Push Notification Strategies

Dec 31, 2023

In today’s attention economy, standing out from the crowd and getting your business in front of customers is not an easy feat. The reality is, that most channels are crowded and competitive, so it’s important to take advantage of every open space you can find. This is where push notifications come in!

Push notifications are powerful tools that connect your brand with your target audience and increase the overall customer lifetime value. If you create a strategy that includes different types of push notifications including things like special announcements and offers that tie into where a person is in the customer journey, you’ll be able to further extend the lifecycle of your customer base.

Push notifications keep people up to date on your products and services, get them involved in your community, and reward customer loyalty. Research has shown that a well-written and well-timed push notification can increase the click-through rate by up to 700%!

This special report will take you step-by-step through the process of creating a winning push notification campaign, and how to tie everything together into a cohesive and effective marketing strategy.

Push Notifications 101

There’s a high chance that you’ve been on the receiving end of a push notification marketing strategy. You might have received a message reminding you to complete your purchase or received a special time-sensitive discount code to win you back.

To break it down, a push notification is essentially a message that appears on a user’s screen, capturing their attention and guiding them through the next step in their customer journey. Whether it’s with a simple announcement, a special offer or a loyalty reward, a well-timed push notification can take your business to the next level.

Push notifications can be sent either by an app or website at any time, and with full permission, they’ll pop up on a user’s screen regardless of what they’re currently doing or what website they’re on.

After they pop up and disappear, push notifications can be found in a user’s notification centre in chronological order based on the time they were received.
With mobile app push notifications, because they show up regardless of whether a user has used the app or not, they have much greater visibility than other channels, such as email or social media.

In addition, push notifications are a great way to keep users engaged for a longer period! Because push notifications work on a platform’s operating system (i.e. Apple iOS, Google, Chrome, etc.) they are sent directly to the user instead of a crowded inbox.

These messages don’t get caught in spam filters, deleted without being viewed or lost in a social media feed. Recently, mobile operating systems have been moving towards giving users more control over their notifications. Most users are highly educated on what giving permissions for notifications entails.

Provided a user does grant permission to receive notifications, they can also decide which notifications they see immediately, which ones get sent to a summary, and which ones are silenced.

Regardless, users who have downloaded your app have already expressed a significant level of interest in your brand. This means that chances are, there are very few steps left in their customer journey before they make a purchase!

Thus, push notifications can help you get the right message in front of high-quality leads at the right time.

Successful Push Notifications

As you can see, push notifications are an incredibly powerful way to connect with your customers. Nevertheless, there is still competition for their attention, so you do have to think about what types of push notifications will resonate with your customers.

Think about your push notifications as you would any other marketing strategy. This means putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and finding a way to catch their attention by focusing on what they care about most.

For example, you could use your push notifications to remind them of a time-limited sale. Or you could use push notifications to provide some kind of added value well and beyond your core value proposition.

To help you start, here are some best practices for how to create a successful push notification message:

Keep it Short & Simple:

Push notifications are meant to be short messages. Every character has to count. Try to avoid confusing jargon and long, or complicated words. The easier your copy is to understand, the more effective it will be.

Keep it Lighthearted:

Most customers are happy to receive added value through marketing material but they don’t like to feel they’re being marketed to. Lighthearted and easy-going copy is more likely to perform better because your customers will feel like you’re talking to them as a person, not as a prospect.

Additionally, a lighthearted copy is more inviting than a pushy, stiff copy. It will also help your brand appear approachable and demonstrate your commitment to providing value to every customer.

In addition, emojis are a great tool for communicating more abstract feelings like tone, and voice, with fewer characters so consider using them if they fit the theme of your message. Just don’t overdo it!

Use Storytelling and Persuasive Language:

Storytelling is another great tool for communicating your brand message in a way that resonates with your customer base and helps you better connect with your core audience. A great story can move people to take action in ways that no other strategy can match.

Your notification should feel like a mini cliffhanger so that your customers can’t wait to find out what happens next. You can also use powerful words in your messaging to add excitement and provoke curiosity.

