85% of smartphone users declare that they would rather gave up drinking water than uninstalled their precious apps. Big news for marketers, provided they realize than not all apps evoke such heroic mood. What differentiates apps worth dying for from others? The answer is simple. Engagement.
How push works?
Push notifications help solve the biggest issue mobile marketers struggle with – engagement (read stats about user abandoning apps easily). Customers are eager to download new apps on their devices, but they simply forget about them later. With push notifications, probability of user dropping out decreases from 21% to 11%, and his engagement increases even by 540%, not to mention sales benefits.
Ready to focus on them for a little bit?
Types of push notifications: batch and triggered
- Batch: sent to the whole database of users or to its segment,
- Triggered 1-to–1: sent to individual user in reaction to his action, e.g. agreeing to receive push, in-app purchase or appearing near the brick and mortar store. Just like transactional emails, they are a response to user’s act.
Combine the two. Mixing good segmentation with triggered notifications will create an impression that messages are tailored to users’ needs.
But how to segment users in mobile apps? There are 3 basic ways.
Segmentation by engagement
Obviously, engaged users need different communication that sporadic ones – the latter will easily get irritated by too much messages while the former present a great sales potential, so it would be a shame not to unlock it to the fullest. And here comes segmentation by engagement, so you can slowly build a relationship with inactive users, testing carefully each message, and send more to ones who love your app and use it frequently.
Segmentation by time of installation
Beginners require different attitude than advanced users: you must firstly show all the benefits of the app and introduce them – start with thank you notification. At the same time advanced users simply don’t need such messages and you can send them pro tips and offers.
Segmentation by interests
Learn what other apps user has installed on his device and see which app modules he uses more often. That way you can address one message to customers who have also sport and healthy lifestyle apps installed and other to ones that prefer budget and finance apps. Such practice will make you offers more relevant, increase conversion and build recipients’ trust as they will see that you care enough to deliver content that matters for them personally.
Context
We should deliver relevant informations and offers, but the concept of “relevancy” or “value” isn’t universal: offers valuable for everybody all the time don’t exist. “Steaks 80% off” won’t captivate vegetarians, people on diet or somebody who loves your steaks, but happens to be on vacation far away from your restaurant.
That’s why context is everything, including history of users behavior and their interests, as well as real time and place when he happens to be right now. It starts with basic solutions, as concerning the time of the device and not sending push notifications in the night.
Geomarketing
Knowledge about user’s localization is a base of your mobile strategy, especially if you have a brick and mortar store (or salon, or any other venue). Because 94% of smartphone owners use device to search for information concerning their current localization (e.g. they look for coffee shop or cobbler in the nearby), and 90% of them act on the advice found there, geomarketing is huge.
But it also requires trust, which marketer must earn in order to make user share data. Be wise – don’t sell your customer’s confidence for “just one more push”. Geolocalization serves providing more relevant offers and collecting data (to send more relevant offers). nothing else.
Length
Just like Twitter, push notification make us poets, who must squeeze the meaning into small amount of characters. For push it’s no more than 200. Actually that concision is what users love – instead of long emails they get precise information that they can act on right now.
Custom sound
Make your app sound special and build unusual associations. Choose your custom notification sound that reflects your brand aura.
Subtle logic of push
Push notification, very direct by definition, won’t work if you are pushy. Use analytics to see which messages perform good, and which aren’t liked. Otherwise push strategy won’t be efficient anymore, as users will turn notifications off or even uninstall an app.
It’s about building relationship slowly and gradually, with great care for relevance of your messages to the context.
Your turn
What are your experiences with push notification?
Are they part of your strategy?
What tool do you use to send them?
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