Top Benefits That Inspire Mobile App Developers To Include Push Notifications

2015 watched the consistently growing popularity of push notifications and it would continue to improve this year. With a striking open rate of up to 80% and push-enabled apps enjoying an impressive engagement rate of up to 88%, there are valid reasons for every mobile app to have push notifications. Let’s elaborate more about what make them truly beneficial in a number of ways.

User Retention

Push notifications facilitate incredible user retention. How? A mobile app has high probability of getting lost in the sea of applications installed on a device. By regularly sending notifications via push-enabled mobile apps, you can actually encourage the app users to ‘come back’ to the app and use it more often. It would happen provided the notifications have great value in terms of information, updates or offers. If that happens, you may retain users for long term and there are fewer chances of them deleting the app.

User Engagement

Mobile users, who are increasing exponentially every year, want to be engaged all the time. Considering that there might be hundreds of other apps ready to beat your app in this regard, it’s essential for you to follow an aggressive approach of keeping the users glued to your app. Apart from having a fabulous app design and functionality, having push technology at place should open some exciting ways to engage them.

Direct Marketing Channel

Push messages have emerged as a capable medium of direct marketing landscape that was earlier owned by the techniques like email and SMS marketing. Mobile marketers now have a new and exciting way to deliver promotional messages, special deals, discounts and coupons, retail incentives and much more to generate leads and improve sales. This further brings onboard a number of push notification benefits, like:

• Fast Delivery: Messages are instantly flashed in the form of sounds, alerts, banners or badges via mobile apps which means that the recipients may access them within seconds.
• Fast Response: By including coupons, links and other elements in the notifications, you may generate quick action from the targets.
• Location-based Targeting: Geo targeting and geo-fencing are the buzz words when it comes to mobile-based direct marketing. Push technology allows marketers to know the exact locations of app users and send relevant messages with higher chances of generating quick response.
• In-store Targeting: Just like location-based targeting, in-store targeting is also possible with push. For example, an app user at a retail store may be targeted with the latest and the hottest in the store using push notifications.

Amazing Communication Channel

While direct marketing is just one way to use push technology for communication, there is much more to it. For example:

• New features and updates about the gaming apps are extremely easier to communicate using push messages.
• It can also be a great channel to announce new launches that may include a new app you have developed or a new product at your store.
• Breaking news, stock updates, sports scores, upcoming events and many such important pieces of information can be sent directly to the mobile users.
• Links to new articles and blogs can be instantly shared to increase the number of readers.
• Push notifications can be used to convey new posts, statuses and other useful information posted on the popular social media websites. It can be further beneficial in encouraging social media sharing.

Non-invasive Pushing

The beauty of push messages is that these are non-obtrusive which allows the app users to have the full control. There are two aspects to it:

• Firstly, the marketers or application owners don’t need to collect personal information of recipients (which is required for communication via SMS or email).
• Users may choose whether they wish to activate push notifications or not.

Needles to say, it helps communicate in a wonderfully cordial manner.

When Used in Business Apps

Push notifications used in business or enterprise mobile apps may prove even more valuable. For example, emergency messages can be instantly communicated to the employees who are out doing the field work. It also facilitates schedule reminding by sending messages directly on the business apps. Incorporating them in the work culture is a great new way to establish communication.

Better Branding

Whether you use mobile app to make money or to market a product or service, it allows branding by creating personalised experiences for users. How? You can include logos, sounds, images or anything else in push messages that help your company or brand to get instantly recognised. You may further improve it by maintaining consistency in terms of messaging frequency and content quality.

Gaining Valuable Insights

As an app developer, you need to know those who use your apps, as they might be interested in your future apps as well. And as a marketer or business owner, you must know the app users who have the possibility to convert into your customers. With push notifications, you get access to the valuable insights into their behaviour. When do they use the app? What type of messages they respond to better and more quickly? What devices and platforms are more popular with mobile users? What actions result from push notifications? By finding answers to each of these questions, you can improve the overall relationship with your audiences.

Going further, these are cheaper (than SMS too) when you need to connect with mobile users. Moreover, these are easy to use, allow simple and customised messaging and may attract your targets even if they are in the middle of something important. Don’t let you app suffer by missing these benefits of push notifications.

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