Here are examples of powerful words and phrases to hook your users when using storytelling in your push notification strategy:

Invoke Curiosity
Promise Efficiency
Invoke Greed
Be the first…
Cheat sheet
Before
Eye-opening
Downloadable
Bonus
Invitation only…
Effortless
Don’t miss out…
Private
Kickstart
Now
Unheard of…
Tools
While they last…

Take Advantage of Rich Notifications:

Rich notifications are push notifications that support media like photos, videos, and audio. If you can use rich notifications, they’re an effective way to capture attention. Many studies have revealed that rich notifications with larger-scale photos generate up to a 56% higher open rate than standard push notifications.

Similarly, it’s best to take advantage of other features offered by the operating systems you work on if you feel they’ll work for your audience.

Action buttons on push notifications provide greater convenience for users, especially if they’re deep-linked to the relevant section of the app.

For example, you could send users a notification that a product they added to their wish list is temporarily on sale and prompt them to purchase with a direct-call-to-action button that specifically directs them to: “Buy Now”.

Creating your Push Notification Strategy

Push notifications are a relatively flexible medium, so you have a lot of room to explore. Besides the text, buttons, and media, you can also control things like the send time, trigger, and location.

In this section, we’ve put together the ultimate list of push notification strategies, and how you can adapt them to your business!

1: Obtaining Permission

Welcome Messages:

When users open a mobile app for the first time, they must get the onboarding right. Onboarding refers to the steps a user has to take before they start using an app.

This usually includes a tutorial on how to use or navigate the app, collecting information, and most importantly - getting consent and permission from prospects.

An effective welcome message on a mobile app can help you communicate the value you’re offering. This also helps you convert new customers faster.

For websites, welcome messages are often used in combination with discounts or special offers for first-time customers during the onboarding process. This can foster greater engagement since you’re offering added value from the very start!

Customize the Mobile Opt-in:

Mobile operating systems tend to have more rules about how apps can use push notifications. For example, Apple makes it quite easy for users to reject push notifications or restrict them to some degree.

One way to convince users that your push notifications are worth receiving is customizing the opt-in. Depending on the operating system, you might have to go about this in different ways, but the principle is the same.

State why you’re asking for permission to send push notifications and explain why this will benefit users. Always focus on highlighting the advantages they’ll get from receiving your notifications.

If you can’t get this point across, around 50% of your users will probably turn off push notifications. So, take your time when writing this copy!

Offer the Opt-in After Purchase:

Another way to convince more people to opt-in to push notifications is to offer it at a high point in the customer journey.

This means that you should ask for permission to send push notifications when your customer is very happy with your business. They’re already familiar with your brand and have engaged with your content. They may have already purchased from you, or perhaps they’ve simply joined your newsletter.

This tends to work particularly well with e-commerce, as it’s easy to work the opt-in into the checkout process.

Offer the Opt-in Alongside Freebies:

Besides offering the opt-in after a purchase, you can also ask for permission when someone claims a freebie or discount code from you. Add a checkbox that indicates a user agrees to receive push notifications during the process of claiming a discount or free offer to maximize conversions.

Alternatively, you could even require the opt-in to claim the freebie. You’d be quite surprised at the lengths people are willing to go for free things, even if they don’t need them!

Discount codes always work best so consider the ways you could include them regularly in your push notification strategy.

2: Personalization

Timing:

Your customer base is likely in many different time zones. When it comes to push notifications, it’s typically best practice to time push notifications to a user’s time zone, not yours.

There’s no golden hour for when to send push notifications since people will respond at different times, no matter their location. However, as a general rule of thumb, important messages that require attention for compliance reasons should be sent in the morning and early in the week.

Recreational push notifications generally perform well outside of work hours and later in the week. So, a push notification about a flash sale, for example, would probably do quite well on a Friday evening.

Nevertheless, the most accurate way to send your push notifications at the right time is to personalize the send-time. This means that every individual user will receive the push notification at the time that they’re most likely to respond.

For example, User A receives the notification on a Friday at 7:30 PM because they’re scrolling through the app after work for some retail therapy. User B, on the other hand, receives the notification at 1:00 PM the next day because their purchase history indicates that they usually make purchases during the afternoon.

