Push notifications are a highly effective customer communication channel if you know how to use them. The right content combined with efficient campaign settings allows your messages to boost user engagement and LTV, increase sales and revenue. How to maximize value from your notifications? Check out these tips for creating highly engaging and effective push campaigns.
When it comes to creating push notifications for your userbase, there are a bunch of things you should take into consideration. A well-thought-out push campaign can give mind-blowing results and make your conversions skyrocket, while a bad one can frustrate many customers, increase the opt-out rate and uninstalls, and as result damage your business.
Importance of content
The most difficult thing is to motivate the audience to click your notification, so the first thing you should think about is a good notification title. Because notification title is what your users read first, it should capture attention. That's why try to make it:
- Funny – Use a funny and relevant title to make your users laugh and click on the notification;
- Inquisitive – Create some curiosity with the title. The user may click on the notification out of curiosity;
- Urgent – You can also write content that shows some kind of urgency. For example, tell about some benefits your customers will get if they complete a certain action now. This will again lead to an increase in click rates.
As you can see, this is an example of a great notification title, because it is:
a. funny
b. relevant (come on, we all have had an awkward experience with a delivery guy)
c. creates curiosity.
It does exactly what a good title should do: captures your interest.
The description is where you briefly mention what your message is about. The description should be in-line with the title. If you are using the Urgency type, then maintain it in the description as well. Here you can give more details about your push notification. Be brief and to the point.
Don't hesitate to add emoji. Multiple A/B tests have shown that using emoji in your messages increases CTR. Usage of emoji has the advantage of triggering emotion in users' minds which leads to an increase in click rate. Visuals are better for grabbing the user’s attention. Besides, by using Emoji characters instead of words, you can shorten your text and pack more words into the first line of your push message (remember that many users don’t read the entire push notification and just quickly read the first line).
With Pushwoosh, you can easily send push notifications with Emoji characters. Let’s say you want to announce a holiday sale with the following push notification: “This Holiday Season, get 30% off all products”. Why not use the Christmas tree emoji to grab more attention?
You can also launch A/B tests and see what emojis and what titles give the best CTR. A/B testing will give a complete understanding of what type of notifications is favored more by your subscribers.
According to that, you can design other push notifications that will most likely perform better.
Importance of segmentation
The more tailored to its audience a push notification is, the higher its open rate will be. That makes segmentation imperative. The best ways to segment your userbase is are based on their behavior and preferences. Looking at the various ways customers interact with the app/website provides valuable insight into what they care about and how engaged they are. This helps us understand what their notifications should be about and when we should send them.
Segmentation criteria can include: previous purchases, preferred content, visit frequency, stage in the sales funnel, country, age, device type etc. Check out more tips on effective segmentation in this post.
You can trigger a message on any key action to encourage users to go into the next funnel stage. For example, if a customer has abandoned their cart, you can send a notification including the cart image and direct them to the checkout page. Similarly, if a user has abandoned a page and suddenly stopped their web session, land them on the page they have abandoned. Behavior-based personalized notifications usually increase CTR by more than 10%.
Read more on how to increase your push notifications CTR
Importance of timing & frequency
There's no doubt that push notifications are great for increasing engagement and conversions, but remember that they can be counter-productive if you send too many messages at the wrong time. Avoid that to reduce the probability of opt-out rates and app uninstalls. To find the right timing, analyze your older notifications to see which ones have performed well and at what time and day their performance was better. This will give you an understanding of when your users are more active.
When choosing the best time for sending a push, always consider:
- Time zones
The last thing a push notification should do is wake up your customer in the middle of the night. Take time zones into account to make sure that all customers are receiving pushes at reasonable times. Pushwoosh allows you to do that out of the box. - Your users' behavior
Different users consume content at different points of time in a day. Find when the users actively engage with your content and send notifications during that period of time. Try to send the notifications daily during this same period of time. This gets the audience into a habit of reading your content. Pushes sent out during times when users are prone to engage with their app have open rates almost 3x higher than that of pushes scheduled solely by time zone and consider how this may vary by region, demographics, and user behavior.
You can also have exclusive content reserved for weekends. Many media companies send out notifications on in-depth long content pieces on weekends instead of weekdays.
When it comes to frequency, it's important not to bombard your users with 10-12 notifications a day, just to annoy them and have them swipe it all away. Rather Focus on sending 1-3 notifications that are most relevant. Once you’ve gotten users to download your app, push notifications are a great way to increase conversions and revenue - but don’t abuse the privilege. Be thoughtful, be relevant, and be helpful, and your users will reward you by engaging.
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