5 Factors That Prove The Power Of Push Notifications And What Your Users Really Want

Push notifications are a common way for businesses to get their customer’s attention back to their app. It is like a reminder to the user that they have something to look forward to in the app. The tactic has proven itself to be effective in re-engaging inactive users and boosting in-app conversions.

Mobile Users Actually Opt-in For Push Notifications, But The Rate Varies By Industry

The first and foremost statistic is to clear the air about push notifications being too nosey. Smartphone users actually opt in for these notifications in most cases. The catch here being, when they know that the app will have something valuable to offer to them whenever it touches base. There are almost 50% of users who opt into push and find them useful.

Boost App Engagement By 88%

Most mobile apps get downloaded when their acquisition campaigns are ongoing. But with competing apps entering the market every day, it is becoming harder to keep the engagement levels of users, high. Push notifications are proven to boost the app sessions and engagement by serving as a subtle reminder to the users.

Boost App Retention Rates 2X

The higher the engagement rates, the higher are the retention rates as well. In simpler words, as long as a user remains engaged with your business, he is more likely to stay.

Since push notifications nudge him to launch the app, they improve the user retention rates as well.

Personalised Push Notifications Have A Higher Click Through Rate

Push notifications were initially just used to update users of new features or call them back with generalised messages. Today in times of personalisation, push notifications are proven to perform better when they take into account user data like his demographics and in-app behaviour.

Android Users More Receptive

A new report suggests that push notifications are particularly a very powerful marketing and engagement tool – especially for Android users. Android smartphone users have a 100% opt in compared to those on iOS.

But these numbers may vary from business to business, depending on the strategies they are backed by. It is important for marketers to first understand their user’s typical behaviour and identify a notification frequency that he is more likely to convert on, instead of getting irritated.

Types of push notifications that users want

But before you get started with all the strategising, let’s take a look at the 6 types of push notifications that your users actually want.

Highly Functional

There are innumerable calls that I’m required to take in a day. There are times when I remember some and totally forget about the others, and am taken aback when the client calls – totally unprepared! But if I had a push notification sent to me by my calendar 24 hours before, there would never be a chance of goof ups.

Push notifications that are simply functional and serve as a life hack are something that everyone needs. Because let’s face it, we do want things to get simpler for us and not all of us have the privilege of a PA to remind us of every little thing.

Simply Encouraging To Keep Going

An app user could discontinue a session or simply become inactive because he isn’t really moving forward in your app or hasn’t found anything new to keep him encouraged. This increases the chances of a churn.

Push notifications that simply encourage a user to come back to the app because there’s something valuable for him in the end, are great for engagement. For instance, I haven’t used the 7 minutes app for a while now but I love the quick message I get every other day to ‘achieve my goals’ – I do open the app, but am simply a little too lazy to get to the workout part!

Location-specific Messages

Imagine sitting on a lonely beach and getting notified of a sale running on your favourite ecommerce app. Now you know they aren’t going to deliver the products to you at the beach, you’re simply going to get irritated for not being able to avail all the wonderful discounts.

Now if the app personalised its push notifications based on your location, it would show you discounts that you can avail close by. In fact, according to Localytics, 34% of smartphone users prefer push notifications based on their location.

Stimulating Excitement

Do you have a launch lined up or a sale coming up? It is a great idea to build up the excitement with push notifications. Let them know what’s headed their way but give out just as much information that will nudge them to use your app to know more.

Tapping into positive emotions like the excitement and curiosity of users can help you engage them better and even get higher in-app conversions from your campaigns. Like I would be really excited if I knew products I put in my wish list went up on sale!

You could also base these notifications around the last activity of your users, making the messaging all the more contextual.

Simple And Important Alerts

If you have a news app or one that updates industry trends regularly, your users are that segment of the audience that want to stay abreast with it all. Having missed something important, is probably going to affect them in one way or the other.

Simple push notifications that alert the user of important news and updates, are the best! They serve the purpose of adding value to the user, not cluttering their notification centre and getting them back to the app.

For instance, Medium sends me a very simple push notification every time someone I follow, publishes a new post. Straightforward and does the trick!

Encouraging To Continue Abandoned Activity

There are going to be times when an app user leaves without completing a certain action in your app. It could be a game level that he suddenly got distracted from or cart items that he did not complete the checkout on.

Push notifications that let the user pick up from where they left with a quick reminder of what they’ve left behind, are proven to get more click throughs and app sessions. Because it was an activity that the user was interested in, so it becomes easier convincing him to come back.

In Conclusion

All your app users are different and they will certainly interact with your app in different ways. It is important to track their in-app activity to be able to create campaigns that stimulate action. The more data you use to personalise your push notifications, the higher are the chances of the user coming back to your app.

[This post first appeared on the Wigzo official blog and has been reproduced with permission.]