Not that long ago, the notion that you could send a message straight into the pockets of millions of people, capturing their attention at the touch of a button, would have sounded like the stuff of a marketer&#;s dreams &#; but that&#;s exactly what push notifications offer.
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The era of mobile computing arrived so quickly that we almost didn&#;t have time to notice how close to magic push notifications really are. And yet, most marketers don&#;t give push notifications the care and attention they deserve, despite the endless benefits they can yield for both company and customer alike.
Certainly, push notifications require care and thought &#; people&#;s attention cannot be taken for granted. But push notifications that are personal, relevant, and well-timed can help users achieve their goals in real time.
In this guide, we&#;ll explore how to use push notifications the right way, and above all how to make them valuable for your users.
Push notifications are short pop-up messages sent to users via their smartphones (or browsers) that contain useful information, news, or offers. They&#;re used to inspire customers and prospects to take a specific call to action.
By nature, push notifications are brief and short-lived. As such, these messages are engaging and effective as a marketing strategy only if they&#;re personal, relevant and, most of all, provide value to your recipients.
It doesn&#;t matter whether a push notification is coming from a fitness app, a news app or a social media app. Whatever the case, the content of your message must be captivating enough to warrant a click-through. Here are some examples:
These short, powerful messages take planning to get right. Start by building a strategy based on information about your recipients. Think about when they&#;re normally active on your app or program, or how often they might like to receive blog articles, news or updates from friends.
Begin by asking yourself the following questions:
When (and how often) you encourage users to opt in for future push notifications can affect whether or not they choose to do so. There are several options to consider:
Keep in mind that push notifications should improve a user&#;s experience, not hinder it. If it&#;s difficult or confusing to turn notifications on manually, consider offering your opt-in prompts intermittently instead of only once. You can always talk to your users to find out what they like or dislike about the timing and frequency of your opt-in notifications.
Again, think about the user experience. When deciding how to deliver and display your opt-in notifications, consider what it will look like within your app&#;s UI on the user&#;s device.
A simple in-app, full-screen opt-in prompt is often the go-to delivery method for smartphone apps. As an app publisher, you&#;re helping ensure that your users get the experience they want, without them having to manually search through their phones to find the right opt-in settings.
How frequently you send your push notifications will depend on your marketing goals, user behavior, and the type of content you&#;re sending.
Think about what type of content your app provides its users and how it provides value. If people use your apps to stay up to date on industry trends, consider sending real-time or daily push notifications. If someone is looking to improve their health but needs help getting motivated, weekly push notifications might be exactly what the user needs to keep themselves on track.
Now that you have the basics down, let&#;s talk about some best practices for creating, sending and monitoring the effectiveness of your push notifications.
Before sending out mass push notifications, A/B test on a small percentage of your audience. This will help you identify what&#;s working and what&#;s not. Begin by testing individual variables, such as the following:
Do text messages have a higher clickthrough rate than pop-ups?
A/B testing is helpful only if you have the right tools to measure success. Try using Intercom&#;s A/B testing capabilities to experiment with your push notifications. You may not be able to get it right the first time, but don&#;t be discouraged. Just keep testing!
Personalization is the key to improving engagement: in order to compete with notifications such as messages from friends, family and coworkers, push notifications from brands must pay attention to the smallest details. We can&#;t emphasize enough how critical it is to use accurate, person-level data to inform your notifications. Event parameters, language and life cycle are all great ways to make sure your message is as personal and targeted as possible.
For example, just adding the receiver&#;s first name can help push notifications perform better (in some cases up to 4x better). Intercom is great for sending these targeted push notifications, but the advice remains the same no matter what tool you&#;re using.
If customers aren&#;t reading your messages, or if you&#;re seeing a lot of customers turn off or opt out of push notifications, your messages are either not relevant to your recipients, are being sent too frequently or are simply reaching customers at the wrong time. Make sure your messages are hyper-targeted and relevant to your recipient by monitoring open, click-through and unsubscribe rates.
Despite the incredible amount of mobile usage, most forms of content are still closely tied to the rhythms of the desktop computer. Newsletters are delivered to a subscriber&#;s inbox at 9 a.m.; blog posts are scheduled to publish at 5 p.m. These schedules have long worked for traditional types of media but don&#;t automatically translate to notifications and mobile.
Andrew Chen has pulled together some excellent data that shows that while brands are sending a ton of pushes leading up to the evening (and dropping off quickly after), open rates are actually higher after 6 p.m. The data is clear: send push notifications between 6 p.m and 8 p.m., when engagement is at its highest.
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Credit: Andrew Chen and Leanplum
Note: 6 p.m.-8 p.m. should only be taken as a rule of thumb. The timing of your push notification will also partially depend on the urgency of the message. In this case, it&#;s worth creating a simple notification map that matches each notification with the right priority.
Interactive notifications mean little if what you&#;re communicating is of no value to the user in the first place. Most businesses continue to use notifications as a signpost &#; a piece of vague, cryptic content meant to entice you back into the app. But notifications work best when the notification is the message.
The message above, from Quartz, works fantastically well because
Real-time adaptive notifications might be beyond most brands right now, but push notifications with current, immediate information get the highest engagement.
Some publishers are doing incredible work designing notifications that automatically update as new data becomes available. It means you&#;ll only ever get the most timely and accurate content delivered to you. These types of notifications can include:
Real-time adaptive messages provide users with the information they want, the minute it&#;s available.
As well as measuring open rates and click-through rates, look for signs that your users don&#;t like what they see. A great way to start is to track repeat-usage behavior. (Our piece on measuring retention is a great first step.)
While click-through rate and open-rate metrics can indicate whether a user reads your notifications, they don&#;t help you understand whether users are getting the information they really need.
For example, a successful push notification could be a self-contained, stand-alone message, as discussed above. The point is, just because a user doesn&#;t click-through on a push notification, doesn&#;t mean that notification didn&#;t do its job.
Instead, look for negative signs:
Pay attention to how users are actively reacting to your push notifications to determine whether or not they&#;re truly effective.
Intercom makes it easy to send and receive push notifications, both internally (between team members) and externally (between team members and customers). Simply navigate to &#;Outbound&#; in your Intercom dashboard, click on &#;new mobile push,&#; as shown in the photo below:
You can A/B test different message variables, choose where to direct your customers (i.e. different pages on your site), select a target audience, set goals for your messages, and schedule them accordingly.
Push notifications can also be used to notify team members when a user completes a target goal (e.g. when they click through to a new page or sign up for a product demo). This is helpful for determining which type of messaging is most effective at engaging and converting users.
Learn more about how Intercom&#;s push notifications work.
In today&#;s digitally-focused world, our phones &#; whether they&#;re Apple or Google/Android &#; are the lifelines that connect us with the people we love, the information we need, and the pastimes we treasure. They&#;re intimate devices that we have on us at all times, whether we&#;re working out, watching TV, or out grocery shopping.
As a marketer, this lifeline is an opportunity to connect directly with our individual customers, and push notifications are the mechanism that makes it possible. Use these messages to engage with your customers and provide value to them in real time, wherever they are. That&#;s the key to converting users into long-term, loyal customers.
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