise are the fundamental qualities of a good push notification. The online travel agency (OTA) notification uses small and to-the-point messages such as flight updates, weather info, local attraction information, what-to-do and other activities. The effectiveness of those messages is very high. According to the INVESP analysis report cited earlier in this article, the notification open rate in the OTA industry is more than 27%. The example of short and punching from the Spotify is one of such a great push notification. Another great example of short and punchy messages is the notification message sent out by Netflix.
2 # Exciting and interactive notifications
The exciting and interactive content of the push notifications is more effective than the forcing CTA to avail some incentives or get free stuff. So, always focus on the notifications that offer excitement and create a good user experience. This quality is more important for the eCommerce and retail notifications to increase the conversion rate. The PLNDR push notification to get 40% discount on immediate purchase is an example of a successful interactive and exciting push notification. This notification excitingly engages with the customer to get a 40% discount if he/she shops now. This increased the sales of the company substantially.
3 # Images & text content
Wanelo sends a very attractive push notification, which is a combination of images, emoji and text. This message leaves a great impression on the readers. The result of that attractive message is the increased user experience and subsequently the increased sales. An attractive image with a short textual description can be more effective in conveying your message. It is a good example to send lightweight emotions or icons with a short text to attract the attention of the user. The impact of visual content is greater than the textual content in the online web environments.
Final takeaway!
In the nutshell, we conclude that:
- Push notification is a very powerful component of modern digital marketing;
- A professional-level expertise is required to create, manage and transmit a push notification;
- Numerous types of push notification are in the use;
- Top 5 mistakes that can make the usage of push notification a nightmare for the marketers;
- Top 3 qualities that make a good push notification.
Bonus Read – Avoid These Ugly Push Notifications To Save Your Business
Surya Panicker
Harshita Lal
Kasturi Patra
