Push Notifications

Recently, Google listed Push Notifications as an important marketing trend that cannot be ignored by marketers anymore. In the age of GDPR where customers do not appreciate being intruded with unwanted messages or emails, push notifications works as a perfect alternative as it works on the principle of permission-based marketing. As more and more brands adopt push notifications, we have put together a 15-chapter step-by-step guide that will help you create winning campaigns and drive sales. Also, check out:

• Best practices to optimize push notification campaigns after analyzing 45 BILLION notifications from across 35 countries.
• Use cases from different industries that can serve as an inspiration for your campaigns.

What are Push Notifications?

There are various definitions for push notifications that get thrown around; some call them actionable messages, others refer to them as rich messages, and some others use the term personalized messages. But which of these is the right description? All of them.  Here’s how we can break it down:

• Sent by an app or website to the user’s phone or desktop.
• Used to send alerts and messages to the user in real-time.
• Can contain rich media content such as images, GIFs or videos.
• Content within the notification can be personalized to drive the desired action from the user.

Push notifications are short messages that pop up on the user’s mobile or desktop, nudging them to take some action. Your customers are busy individuals who are likely to forget about the great offers you had announced a few days ago via e-mail or about the cart they have abandoned after adding a lot of items to it.

If you want them to stay updated with the latest offers that you are offering or remind them of the impending items in their cart, push notifications can be a perfect way to communicate. With email open rates declining at a rapid pace, notifications can be a great way for businesses to engage with users and reduce churn. The benefit of push notification is you can time the message and even customize it depending upon the situation. For example, a customer who had abandoned the cart will receive a reminder notification, while a customer who has not used the app for shopping for a long time can receive offers that are relevant to them.

Push notification is also a powerful marketing tool. According to Invespcro, push notifications can boost app engagement by 88% and has led to 48% of mobile users making an in-store purchase. However, a push notification can get intrusive if not done the right way. Read ahead to know how to use them judiciously and the best practices to follow to make the most of it.

How do Push Notifications Work?

Now that you know how powerful push notifications can be to your marketing campaign, let’s dig deeper to know how it works. We have taken the example of MoEngage’s way of push notification delivery to help you understand the working better. When a marketer creates and executes a campaign using MoEngage’s platform, MoEngage identifies the users who fulfill the segmentation criteria set by the marketers and has at least one active device linked to an active push token (a unique identifier set by cloud messaging platforms such as APNS and FCM that helps marketers to communicate with the end-users of the app).

Once MoEngage identifies the eligible users with the help of frequency capping, it determines the active devices that will receive the message. The cloud messaging platforms such as GCM, FCM, and APNS receives the message and takes over the delivery process. The cloud messaging platform then relays the message to the end user’s device. Once the user receives the notification, MoEngage’s Software Developer’s Kit (SDK) informs the server about it. This is called an Impression.

Types of Push Notifications?

There are two types of push notifications – web push notification and mobile push notification. Web push notifications are sent from a website. You get them on your desktop or a mobile device even when the website is not open. Web push notification is compatible with Safari and Chrome and is ideal for companies that have not created an app yet. Mobile push notification is sent from mobile apps. The user needs to install the mobile app for the marketer to be able to send notifications.

What are Push Notifications used for?

Push notifications can be used for various purposes such as:

• Engaging with your customers: An average mobile user uses at least nine apps per day. Most apps are not as frequently opened as maybe a cab-hailing or an OTT app. To ensure that your customer does not forget about your app or uninstalls it, you need to keep them engaged. That’s where notifications come to play. With personalized offers, reminders, and relevant notifications, you can capture your customer’s attention and engage them on your platform.
• Leading the customer to make an in-store purchase: Push notifications can help you to bridge the gap between online and offline channels and create a seamless omnichannel experience for your customers. According to Google, 82% of smartphone users use their mobile device to make an in-store purchase. You can leverage this opportunity to send personalized push notifications to drive your in-store sales.
• Retaining customers: Retaining customers is a bigger challenge than acquiring ones. Push notifications, however, can fix that problem. It also helps in retaining new customers. Reports suggest that sending an onboarding notification to a newly acquired customer within the first week can lead to a 71% increase in app retention rates.
• Provide real-time updates: Whether it is to inform the user about the weather conditions or enable the user to track a package, you can send real-time updates to your user using notifications.

Difference between web push notifications and app push notifications

The difference between web push notifications and app push notifications is outreach. Web push notifications have a wider reach than mobile app notifications. You don’t require a mobile application to send notifications to the user. You can send them notifications on computers, laptops, and mobile browsers. For mobile push notification, the user has to install the app to receive messages.

Push notification opt-in process

Push notification opt-in is a process that enables customers to manage their push messages by allowing or stopping the mobile apps from sending them. A mobile application needs to make an opt-in request during installation to ensure that the user has permitted them to send push messages.

Considering that push notifications are permission-based, the opt-in process typically involves a strategy wherein you either hard-ask or soft-ask for opt-ins. Hard-ask is when you directly ask the user a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, i.e., whether they want to allow or block the notifications. The user chooses their desired option, and the process gets closed.

Hard-ask is straightforward and has the highest number of opt-in rates. However, they work better with HTTPS sites. Soft-ask, on the other hand, involves providing additional information about what value or benefit the user will receive on answering affirmatively. It comes before the hard-ask. There are chances that the user may drop-off if there are too many steps involved. So, keep the soft ask visually presentable and ensure that you ask at the right moment. No matter what approach you choose, ensure that your opt-in message is relevant and personalized. This could double the opt-in rates.

