How to Maximize the Effectiveness of Your App With Push Notifications

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If you run a business, site, or platform, the existence of an app makes life better. This is true both for you and the customer. Still, many people remain disengaged while being your customers.

That is why there are different techniques to top up engagement. One of them is using push notifications that help users remember the app and not annoy them! Read on to see the advantages of sending smart push notifications and find ways to make them most fruitful.


Why Your App Needs Push Notifications: Make Use of Their Convenience

There’s much to be gained from your app with this type of notification:

  1. Accessing customers directly, without needing them to visit the website or app.
  2. Learning the audience’s preferences and improving the app based on them.
  3. Informing clients about urgent changes and fresh news they wouldn’t otherwise know.
  4. Topping up sales (with messages aimed at have-been-shoppers).

This is, in a nutshell, why they are helpful. However, you won’t be overly intrusive if your clients receive push notifications. People will always have a choice: to open them or not, to be notified with a sound, icon, vibration, or with no signal.

Such notifications are your friends: they act immediately, delicately get users’ attention, and have the potential to increase user retention (if used right).


Principles of Successful Push Notifications

Principles of Successful Push Notifications

Simply having push notifications as a tool for keeping users engaged won’t work. There are certain conditions to justify the use of these notifications. They need to:

  1. Carry value.

The reason for sending a notification must be solid. The value should be either informational or offering something. Ideally, that’s a limited time offer – special price, shipment discounts, or the arrival of new items they’re already interested in. Otherwise, a user will quickly deactivate alerts.

  1. Personalizaion

Addressing users should be made with their first names, but not only this: send them relying on a client’s real activity and repeated behavior (like items they had put in the chart earlier but didn’t buy, goods on the list of Favorites, etc.).

  1. Grasp attention.

Wordplay, GIFs, funny memes, or pictures effectively catch their eye. They top up reaction rate by 20%, studies in 2021 say. Make them informal, which will feel like a friendly conversation rather than a business talk.

  1. Be on time.

If visuals improve reaction by 20%, tailored sending time is a true hero in its background – it increases the reaction rate by 40%.

Let’s be sincere, too: who likes a loud alert at 2 AM? If your business is international, research enough and mind each time zone to avoid sending notifications at the wrong hour.

Keep in mind also stages of client-business interaction and the usage of the right push notification ideas to match them.


I Want to Get Better at Sending App Alerts: What Shall I Do?

Being in e-commerce may urge you to use push notifications for everything. Yet, this strategy is bound to fail. An example is trying to win new users instead of keeping the existing ones excited.

The points discussed above make sense if you want a successful notification style. Now, allow us to expand on them and provide specific techniques for your notifications to hit home (and not feel like an annoying insect).

  • Elevate notifications’ appearance.

When we talked about imagery in alerts, we meant simple and relevant pictures that speak to the point. But why not take it higher and use your brand logo or other visuals that immediately create associations with your product?

Not only images – brand colors as message backgrounds can also activate the same memory. So if your brand isn’t easily recognizable, it’s a great way to build the tie!

  • Use subtitles and message summaries.

They both aim for a shorter text alert. This technique is great for alerts that need to be expanded manually. For iOS, message subtitles can also play a role.

  • Offer clients only what they already need.

No, you’re not trying to promote your goods. The goal is to reflect what users need, e.g., restoring an abandoned cart to save clients time or discounting a wishlist good for them.

  • Showing fresh content.

Again, provide new advice or informative articles on things they’ve researched lately. When the content is relevant, users don’t blacklist you and mark your app or site as a useful resource.

Make these tips your golden rules, respect the user’s right to choose and receive only relevant info, and you will surely be valued.


How to Understand What Types of Push Notifications Resonate With Users Most

How to Understand What Types of Push Notifications Resonate With Users Most

If you’re already employing a variety of notification types, it’s a must to determine which of them has higher productivity. Again, a team of app developers and improvers will be greatly valued at this stage.

For instance, you can check how different wording and formulations influence the clickability rating. Those that create a sense of urgency, like ‘Just 5 hours to get your -20% code!’ tend to work better, as well as more location-specific offers.

To check how your own push notifications are doing, you can use tools such as Count.ly and see all the analytics (according to numerous parameters) to help you increase user engagement.


Final Word

As you can see, even such a simple thing as sending mobile notifications from apps has many nuances. That’s a kind of science, if you like the comparison, that requires you to be meticulous in your study of user preferences, thoughtful in placing words and visuals in messages and caring in choosing the correct timing for this.

If you still ask ‘To send or not to send?’, we unanimously say ‘Yes!’ Push notifications can engage customers. Use expert advice, and seek guidance from your developer team. Your mastery will grow together with business revenues.

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