You already know about email, social media, affiliate marketing, SMS, ads (Google Adwords, Facebook, Bing). All these channels have their own piece of the marketing promotion pie, where you can deploy different kind of campaigns to reach and engage users.
Online businesses use all or a part of these channels to attract visitors to their website, as well as engage with the ones who have already visited it. But there’s a new one that looks very promising for both businesses and users: push notifications.
Push notifications have a short history in the world, coming from mobile apps, where IOS and Android used them as the default way by which mobile apps communicate with their users.
The advantage of delivering the message in real time with a higher response rate compared to email (50% higher according to CampaignMonitor) gives this channel the chance of becoming number one in terms of marketing ROI.
We might be also tempted to think of push notifications and text message of being the same, but they have crucial differences.
Mobile marketing and marketing automation is where the magic is these days. Notices of sales, offers and discounts landed in customer inbox are not enough to build a good marketing strategy. Now, customers want those alerts in real time, flashed up on the screen of their mobile device, easy to discard or to take an interest in. These instant alerts, called “push notifications”, are being widely adopted by consumers and if your business is not using them, you are very likely losing money.
A survey by Responsys found from 1,200 adults that almost 60% of adults have downloaded apps from their favorite brands and from those, 7 in 10 have enabled push notifications.
Push notifications will not replace email marketing, the same way email marketing didn’t replace old catalogs received through emails, but will definitely get a piece of this pie.
Instant delivery of push notifications allow you to communicate in real time. Being flexible in marketing strategies and having an ability to react to breaking news and relevant trends in order to communicate with customers is strongly encouraged for a business.
Every visitor has to decide himself whether he wants to receive notifications or not from you. This means that as a business owner you do not have to worry about bothering your clients with push messages, as visitors themselves agreed to receive them.
Website push notifications are easy and fast to implement. Service have all the necessary script writing done and the only thing you, as a client in this case, need to do is copy-paste ready Javascript into your web page. It usually takes just a few minutes and with an assistance of customer support can be done by anyone.
Read more about getting started with push notifications
Walmart used push notifications to send consumers new products that the customers have shown interest in previously. This increases user retention rates by up to 100%.
Another advantage of having offline supermarkets everywhere, allowed the company to developed a geo-based push notification that lets the app to automatically send relevant pieces of information based on its current location.
Growing total customer number from 1150 to over 2000 in just 2 weeks was easy for this british small retailer using push notifications.
Image: courtesy of buywholefoodsonline.co.uk
Push notifications are not so intrusive as emails, and people are already used to receive a few a day.
Try to see it from your customers’ point of view. Ask yourself whether this type of message is really suitable for notification.
We’d recommend sending one per day, or maybe two if your customers are active and are interested in your products.
According to experts from the Localytics, users read notifications on their daily commute to work, when in need of a distraction at work or when their smartphone is within reach. Notifications sent on working days have 66% higher rate of reading. During the weekend, the response on those push notifications is lower.
So, the optimal times are between 12 and 17 pm. That is the time when the user has the opportunity to read it.
TIP: Don’t send notifications too early in the morning or too late. After the bedtime story and before wake-up, you might have a 95% clearance in order to bother your customers.
The number of words displayed in a notification message varies depending on the device and browser type. Android has a limit of 60-90 characters, IOS has 120 but browsers like Firefox has only 50. Chrome can show up to 2 lines, and allows you for two more extra buttons. Remember then that shorter messages are usually more effective. Experts state the optimum is about 10 words.
What’s an example of such a message?
“For gourmands: 30% off on seafood. Try it”
Because text length is limited, and users are already flooded with thousands of words from media, internet and mobile you have to create a catchy call to action. With quality and helpful message you can achieve this.
When shouldn’t be notifications used?
Push notifications are ephemeral, so they disappear easy from your user screen with a simple tap or click.
While this is not an exhaustive list, we recommend you looking into the following when choosing a provider:
Push notifications is a new marketing channel, with great potential. They allow you to get personal with your customers, in a simple and non intrusive way. As with emailing, do not oversend. The fact that push doesn’t interrupt user activity is not a license to send them very often them.
Alexandru Rada is founder of Vibetrace.com, one of the top marketing automation solutions dedicated to online retailers. He thinks that the next big trend in digital marketing is automation and personalization centered on individual customer profile. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
By Expert commentator
This is a post we've invited from a digital marketing specialist who has agreed to share their expertise, opinions and case studies. Their details are given at the end of the article.
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