Strategies to maximize the impact of push notification campaigns

In our latest guest post, Kate Butler, Marketing Manager UK & Nordics at growth management platform Insider explains the importance of getting push notification campaigns right, and how they can help you reach customers and boost lifetime value.

Push notifications are attention-grabbing - they’re the "look at me!" members of the digital marketing family. Their very aim is to disrupt a user from what they are currently doing and redirect them to your app. This is all well and good if the interruption provides great content, enticing promotions, or other relevant offerings. But if the message is uninteresting or irrelevant, users may be provoked to reach for the unsubscribe or uninstall button, potentially creating a negative association with your brand.

So what can you do to maximize app push deliverability and engagement and make sure you have the right strategies that bring real value to your recipients?

1. Make the first experience a great experience

According to Adjust's benchmark report, 19.13% of all users use a new app one day after they download it. That rate drops to 10.25 % on the seventh day, and by day twenty-eight, only 6.04% of users come back to the app.

With such a huge drop in app launches within a week, it's imperative that your app provides a positive customer experience, slick UX, and tangible value so that users want to come back again and again.

Why is this important to push deliverability? While Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) accepts all notifications, not all of them are delivered. A large proportion of users who don't receive notifications are those who have been inactive on the sender's app for three or more weeks. First impressions and repeated opens can make a big impact.

2. Engage users with carousel push

When competing for a user’s attention, one of the strongest weapons you have is visuals. Rich push notifications, which include compelling text and great images of your products or services, speed up the process of "see, think, click, buy" dramatically.

Such notifications start with a standard lock screen notification which, once tapped, opens a larger window with one or multiple captivating images to tap on ⁠—promoting a campaign, a particular product line, or anything else that you're confident will engage your users.

3. Segment users for relevant and compelling pushes

Segmented push notifications vastly outperform bulk push in terms of conversion rates. Of users who open a push notification, 54% convert from segmented pushes, compared to only 15% who convert from bulk pushes.

One of the simplest segmentation strategies is demographic segmentation, dividing your users into cohorts based on their age, gender, or location and creating distinct messaging to appeal to each segment.

Behavioral segmentation is a more advanced and precise strategy. It divides customers based on their previous behavior and interactions with your app, such as categories or products viewed, previous purchases, and which campaigns they have interacted with in the past.

For a deeper dive into developing your marketing segmentation strategy, check out Insider's What is Marketing Segmentation blog.

4. Deliver your message at the best time for each user

Early birds, night owls, tea-time tappers ⁠— not everyone has the same schedule or interacts with their phone at the same time, so messaging your whole customer base at once is never going to produce the highest results.

There are some general rules of thumb:

• It's a bad idea to send push notifications between 12 am and 6 am because you risk disturbing recipients' sleep or being lost or dismissed in the morning messaging pileup
• Some research recommends that 7 am to 10 am and  6 pm to 10 pm are the best windows for notifications

Specialist communication channel providers can collect and analyze historical information about each of your users, observing which campaigns have been opened and at what time. They use this information to calculate the time most likely to capture a particular user's attention and engagement and send the push at the optimum time to achieve your chosen success metric.

5. Bridging the gap between digital and brick and mortar with geolocation technology

Set a radius around a particular area ⁠— and as soon as one of your users enters it, a timely, highly relevant notification is sent. If your beauty and cosmetics brand offers free in-person skin consultations, set a ten-minute walking time radius around your store. As soon as the user enters the radius, they will receive a notification alerting them to your services and letting them know that you are close by.

This technology also offers great opportunities to travel brands, promoting ancillary products, or providing useful information to users arriving at a specific location.

Don't forget to set a frequency cap to limit the number of times the same customer can receive push notifications from your brand to avoid repetition and potential irritation and disengagement.

Consumers love brands that treat them as individuals

Carefully curate your push campaigns, find the right timing, frequency, and content to maximize engagement. Put yourself in your subscribers' shoes: What bothers you? How often does a person or brand have to contact you before they become a nuisance?

When push notifications are done right ⁠— with smart segmentation and perfectly personalized campaigns that bring genuine value ⁠— the potential uplift in conversion rate, average order value, and lifetime value is huge.

To learn more about effective personalization and segmentation and compelling cross-channel messaging strategies, take a look at Insider’s information and resources. For more on how to optimize push notifications, you can read our blog post here.