Push Is Pulling in More People
Push notification technology, first introduced by Apple in June 2009 alongside its iOS 3.0 iPhone operating system, have steadily become more important to company marketing strategies.
Push notifications enable companies to send messages to their apps’ users, even when those apps aren’t running. As the Business of Apps notes, the benefits are quite significant, allowing them to communicate important information at any time, increasing the value of the apps to their end users.
Mobile apps have the inherent advantage of reaching people wherever they are, at the exact moments that matter most. That’s because mobile app push notifications arrive on smartphone lock screens, the most visible real estate in everyone’s pocket. That’s a huge benefit to companies, Airship notes in its “Mobile App Push Notification Benchmarks” report.
“Notifications don’t get caught in spam filters or forgotten in an inbox,” the report says. “As a result, push direct open rates can be more than twice as high as email click-throughs. App users benefit from more personalized service and convenience. They can share their preferences and affinities so brands can better meet their needs.”
According to the Business of Apps, smartphone users in the United States receive on average 46 app push notifications per day. For these notifications received, the reaction rate from users is 4.6 percent and 3.4 percent for Android and iOS devices, respectively.
Marketing really was the genesis for push notifications, says Jason Valdina, senior director of go-to-market strategy for engagement channels at Verint, pointing to a push in the second half of the past decade by marketers to go beyond basic email campaigns to channels like text messaging and social media.
The social media channels became an excellent environment for marketers to experiment with how to market to and stay in touch with customers, Valdina adds. “I think push notifications have always fit at both ends of the customer relationship.”
Push notifications have been used to offer discounts and other perks to prospects to convert them into customers, Valdina explains. Similarly, push notifications have been used to convince customers to stay with a company rather than churning.
“What’s evolved over the last few years is the channels by which they do that and the increase in scope of who was looking at push notification strategies,” Valdina says. “It originally was marketers, and then the contact centers started to really get involved. They wanted to be proactive with customers, rather than being reactionary.”
Past Airship research shows that 78 percent of users will churn in the first week after installing an app if companies do not have a clear engagement strategy. However, app users who receive push notifications within their first 90 days have a three times higher app retention rate than those who received no push notifications. More frequent notifications correlate with higher retention rates as well.
“With the proliferation of mobile apps, push notifications are a direct line to your audience, offering timely updates and engaging content,” says Catherine Parsons, managing director of Hawkeye, a CRM agency and part of Publicis Groupe.
Donorbox, providers of an online fundraising platform for nonprofits, has been a huge advocate of push notifications.
“At Donorbox, we have seen push notifications be extremely effective for proactive outreach when done strategically,” says Raviraj Hegde, its senior vice president of growth. “This is an opportunity to create much deeper engagement, provided the information is both timely and relevant if done with consideration.
“Personalization is important,” Hegde adds. “We do not send generic messages. Rather, we use data to segment audiences and tailor notifications to user preferences and behaviors. This way, the notifications don’t feel like they’re interrupting anything from your user experience; they enhance it, because each message is so carefully aligned with exactly what’s of value to the user.”
A New Market in Customer Care
Companies today spend most of their marketing dollars on digital communications, including push notifications, Valdina notes, and that is a trend that has been developing for the past few years. What’s changed is that there is now a blurring of the lines between marketing and customer care when it comes to push notifications.
Customer care push notifications include messages such as a package arriving, appointment reminders, post-interaction survey invitations, and more.
“This is where marketing and customer support meet,” Valdina says. “It’s about the lifetime value of the customer and retaining customers. That’s not owned by marketing. It’s not owned by the contact center. They need to collaborate.”
Valdina says social media, through programs like WhatsApp, are becoming more prevalent for push notifications. WhatsApp offers push notification templates for service, marketing, utility, and authentication, all with different pricing.
Best Practices for Push Notifications
While push notification technology has really only come on strong in the past little while, already some best practices have emerged. They include the following:
Focus on the customer. Push notifications need to be customer-led, says Elizabeth Tobey, head of marketing for digital solutions at NICE. “They need to provide value to the customer, which means being able to be selective and being able to intuit when the customer would want an update, be it a sale, a new product, etc.” Not all customers want all of these updates.
That typically doesn’t happen today because the data needed for customer-focused push notifications is usually disparate, fractured, and incomplete, Tobey says. “Marketing databases are often untethered from the rest of the organizations. To create better push notifications that are truly valuable to the customer, the first need you have is convergence of all customer data so marketing can figure out what is necessary and what is valuable so that push notifications become something a customer actually looks forward to rather than something that is deleted or ignored.”
Adhere to regulatory guidelines. Depending on which part of the world the intended recipients call home, there could be different legal requirements for what companies can send, when they can send it, and whether such activities require customer permission through formal opt-in. “It’s like Wild West with SMS,” Valdina says.
Personalize notifications. Tailor notifications to individual user preferences and behaviors, Parsons advises. “By leveraging data analytics, you can send relevant messages that are more likely to resonate with the recipient, thereby increasing engagement and reducing the likelihood of being perceived as spam.”
