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What are Push Notifications? An In-depth Guide For 2021 and Beyond
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Recently, Google listed Push Notifications as an important marketing trend that cannot be ignored by marketers anymore. In the age of GDPR where customers do not appreciate being intruded with unwanted messages or emails, push notifications works as a perfect alternative as it works on the principle of permission-based marketing. As more and more brands adopt push notifications, we have put together a 15-chapter step-by-step guide that will help you create winning campaigns and drive sales. Also, check out:
There are various definitions for push notifications that get thrown around; some call them actionable messages, others refer to them as rich messages, and some others use the term personalized messages. But which of these is the right description? All of them. Here’s how we can break it down:
Push notifications are short messages that pop up on the user’s mobile or desktop, nudging them to take some action. Your customers are busy individuals who are likely to forget about the great offers you had announced a few days ago via e-mail or about the cart they have abandoned after adding a lot of items to it.
If you want them to stay updated with the latest offers that you are offering or remind them of the impending items in their cart, push notifications can be a perfect way to communicate. With email open rates declining at a rapid pace, notifications can be a great way for businesses to engage with users and reduce churn. The benefit of push notification is you can time the message and even customize it depending upon the situation. For example, a customer who had abandoned the cart will receive a reminder notification, while a customer who has not used the app for shopping for a long time can receive offers that are relevant to them.
Push notification is also a powerful marketing tool. According to Invespcro, push notifications can boost app engagement by 88% and has led to 48% of mobile users making an in-store purchase. However, a push notification can get intrusive if not done the right way. Read ahead to know how to use them judiciously and the best practices to follow to make the most of it.
(Push Notifications on Mobile and Desktop)
Now that you know how powerful push notifications can be to your marketing campaign, let’s dig deeper to know how it works. We have taken the example of MoEngage’s way of push notification delivery to help you understand the working better. When a marketer creates and executes a campaign using MoEngage’s platform, MoEngage identifies the users who fulfill the segmentation criteria set by the marketers and has at least one active device linked to an active push token (a unique identifier set by cloud messaging platforms such as APNS and FCM that helps marketers to communicate with the end-users of the app).
Once MoEngage identifies the eligible users with the help of frequency capping, it determines the active devices that will receive the message. The cloud messaging platforms such as GCM, FCM, and APNS receives the message and takes over the delivery process. The cloud messaging platform then relays the message to the end user’s device. Once the user receives the notification, MoEngage’s Software Developer’s Kit (SDK) informs the server about it. This is called an Impression. You can read more about how it works in this article.
There are two types of push notifications - web push notification and mobile push notification. Web push notifications are sent from a website. You get them on your desktop or a mobile device even when the website is not open. Web push notification is compatible with Safari and Chrome and is ideal for companies that have not created an app yet. Mobile push notification is sent from mobile apps. The user needs to install the mobile app for the marketer to be able to send notifications.
Push notifications can be used for various purposes such as:
The difference between web push notifications and app push notifications is outreach. Web push notifications have a wider reach than mobile app notifications. You don’t require a mobile application to send notifications to the user. You can send them notifications on computers, laptops, and mobile browsers. For mobile push notification, the user has to install the app to receive messages.
Read - Killer Strategies for Mobile App Re-Engagement
Push notification opt-in is a process that enables customers to manage their push messages by allowing or stopping the mobile apps from sending them. A mobile application needs to make an opt-in request during installation to ensure that the user has permitted them to send push messages.
Considering that push notifications are permission-based, the opt-in process typically involves a strategy wherein you either hard-ask or soft-ask for opt-ins. Hard-ask is when you directly ask the user a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, i.e., whether they want to allow or block the notifications. The user chooses their desired option, and the process gets closed.
Hard-ask is straightforward and has the highest number of opt-in rates. However, they work better with HTTPS sites. Soft-ask, on the other hand, involves providing additional information about what value or benefit the user will receive on answering affirmatively. It comes before the hard-ask. There are chances that the user may drop-off if there are too many steps involved. So, keep the soft ask visually presentable and ensure that you ask at the right moment. No matter what approach you choose, ensure that your opt-in message is relevant and personalized. This could double the opt-in rates.