Technical requirements for implementing web push notifications

Web push notifications are ideal for audiences who do not want to subscribe to email but at the same time would like to receive the latest updates from your websites. To ensure maximum opt-ins and engagement, you need to make your web push notifications a winning channel. Here are the technical requirements that you need to fulfill when you send push notifications.

• FCM details: MoEngage uses FCM Project Number and corresponding API Server Key to send a push notification. To get those, use MoEngage’s Shared FCM credentials, and select Custom to enter the details of your projects.
• Push icon: Upload your logo to show your brand’s icon in push notifications.
• HTTP or HTTPS integration: While web pushes are supported only for the HTTPS domain, MoEngage enables marketers to allow subscription for HTTP sites too. MoEngage creates an HTTPS sub-domain. Once that is done, you can select the HTTP domain type while setting up the push and initialize the SDK on your page with MoEngage’s App ID. If your website is an HTTPS, select HTTPS as domain type while setting up Web Push. You need to host two files in the root directory of your web server – manifest.json and serviceworker.js. Click on Save and download these two files. Use your existing manifest and serviceworker files to support the push notifications, add a link to manifest in HTML, and integrate the SDK on your page.

Browsers and devices that support push notifications

Currently, MoEngage’s web push notification works on Chrome (version 42+ on macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android), Firefox (version 44+ on macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android), and Opera (version 37+ on macOS, Windows, Linux, and Android). Web push notifications work on all computers and laptops irrespective of the OS type.

Types of push messages, brands send in their campaigns

Push notifications can be customized based on what stage of the customer lifecycle the user belongs to and your campaign’s objectives. Here are a few types of push messages that you can send to your customers:

• Transactional: Transactional push messages are sent to users when you want to inform them of the status of their transaction. For example, when you make a bill payment using a payment app, you would receive a transactional notification informing you that the payment has been made.
• Educational: You can use educational push messages to send information such as new course additions or reminders to take an exam.
• Promotional: You can use promotional notifications to inform users about new deals, exclusive offers, and flash sales. The objective is to prompt the user to purchase in your app.
• Lifecycle: Personalization is the secret sauce to keep your customers engaged at every stage of the customer lifecycle. You can send your customers personalized push messages depending upon the stage of their lifecycle. For example, you can send a warm onboarding notification to a newly acquired customer to prompt them to open the app, while you can send special promotional offers to re-engage with customers who have not purchased from your app for a long time.
• Rating or customer feedback: Want your customers to review your product or service on the app store? You can send push notifications requesting them to leave feedback and a rating on your app.

Push notification click-through rates

The push click-through rates can go up to 45%, reveals a study conducted by MoEngage on the push notification campaigns across 35+ countries. As compared to other channels such as emails and SMSes, the push notification click-through rates are 7x more than emails, while the opening rate is 50% more.

Push notifications work better than other channels is because it pops up on the screen of the user, unlike emails that remain unopened for a long time. Concise messaging also makes it a more effective communication medium, and the fact that the user opts-in for notifications makes it a more reliable channel as compared to the others.

Examples of push messages

Let’s look at a few examples of how brands used push notifications to boost their sales.

• Sivvi: Sivvi is a Dubai-based online retailer that sells trendy clothing, footwear, and accessories to men and women. Sivvi faced a common problem that most e-commerce companies face, customers abandoned their shopping cart after adding items to it. This resulted in low conversions. Sivvi used MoEngage’s notifications to bring back visitors to the website, which resulted in converting up to 10% of abandoned users. Read how Sivvi increased their ROI by 70%.
• PetFlow: PetFlow is a retail brand that offered specialized pet food, toys, treats, and other pet accessories. PetFlow solely relied on email marketing to boost conversions. When they found a decline in engagement, PetFlow used web push notifications to send personalized messages to customers and to drive traffic to their stores. It led to a 7% increase in the engagement rate. Check out how PetFlow improved their engagement rate with notifications.
• SportsCafe: SportsCafe is a one-stop-platform for Indian sports fans that offers them live-scores, match reports, etc. SportsCafe used social media and Google AdWords to drive traffic to their website. However, 90% of them were anonymous visitors. The team wanted to increase the traffic and create a pool of engaged visitors. They used MoEngage’s web push notifications to deliver breaking sports news and analytical write-ups to users on desktop and mobile phones. This resulted in a 32% increase in average page views on the website and a 120% increase in time spent on the website. Read how SportsCafe increased their average page views with push notifications.

Difference between push and text messages

Text messages or SMSes might seem like an old approach to reach out to customers. However, it can be an effective medium to reach out to customers, especially those who do not have a smartphone to install the app. In fact, you can also automate SMS campaigns using automation tools.

The drawback is that you cannot add rich media content such as GIFs, animations, and emojis to make the text visually appealing. Push notification lets you do that. There are also legal limitations such as certain countries have a cap on the number of text messages that you can send per day. Push notifications have no such limits.

Another major difference is, it’s easy to opt-out of push messages than messages. While this might seem like good news to marketers, the truth is, your customers may find your text messages intrusive and spam and may even choose to not engage with you anymore. This can have a major impact on customer loyalty.