Leverage artificial intelligence. Tobey advises companies to leverage AI to automate push notifications. AI also helps to quickly add, delete, or otherwise change push notifications for different customers, a process that otherwise can take weeks or months, according to Tobey. “The impact on businesses and on customers will be profound.”
Use push notifications as part of a comprehensive customer experience. “It’s important that push notifications are not viewed in isolation; they are part of the larger customer journey,” Parsons says. “Given the limited real estate, it’s imperative that the appropriate landing destinations and deep links are leveraged to make it as seamless as possible for your audience to find the relevant information or take the desired action.”
Customize messaging. Push notifications have space constraints that other forms of messaging do not. Companies need to recognize this and other limitations; a message designed for a push notification needs to be different than a message for email or for another channel, Valdina says.
Offer clear messaging and calls to action (CTAs). “Given the limited character counts, it’s important that each notification has clear, concise messaging and a compelling call to action,” Parsons explains. “Whether it’s encouraging a purchase or prompting a social share, clarity can significantly improve conversion rates. Consider how the headline supports the body of the message and, for rich push, whether an image is adding value or not.”
Focus on value-driven content. Ensure that every notification provides genuine value, be it a special offer, an important update, or a useful tip, Parsons says. “Users are more likely to welcome notifications that enhance their experience or solve a problem.”
Offer deep linking, additional support. Deep linking connects users to a destination, usually within a website or app, that adds value and has meaning, says Rob Manley, technical director of Flourish, a specialist CRM agency in England. “This is very important to retaining permissions from your customers for these types of communications, because there’s nothing worse than receiving a message from a brand which takes you to an irrelevant web page. Your customers are likely to opt out of comms and disengage with your brand.”
Manley adds that it’s best to support push notifications with a more detailed inbox message, where you can elaborate and make the onward journey very clear for the customer. “This is generally where we see the use of a combination of channels driving positive engagement and conversions.”
Segment the audience. Proper segmentation helps ensure that all push notifications are relevant to the specific recipients, says Pipeliner CRM CEO Nikolaus Kimla.
Once segmented, push notifications can be used for promotional offers to bring in new prospects; welcoming and onboarding messages for new customers; and for personalized product recommendations, new product introductions, abandoned shopping cart reminders, and re-engagement campaigns for repeat customers.
Use the right timing and frequency. Timing is crucial, Parsons stresses. Send notifications at times when users are most likely to engage and avoid overwhelming them with too many messages.
Give users transparency and control. Transparency is the key for avoiding the appearance of spam in push notifications, according to Parsons. “Provide users with control over their notification settings, allowing them to choose the type and frequency of alerts they receive. This not only fosters trust but also aligns with privacy best practices,” she states.
Test, test, test. Consistent A/B and multivariate testing can help improve performance through better understanding of audiences and segmentation, timing, frequency, content, and calls to action, Parsons says.
Scrub the data. Regularly scrub your list to exclude users who aren’t engaging with the notifications, recommends Myra Medina, founder of Oui’d Marketing, a Florida marketing agency that specializes in the cannabis industry. “This not only improves deliverability but also prevents sending redundant pushes to those who may not find them useful. Thoughtful, customer-centric push notifications will feel like a helpful nudge rather than unwanted spam, keeping engagement high and relationships strong.”
Spam Avoidance
Successful push notifications rely on a delicate balance between being informative and intrusive, Parsons notes.
Customers look forward to some retail push notifications, particularly if a sale on merchandise they typically buy will save them money or if there is a new opportunity that rich personalization data shows might interest them. However, superficial personalization data (or none at all) can result in the customer receiving too frequent or irrelevant push notifications that they will eventually perceive as spam and automatically delete, eventually unsubscribing.
Customers have less patience and are more savvy about what they want to see, according to Tobey. “Think that everyone is valuing their time, their energy, and their resources more than ever before. That means customers are more ruthless about what they won’t tolerate anymore. Companies have to be more discerning about the push notifications they send out or they will be in trouble.”
Recipients should be able to immediately understand why they received a push notification, according to Valdina. It could be from a company from which the recipient regularly buys or from a company that the recipient used to patronize that is now trying to rebuild that relationship. Those can be legitimate, unless the recipient has asked not to be contacted.
But even those notifications need to be relevant, the sender needs to be clearly identified, and the frequency has to be just right. When companies start increasing the number of push notifications, they could be reaching a frequency at which the notifications start being perceived as spam.
Connected data and connected workflows are critical for companies that want to avoid spam and want to send out highly personalized push notifications to the right customers with the right frequency, Tobey adds.
And as customer tastes evolve, so too will push notification technology and the market for it.
Push notifications are already getting more advanced, Parsons says. “We are leveraging push as part of an omnichannel approach right now. You’re going to see a lot more rich media. You’re going to see direct links in push notifications. You’re also going to see send time optimization leveraging AI technology. All those things are what we’re doing today as part of an omnichannel approach.”
Companies will develop a more exacting standard of what is actually a useful message, Tobey predicts. “We’re going to see a profound blurring of what is a marketing message and what is a service message. If done right, that will result in a positive lift.”
Phillip Britt is a freelance writer based in the Chicago area. He can be reached at spenterprises1@comcast.net.