Web push notifications are ideal for audiences who do not want to subscribe to email but at the same time would like to receive the latest updates from your websites. To ensure maximum opt-ins and engagement, you need to make your web push notifications a winning channel. Here are the technical requirements that you need to fulfill when you send push notifications.
Currently, MoEngage’s web push notification works on Chrome (version 42+ on macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android), Firefox (version 44+ on macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android), and Opera (version 37+ on macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android). Web push notifications work on all computers and laptops irrespective of the OS type.
Push notifications can be customized based on what stage of the customer lifecycle the user belongs to and your campaign’s objectives. Here are a few types of push messages that you can send to your customers:
The push click-through rates can go up to 45%, reveals a study conducted by MoEngage on the push notification campaigns across 35+ countries. As compared to other channels such as emails and SMSes, the push notification click-through rates are 7x more than emails, while the opening rate is 50% more.
Push notifications work better than other channels is because it pops up on the screen of the user, unlike emails that remain unopened for a long time. Concise messaging also makes it a more effective communication medium, and the fact that the user opts-in for notifications makes it a more reliable channel as compared to the others.
Let’s look at a few examples of how brands used push notifications to boost their sales.
Here's an insightful article on how to get push notifications right.
Text messages or SMSes might seem like an old approach to reach out to customers. However, it can be an effective medium to reach out to customers, especially those who do not have a smartphone to install the app. In fact, you can also automate SMS campaigns using automation tools.
The drawback is that you cannot add rich media content such as GIFs, animations, and emojis to make the text visually appealing. Push notification lets you do that. There are also legal limitations such as certain countries have a cap on the number of text messages that you can send per day. Push notifications have no such limits.
Another major difference is, it’s easy to opt-out of push messages than messages. While this might seem like good news to marketers, the truth is, your customers may find your text messages intrusive and spam and may even choose to not engage with you anymore. This can have a major impact on customer loyalty.
Do you know Chrome Push Notifications can increase conversions on your website by up to 9x? It is more beneficial than other channels like email and app push as the opt-in rates are higher than the email opt-in rates and the opt-out rates are significantly less than that of mobile app push. Chrome push notification helps marketers to track anonymous visitors on the website, understand them, and engage them with relevant content via notifications. This guide will tell you how chrome push notification works and how it can strengthen your marketing efforts.
In this chapter, you will learn:
Push notifications are undoubtedly the best way to communicate with customers and increase conversions. However, an irrelevant or spam push notification can harm your brand’s reputation and create mistrust in the minds of your customers. 85% of Android users do not know how to disable android notifications. This might spell happiness for the marketers but not for too long.
The following image illustrates how to get your notifications right,
We have packed this chapter with best practices that will teach you to use push notifications the right way. You will learn:
Don’t worry if your notifications do not get delivered despite following the best practices (refer to chapter 3) of notifications and setting the campaign correctly. There can be multiple reasons why they do not get delivered to the end-users despite successfully sending it to the GCM.
In this chapter, we’ll dig deep into the probable reasons that could affect the deliverability of the messages.
Bonus: We’ve discussed how you can overcome this marketing challenge in the chapter.
For a detailed analysis of factors that influence push notification delivery rate, download this Push Notifications Delivery Report.
There are 14 primary factors that impact Push Notification delivery rates on Android devices. We've built a framework for mobile marketers that highlights the importance of each of these factors, letting you pick the best ones to optimize for.
👉 You can get the framework here.
We also discuss each of these factors in detail and how you can fix poor delivery rates with a simple solution, in the chapter below. In this chapter, you will learn:
In spite of Push Notification being such an important way of reaching users as high as 40%-70% of your notifications may not be delivered to end-users.
One of the reasons for low delivery rates can be attributed to OEM-related challenges. For example, Xiaomi devices can shut down apps in the background or when the screen is off to optimize battery usage. For Vivo devices, an “Auto-Start Manager” prevents applications from being woken up to process notifications.