Tailored and Actionable Content:

You’re probably already aware that customers like to feel special, and not like a sales goal that has to be met.

The same applies to your push notification marketing. The technology needed to automatically personalize push notifications is available and accessible, and now is the best time to take advantage of it!

You can take this further by including a strong call to action and deep linking the notification to the relevant section of the app. By clicking on this notification, users will be taken directly to whatever’s been personalized for them, thereby increasing the chances of a purchase.

Here are some ideas for personalized push notifications and how to make them actionable:

Deals and Promotions:

Discounts and promotions are always a great way to re-engage existing customers, especially when you know that they love your products.

To personalize this, adjust the copy of your push notification to highlight the specific products each user tends to purchase the most. You can also make this actionable by adding a deep-linked button that says “Buy Now”.

Abandoned Carts:

Research has shown that almost 70% of carts are abandoned. Push notifications geared towards abandoned carts can recover roughly 30% of those carts and will make a significant difference to your bottom line!

You can set your notification to send a few hours after a user abandons a cart, with a button that takes them to the cart that they had abandoned.

If you find that this still isn’t that effective, you can even offer a discount for a limited time to incentivize the purchase.

Back in Stock:

If you have a product that’s high in demand and tends to sell out quickly, this could be a great opportunity for you to obtain consent to send push notifications.

When a product goes out of stock, add the “Notify Me” button to the product page, so that users get a notification as soon as it’s back in stock.

New Products:

Newness and novelty are strong selling points. You can hype up a new product release, and create a sense of urgency by sending a push notification with words like “just out”, “brand new”, and “limited”.

Personal Goals:

Personal development is a growing trend that’s showing no signs of slowing. If you can connect your business’ products to your customer’s personal goals, you can create a powerful relationship with your customer.

Overall, if your product helps users fulfil their goals, they’re likely to appreciate the extra support, even if it’s costly.

Send Nudges:

Nudges push people towards making a decision. Push notifications are a good medium for nudges because they’re eye-catching, timely, and short.

You can use them to bring back inactive users, upsell a product, or demonstrate positive reviews as social proof.

If you want to read more about nudges and how to use them, we recommend this resource from Museum Membership Innovation:

https://www.membershipinnovation.com/insights-and-ideas/an-overview-of-the-various-types-of-nudges

Geolocation:

Using location-based triggers can be quite effective as they’re highly targeted. A fair number of popular apps like YouTube and Starbucks use location to personalize offers, so there’s no reason this can’t work for your push notifications too!

You could use geolocation to encourage in-store visits or offer city-based promotions. Just keep in mind that you need to obtain a user’s consent to track their location.

3: Segmentation

A less resource-intensive option to personalization is segmentation, which means categorizing your customers into different groups based on certain characteristics.

These characteristics will then help you decide how you should communicate and market to customers in that segment.

Here are two ways you can segment your customers to improve your targeting:

Demographics:

Demographic segmentation divides your customer base into groups based on factors such as age, gender, and income. This method of segmentation is commonly used because this kind of data is generally easy to obtain.

With demographic segmentation, you segment customers based on the assumption that they should be sufficiently similar since they’re the same age, same gender, or in the same tax bracket.

There are several ways to use demographics, but here are the most common:

Age
Generation
Gender
Income
Occupation
Ethnicity
Religion
Family structure

You can then tailor your push notifications based on each of your segments. So, for a segment of college students, you could use your push notifications to advertise a big sale.

For a segment of busy parents who haven’t had time to complete their purchase, you could use push notifications to remind them of their abandoned cart. And for a segment of high-earners, you could recommend your pricier products.

Psychographics:

One drawback of demographic segmentation is that it works on very broad assumptions. For example, a segment of young people will usually receive marketing copy with the latest pop culture slang. But knowing these individuals could reveal that they aren’t even on social media, and don’t know what the jargon means.

These nuances are practically impossible to catch with just demographic segmentation, which is why more and more businesses are turning to psychographic segmentation.

