5 Powerful Push Notification Marketing Strategies You Probably Aren’t Using

Author: Marry Ann / Source: Jeffbullas’s Blog

Push notifications have become a common phenomenon for everyone with a smartphone, smartwatch or computer. You don’t need to know about them to receive one. If you are connected to the internet, you will receive a push notification every other minute from one of the apps installed on your smartphone or through a website browser.

However, despite this prominence, superior ability to penetrate a deeper section, and grander options for personalization, some marketers don’t get the precise ROI. Their investments on luxurious push notification services fail to even make up for the service rentals.

For instance, consider the following push alert screaming out an overwhelming deal on the Men’s fashion.

Now, if this limited time offer comes at the stroke of midnight, answer the following questions related to this particular event:

• How many people do you think would actually see this alert at the right time?
• How many do you think would be interested in checking it out when it’s clearly interrupting their good night sleep?
• What about those subscribers who have blocked notifications on mobile but have them allowed on computer browsers?

That’s the nucleus of the matter. If we see how push notifications work, despite having quite tempting and great deals, many of them fail to get the deserving attention. Either they don’t make it on time, or don’t get delivered to the right device. This notification clearly deserves immediate action, but due to wrong timing, it fails to get that attention, not only on mobile phones but also on computer web browsers.

You must understand that, if people have opted-in to receive the notifications, they are actually interested in what you offer. You have to plan a little to make things, rightly timed, relevant to specific people, and finally get those relevant things delivered to the appropriate people only.

This article will discuss examples of this in practice as well as several push notification marketing strategies that many marketers aren’t using. By missing these strategies, they are missing the array of opportunities that push marketing holds.

1. You are not planning for getting opt-ins

This is how push notifications work. You cannot deliver push messages unless users subscribe to them from your website or mobile app. Specifically, for website-based web push notifications, you need to ask every visitor to subscribe to your alerts.

Luckily, Android users subscribe to app-based push alerts by default when they install an app. However, iOS apps don’t get this liberty. They need to manually ask every user right after the app-install to subscribe to the alerts.

Now here is the thing:

• Despite subscribing to your push alerts by default, the Android app users can easily unsubscribe whenever they want.
• The iOS users can do the same, even after manual opt-in post-app-install, and
• Same goes for web push notifications subscribers.

It’s not easy to get opt-ins, and more complex is retaining the subscribers.

You need a plan of action that does not only entice the users to opt-in but also encourages them to stay subscribed. The only way to do that is getting opt-ins from a relevant audience.

How do you get opt-ins?

Except for app-based Android push notifications, it is very tricky to get opt-ins. A marketer with some beginner-level knowledge would simply choose to trigger the following boxes to get the opt-in:

However, if you are not a rookie, you would know that people don’t want notifications. They want information. The more they are informed of the consequences of making a choice, the more they would be encouraged to opt-in or opt-out, based on their comprehension of the choices.

If you are merely asking – “XYZ wants to send you notifications- Block or Allow”, it’s purely based on luck to get the opt-in. A notification could be anything. It could be a piece of relevant information or not relevant at all.

The best way to do this is customizing an opt-in box to make it as informative as possible. While designing the box, make sure that it is informing the potential subscriber about the consequences of making each of the two choices. Explain to them about the type of information they would receive if they allow the same.

See this opt-in box for a blog that posts regular health tips:

It offers a clear comprehension of what users would get after opting-in and what they would miss if they block the same. This tweak is not limited to health tips, depending on your domain, you can come up with many such fancy opt-in box ideas.

For example, if you own a webshop, one of the best eCommerce marketing ideas would be sending transactional as well as engagement push notifications. Inform your users about this with a notification alert like this:

Text: “We keep our users posted about latest offers and purchase details through push notifications”

Choices: “Keep me informed”; “Not Required”

Bottom line: This tweak is so fundamental that a majority of marketers miss it, considering as not very crucial. In fact, while writing this point, I was looking for some websites to show you guys as an example, but hardly found one. Most of the websites are still stuck with the generic opt-in boxes.

In other words, it is the best opportunity to make your notifications unique and stand out from the rest.

2. You are not planning for preference and behavior-based notifications

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