Are Browser Push Notifications An Email Marketing Alternative?

Email marketing has been ruling the digital industry for years together. It has become an integral part of every business’s marketing and growth strategies. But with the change of trends and marketing tactics, there have been other tactics that have emerged as effective in acquiring as well as customer retention for businesses. Case in point here being, browser push notifications.

In this article, we’ll be discussing if browser push notifications can become an effective email marketing alternative or is it wise for marketers to leverage the power of both.

Email Marketing Versus Browser Push Notifications

According to Campaign Monitor, emails have been ruling the marketing industry for more than ten years in a row. Email has proven to be the one channel that generates the highest ROI for marketers across B2B and B2C industries. As a matter of fact, when strategised right, every $1 spent on email marketing generates $38 in ROI.

The average open rates of email marketing campaigns across different industries is recorded around 22. 87% and the channel is said to deliver a click through rate of 3.26%, with an unsubscription rate of only 0.53%. This only goes to say that emails deliver results for businesses when it comes to conversions.

While emails are mostly accessed by Internet users on their mobile devices, there are still a considerable number that use their desktops for general browsing and accessing other business websites – especially at work. Desktop usage still accounts for up to 42% of the total internet time.

This is where browser push notifications come in.

Browser push notifications refer to messages that come from business websites on your desktop. The Internet user gets these notifications even when he is not on the website.

This channel has fast become an effective marketing tactic to re engage website visitors without having them share their email address or any other kind of contact information.

Since most Internet users are skeptical about sharing their contact information, browser push notifications get a higher opt-in rate than emails. For that matter, multiple studies suggest that browser push notifications have less than 10% unsubscription rates in over an year.

Another reason why businesses should use browser push notifications is its inexpensiveness. While creating a mobile app to stay in touch with users or set up email marketing campaigns on tools require considerable resources, browser notifications are the best for those on a shoestring budget. If you just create a mobile website, it works perfectly to re-engage your desktop and mobile website visitors.

This makes website or browser push notifications an important channel for marketing communication.

So do marketers really need to choose between the two marketing channels?

We say, no. A smarter approach that definitely guarantees higher marketing ROI and faster growth of businesses, is to leverage the power of stronger communication channels. In this case, both email and browsers.

Power-Packed Marketing Combo: Emails And Browser Notification

Having tried various marketing campaigns and channels to acquire as well as retain customers, we have learnt one thing – it is important to find a way to interact with them directly and stay at the top of their mind every day. With the rising competition, this has become all the more important.

This is why we believe that emails are not replaceable by browser push notifications. If you want guaranteed results from your marketing, you need to optimise your campaigns to tap into the power of both.

With higher click through rates for both emails and browser notifications, our decision is completely data backed. Leaving no room for competitors to target your audience is the only way to sustainably grow in the market.

Here are a few examples of the two working magic together:

During Sales

So you’re running a special offer on some products – but if you don’t let your website visitors know of it, they’re probably never going to discover those products. For those who have subscribed, an email works perfectly.

But for those who haven’t, a browser push notification is what’s going to bring them back.

Similarly, you can use both the channels to also remind them of the ongoing sale every few days and when it is just about to end to create a sense of urgency.

Cart Abandonment

Yes, there are times when visitors come to your website, add items to the cart and then leave without making a purchase. If the visitor has left after sharing his contact details, you can send over a direct email to let him know the products he had shown interest in are going out of stock.

And for those who haven’t shared any contact details, well, a browser notification is surely going to bring them back to your website.

Price Alerts

The number one thing that we all look for online, are good deals on products and services we are looking for. More often than not we find the product on a website but come away thinking we’ll wait for its price to drop. In this case, I am the visitor who wants to be notified of these price alerts because it is hard for me to check the website everyday. An email that notifies me of the same would be lovely.

But since I could be at work and don’t want to miss the deal, a browser notification would be brilliant!

Launch New Products

If your business is launching new products, it is important to let your existing customers as well website visitors know. While an email absolutely does the trick, there are those who might not have shared their email id with you yet, and that’s where a browser notification comes handy!

Personalised Communication

Companies like Wigzo offer you tools powered by machine learning, that help track your website visitor’s as well customer behaviour. This helps you understand what they are looking for, where they come from and what you can do to make their experience better. So use this data to personalise your emails while sending offers on products.

And your browser notifications when promoting a new product or offering a discount on one!

Notify Of A New Blog Post

Yes, most of you might think that blog visitors would subscribe to your newsletters if they are interested in more reads. But the truth is, they are still skeptical about sharing their contact information with you. While those who opt in to your email list are sent your new blog posts via newsletters:

Let the others who didn’t opt in to your email list know of them via a browser notification that redirects them to the new blog post!

Conclusion

Browser push notifications are basically your tool to interact with those website visitors who’d rather not share any of their contact information with you. While retargeting ads on social media based on their interaction is a smart approach, giving them an option to opt-in to your notifications in a smaller way is even better.

It is important that we account for the 42% of desktop traffic to our website in our strategies. After all, they could make for almost half the sales of the business!

[This post by Umair Mohammed first appeared on Wigzo’s official blog and has been reproduced with permission.]