Rather than targeting people of a certain demographic that stereotypically behaves a certain way, you identify the people who have proven to behave in that way and then group them into a segment.

To start with psychographic segmentation, you want to ask your consumers qualitative questions about themselves like their interests, values, and beliefs. It might seem far off from your business, but these things influence the things they see, do, and eventually purchase.

You would then use a user’s data from your website or app (products viewed, products added to wish list, purchase history, etc.) to help you determine what psychographic segment they belong in.

An example would be a segment of environmentally conscious customers and a segment of price-oriented customers. Knowing this, you’ll be able to appeal to the values they’ve already demonstrated.

So, you could offer your environmentally conscious segment plastic-free delivery. And you could bring your price-conscious customers back to their abandoned carts with a limited-time discount.

4: Information

Push notifications are also used for urgent matters like updating a customer about their order. For these messages, it’s a good idea to double up on channels to make sure that your customer sees them (email and SMS are good choices!).

But besides updates, you can also use information-based push notifications to achieve other means.

Confirm Personal Information:

High-quality data refers to data that comes directly from your customers. While your customer relationship management database may already have some data on your customer, it’s best practice to confirm it by verifying.

You can use a combination of push notifications and email to indicate urgency and formality. Also, by obtaining a customer’s delivery address or IP, you have a good idea of where they live, which could help you segment them by location.

Ask for Feedback:

Asking for feedback is a great way to build a two-way relationship between yourself and your customers. Again, push notifications are a good way to do this because they’re highly visible and tend to have higher open rates than other channels like email.

You could incorporate action buttons into the push notification, send them to a feedback form, or ask them to provide an app rating for the operating system’s app store.

Be explicit in the copy that you’re asking for feedback, and state how long it should take. Anything below five minutes is ideal.

Send Important Information:

As we mentioned before, push notifications are good channels to send information quickly (practically in real-time!).

Besides delivery updates, here are other things you can send using push notifications:

Sales dates
Order confirmations
Payment received
Delivery updates
Order dispatch updates
Error messages

5: Testing and Optimization

Lastly, it’s important to remember that push notifications work like any other marketing strategy. They’re not something that you can set and forget!

Once your push notifications go live, you should be testing and fine-tuning to maximize your ROI. Depending on the composition of your push notifications, you could measure different things.

Here is a list of variables that you can track the performance of:

Copy
Tone
Voice
Length
Emoji’s
Rich media creatives
Images
Videos
Sound
Send-time

You could also track the performance of an overall tactic.

For example, you might find that your recover abandoned carts notification converts much better than your back-in-stock notification - so you should probably redirect resources away from the latter.

A/B Testing:

A/B testing is an experiment where two versions of one variable are shown to different users at the same time. In comparison to simply measuring performance, A/B testing eliminates the guesswork and helps you be more precise with your testing.

This will help you be more efficient with your budget and overall improve your ROI.
For example, you could test a push notification with the same copy and send-time, but using a different image. The notification which performed better (e.g. had more opens, generated more leads, etc.) would indicate which image resonates best with your customers.

If you need some more help with A/B testing, we recommend this resource from VWO: https://vwo.com/ab-testing/#locale_lang

Final Words

Here’s a summary of the most important points that we’ve covered so far:

Push notifications specifically focus on engaging and retaining your current users, which is an important key to long-term success. Push notifications are messages that pop up on a user’s screen, regardless of what they’re doing at the time of receiving.

They are usually clickable and can contain media like photos, videos, and audio. They can also contain buttons, deep links, and variable fields. Push notifications are highly visible in comparison to traditional channels like email and social media.

Thus, they generally have higher open rates, better engagement, and a more significant knock-on effect on your bottom line.

A good push notification is concise, light-hearted, and actionable. The content of the notification itself can be personalized. And users can even be segmented to improve the accuracy of your targeting.

Like any other marketing channel, the performance of push notifications should be measured and optimized. A great way to do this is A/B testing one variable at a time.

Lastly, we’d like to reiterate the importance of putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think about how you can improve your customer’s experience using push notifications and get started!