Push Notifications to Maximize Business Engagement

Businesses strive to retain their existing customers because getting them in the first place costs them time, effort, and money.

Besides, it is more effective to engage with your erstwhile clients than new business prospects. Your clients don't always stop using your service because of the work quality; they sometimes stop using your service for other unskippable reasons. It's easier to develop a rapport with your old clients as you already know one another.

One of the effective ways to keep an engagement with your old, gone, or existing clients is to send them helpful or intriguing content (offer them something special from time to time). It would make them come back to you, again and again.

In this rapidly moving and busy world, people have very little time remembering your business or checking out your latest content themselves. And thus, they need a little nudge or pop up to check out what latest you have for them.

And that little push is your Push Notification.

Introduced in the year 2009, Apple launched Apple Push Notification (APN) that brought out Blackberry's email notifications into a new space and has since become a revolutionary tool used by digital marketers worldwide to send engaging updates to the customers.

WHAT IS A PUSH NOTIFICATION?

Push Notifications are short messages or alerts that pop up on your mobile or desktop, conveying offers or messages of different businesses.

These notifications only reach you when you have those companies' apps installed or have opted-in to receive them.

WHY SHOULD YOU USE PUSH NOTIFICATIONS?

1. Push Notification has a better click-through rate than emails because they do not get filtered in the spam or remain unopened in your inbox.
2. The conversion rates from push notifications are also high because they directly appear on the user's mobile or desktop screen, grabbing their attention.
3. They give you a choice of whether you want to receive notifications from a particular brand or an app. When users choose to allow giving permission, they are interested in it to target them better.
4. These notifications help you capture good-quality leads who take an interest in your brand.
5. Because you send them updates about what is new and prompt them to take action, there are high chances of them visiting your website, and thus, leading to an increase in return traffic.
6. Unlike your promotional ads or newsletters, writing copies and designing content for your push notification content is relatively easier to save time.
7. To connect to your users at the right time or receive instant responses, push notifications work best.           

Sports scores, weather or traffic updates, brand promotional messages, offers, etc., are information sent through push notifications to drive actions. These notifications are beneficial in increasing engagement and traffic to your website or app.

WHEN TO USE PUSH NOTIFICATIONS-

To get visitors back on your website:

If the traffic on your website has started declining, it is a sign that you need to work on a strategy to get it back on track. You can initiate it by targeting your existing customers by sending them a push notification.

Offer something exciting, be it an offer or update, so that they visit your website.

When monetizing your website:

If you have a website whose revenue depends on the ad views and the number of page visits, then push notifications are a great way to keep a steady flow of traffic coming in. At the same time, you can reap the benefits from the monetization of your website's traffic.

Nudging users to take action:

You can use push notifications to prompt your client to take action.

A call-to-action about a special sale going on, reminding your customers to make through the purchase of items sitting in their cart, or even a simple message to check out the new addition or update made to the website or the app. Through push notifications, you can nudge your users to do something.

With push notifications, it is easy to customize and use it as per your requirement and needs. It can be used to suit various purposes.

HOW SHOULD A GOOD PUSH NOTIFICATION STRATEGY BE-

1. Your push notification content should have compelling content. The message should be crisp and clear, like a catch one-liner with a CTA. The message should be easily understood with just a glance and must target your audience. If need be, create a sense of urgency to make people take action faster.
2. Use visual elements in your notifications like logos, interesting images, and emojis to increase your brand awareness and make your messages appear warmer.
3. Target users who have already subscribed for your email updates and newsletter by directing them to a push notification opt-in page.
4. Similarly, you can even provide a link to your push notification opt-in page on your social media pages through which people can sign-up for receiving notifications.
5. Try different push notification types through testing various methods and content to see which one is more effective in getting the CTRs (Click-Through Rates). CTR: The number of clicks that any advertisement receives divided by the number of times the ad is displayed or shown (impressions). Let's presume, if your ad got 10 clicks and 100 impressions, the CTR would be 10%. Send push notifications with the right message and at the right time. It should depict the right emotion and must be according to the nature of your content.
6. Do not send very generalized messages through push notifications. Make your messages and notifications more personalized which will give your users an extra push.
7. Give your users a choice to opt-in and opt-out for the push notifications and keep it permission-based. Choose what kind of opt-in message will appear properly.
8. And lastly, automate your push notifications to schedule them on time. Do not overdo by sending too many notifications, which may lead to people wanting out or muting your notifications.

Now you should be having an idea about why push notifications are essential to increase your engagement with users and how you can make it work for you.

But before you get started with your push notification strategy, make sure you know how to choose the best providers.

Here are a few things that you need to keep in mind:

1. Performance: Your provider should be able to deliver good results in regards to performance and boost your push subscription rate.
2. Ease of implementation: Look for the ones that can get your job done and are easy to implement and manage. Do not let the other plethora of options confuse you.
3. Analytics: You should track your deliveries and get reports of the impressions, click-through rates, and other relevant data to track the performance results.
4. Adaptability and assistance: The providers you choose should assist you regarding any options well and must be adaptable enough to integrate any additional services.
5. Automation and customization: The provider you choose should give you the option to automate and customize your messages and notifications without having to approach them for support always. It should be robust enough to let you target subsets of users.

So go ahead and make the best use of push notifications to not only increase your traffic but increase your user engagement too.

If you still have any doubts, MyTasker's team of skilled developers will help you with any of your queries and will be glad to assist with setting up push notifications for you.