Push Messages: 7 Tips for Engaging Your Audience

According to research conducted by Localytics. Android devices have this feature on by default whereas it was only until recent with the release of iOS 8 that Apple users saw a transition from reminders to an interactive experience.

Other interesting bits of information that will pique your interest about push notifications include:

• 70% of mobile users are opted into push notifications
• Conversion rate is 2x higher for users who received push notifications
• Open rate is 3x higher with targeted notifications vs generic notifications
• Notified users open apps 3x more often than non-notified users

Those promoting their business, apps, and trying to reach their market should consider the opportunities of push notifications now that they have evolved from “annoying reminders”.

Here are some ways to engage you audience with the channel:

1. Chances are that the initial push led to engagement but over time you may have saw a dip due to individuals losing interest. The first thing you will want to do is get users back into the engagement by sending gentle reminders; this may lead to re-installs and reactivation of push notifications to their devices.
2. The second is to remember that you should never over-message your audience as this may lead to a break in trust with your users. Over-messaging will lead to your users turning off messages, plain and simple. It would be wise to base your frequency on other marketing initiatives such as during a product launch, email newsletter, major update, or if you have something truly great to share.
3. The timing of your messages will always be an element of engagement no matter the channel so naturally it will need to be a main focus. The timing will greatly depend on your type of business or campaign; delivering a push notification with a coupon later into the hours when people are likely to go out to eat is one such example.
4. As you can image – content is going to actively engage a user. You are limited in the amount of information you can share through push notification so it’s important that the content is rich. Updating an individual about a new, lower price for a product they have on their wishlist is one such example of rich content that is likely to engage the user.
5. The targeting and segmentation of your user base will certainly increase engagement (as previously pointed out above). One way of doing so is to provide users with a way to subscribe to different categories and topics that are relevant to their interests. You could, for example, deliver a targeted push notification to only those that have purchase $X amount of product within your app. Location is another part of targeting you may also want to consider.
6. You should reach out and drive additional users through advertising and other marketing strategies besides relying just on opt-in users. Facebook, naturally, is a solid channel to start with advertising as the usage is extremely high for mobile users. You could then, in turn, use targeting and timing to start engagement with these new users on a power note.
7. Last, but not very least, for this list is that you should always track the response and engagement of your push notification so that you may improve upon each new attempt. A combination of reading the analytics, A/B testing, and using feedback will allow you to hand-craft messages that your audience actively wants.

Considering the levels of engagement and overall ease of using push notifications… will they become a regular part of your strategy?

Image by niekverlaan