Challenges like these make it imperative to fill the gaps that are plaguing the current mobile ecosystem. Push Amplifications helps marketers combat push delivery challenges and engage their mobile users more effectively. Using this capability, marketers can reach more potential user devices that are cut-off from FCM. Brands could improve their push delivery rates by up to 20% and drive higher conversions.
To understand the push notification delivery funnel and delve into the discrepancies in the push delivery rate, watch this webinar.
Do you know up to 15% of the e-commerce conversions are driven by a push notification? From notification on the abandoned cart to transactional alerts, marketers can send customized messages to the customers at a lesser cost than SMS. In this chapter, Raviteja Dodda, the CEO of MoEngage and Nalin Goel, the VP of Product Management, takes you behind the scenes of how push notifications are delivered on Android phones. Some of the points that are discussed in this chapter include:
Bonus: There’s a link to the full on-demand webinar in this chapter. Don’t miss it!
Last year, Apple made several updates to iOS 12, including the notifications that gave users more control over the messages they prefer to see. While this is a cause of worry for marketers, we will tell you how you can leverage it to your advantage in this chapter.
Few takeaways for you from this chapter include:
In the age of 1:1 communication, brands have to move away from the traditional approach of reaching out to the customers. If you still use the “batch and blast” approach for push notifications, it’s time to shift to personalization. Personalized push notifications can increase conversions by 4x. This chapter will quickly run you through the benefits of using personalized push notifications. You will learn why personalized push notifications are more powerful batch and blast push notifications and how 1:1 personalization can strengthen your marketing efforts.
Bonus: You will find a solution that will help you to personalize your push notifications and drive conversions by 4x.
This chapter will walk you through the process of setting up your app to send push notifications. You will learn:
The benefits of using push notifications include:
An average smartphone user has around 26 apps on their phone, out of which only 3.3% of Android apps and 3.2% of iOS apps have active users by the end of 30 days. As a marketer, these numbers could worry you. You will have to find a way to grab the attention of the user and engage them to drive conversions. In this chapter, we have covered how you can increase conversions with notifications. You will learn:
Web push notifications are one of the most effective ways to bring users back to your website after they’ve dropped off. Whether you’ve got a great offer or have discounts running for the next couple of hours, web push notifications can be leveraged to spread the word among your subscribers and bring them to your website. Be prepared for a surge in site traffic after you’ve sent web notifications to all your subscribers
There are 3 ways you can use web push and drive conversions for your online business:
Dive deep into these strategies and see which one works best for your business.
There are certain push notification best practices that you need to adhere to in order to ensure that your users do not opt-out of receiving them.
Push notifications have become more intelligent and efficient. They help you to personalize your messages through better segmentation, reduce the cost of customer acquisition by deploying better omnichannel lifecycle campaigns, and reconnect with your customers using dynamic push notifications. In this chapter, we have covered the top 5 trends that can help you improve your push notifications strategy in 2021. You will learn:
Bonus: Also learn the 7 best practices to increase the ROI of your push notification strategy by 11 times.
These use cases from different industries will show you how you can use notifications to reach your customers.
Geofencing is a method of creating a virtual fence around a particular geographic area (mainly around the area you operate), so you can send highly targeted and hyper-personalized push messages to people who are close to your vicinity. Imagine, you have landed at the airport after a long flight hungry and tired. Suddenly, you get a notification on your mobile phone directing you to some of the best restaurants in the vicinity. Wouldn’t you be relieved? Or imagine going to a mall with a plan of meeting a friend, when suddenly Starbucks sends you a notification informing you about the great deals available at their cafe, wouldn’t you and friend head there? These micro-moments can go a long way in building customer experiences, and you can create them by using geofencing.
According to Market Research Future, the global geofencing market is expected to grow to $2.2 billion by 2023. According to Search Engine Land, geofencing advertising increases the click-through rate by double as compared to digital advertising and is said to provide 20 times more ROI than traditional banner ads. Adding geofencing to your campaign is very simple, especially when you have a marketing automation tool like MoEngage that enables you to create such hyper-personalized campaigns.
Read the success stories of brands that have deployed MoEngage for their Omnichannel marketing.
Try MoEngage’s push notifications for FREE. Sign up now and engage up to 10,000 MAUs at zero cost.
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