They are annoying but work — PUSH notifications

What are push notifications and for what purposes they can be used

Push notifications are short, pop-up notifications that appear on the displays of your smartphones, laptops, tablets and regular PCs. When used correctly, they become an effective marketing tool.

The main goals of any push notifications:

• informing (for example, the opening a new outlet);

• sales - new items, promotions, sales;

• reminders (for example, "Your discount coupon is valid for another 24 hours");

• trigger notifications - messages sent automatically as a response to a specific user action;

• congratulations;

• events (for example, "You have become our 10,000 customer .…").

Before starting push notifications, you need to make sure that your mobile or browser notifications comply with the basic rules, namely:

• messages must be up-to-date and relevant;

• the ability to quickly and easily unsubscribe from receiving notifications;

• scheduling the number of pushes - after the 6th message per day, users stop clicking and viewing them (statistics data).

Pay attention to the last point: nowadays many marketers use this tool, so sending 2-3 push notifications per week will be enough.

Types of push notifications

Globally, they can be broken down into mobile and browser (web notifications).

• Mobile - notifications that you see on your smartphones from installed applications. Mobile push are also different from eachother.

On iOS:

1. Audio - notification by sound signal;

2. Badges - a number is shown on the application icons indicating the number of notifications;

3. Audio / Banners - an alert appears on the iPhone display and is accompanied by a sound signal.

• Web push (browser) - messages that appear on your PC or Android mobile device with Google Chrome installed.

Based on purpose, these can be divided into:

• transactional - the user sees a push in response to certain actions (for example, when adding an item to the cart);

• event - displaying the notification associated with a specific event (for example, "Check-in via a social network and get a gift ....")

• marketing - the display of notifications is set in the settings (for example, if an Internet user spends three minutes on your site).

Why are push notifications so exciting for businesses and marketers?

First of all, push notifications are an affordable way to create and collect a subscriber base. Compared to email marketing, it has a number of advantages:

• Easy subscription. One click and you are signed.

• High conversion rate. Statistics show 40-50% of transitions to the site with optimal notification settings;

• Simple connection. You can set up sending push notifications to your site in 15-20 minutes by adding just a couple of lines of code.

• Convenient application. Automatic configuration (automation) is possible through various services (for example, gravitec).

Push notifications are of great interest to businesses and internet marketers due to their various uses. There are 4 main areas of use of this tool:

• 41% of push messages are used to notify about the appearance of new mobile applications or the release of their next versions.

• 24% are sent as special offers or links to landing pages.

• 14% of messages are about new content.

• 12% are used to send referral or advertising links.

Which sites will benefit from push notifications?

• Online shops. Sending notifications about promotions, discounts, new products, working with an abandoned cart - all this can bring serious results in the form of an increase in sales, the number of repeat purchases, an average check, etc.

• News portals. On such sites, the content is constantly updated with useful, interesting and relevant articles. The question immediately arises: who will read them? Customize your notifications with an attention-grabbing headline and you'll get more readers.

• Landing pages. Successful one-page websites with webinars, trainings or training courses are no longer complete without push notifications. Many users forget about these kinds of events, and timely reminder alerts will keep your plans from falling through.

How do push notifications work?

The principle of implementing push notifications is quite simple and includes three stages:

1. Collection and formation of a subscriber base. Subscription does not require any personal information, so you can easily grow your base. But it should be understood that the subscription is voluntary and there is no need to impose your products and services on users, otherwise you risk losing some of your subscribers.

2. Planning. There are a number of factors to consider in order to choose the optimal push strategy:

• The relevance of notifications (it makes no sense to send 8th March congratulations on the 9th);

• Duration and time of sending - aspects that depend on the specifics of the business area (for example, it is better to send alerts about sales on weekends);

• The timing of the alerts - we have no control over when the alert will be shown to the user, be it a PC or smartphone. We can only schedule in the service the time for sending and demonstrating notifications, for example, on Monday at 9.00. But if an Internet user connected to Wi-Fi only at 18.30 or turned on the computer on Tuesday evening, then only then they will see the notification. Also, browser and OS settings affect the demo time.

• Frequency of sending - it is important to correctly maintain the intervals between sending notifications. If you make a working series of messages about the upcoming holiday on March 8, but send them every day, you will definitely not get the planned result. Obsession is the first thing to avoid in push.

3. Analysis and adjustments - the stage of verification for effectiveness. The results will demonstrate if the strategy was correct and if any changes are worth making.

What are push notifications made of?

• a title in which you can and should use emoticons;

• visual - pictures;

• links to the site, to the product, to the article and UTM-tags, which significantly help in the analysis;

• text - short information, your message that needs to be conveyed to the user.

After an Internet user subscribes to push notifications, they come to their desktop, tablet or smartphone when they are online. By clicking on such an alert, the user immediately gets to the site, article, product, which is now on a discount, in general, to any page that you specify. The conversion can be up to 35%. Agree, the principle of push notifications is quite simple. It is only important to formulate them correctly and the results will not take long to come.

Services for setting up and sending push notifications

1) Letreach

The service offers 3 tariff plans, the minimum cost is $ 15 and corresponds to the number of subscribers. The most expensive rate reaches $ 550 per month. The first 2 weeks you can use Letreach free of charge. It supports Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari. The interface is in English only.

2) Push Expert

Offers 6 tariff plans. There is a free trial, which has a limit of 500 notifications with access to analytics. The minimum tariff is 500 rubles / month. Supports Internet Explorer, Yandex Browser, Google Chrome, Mozila Firefox, Safari.

In addition to customizing notifications, the service offers graphical reports on push sending and delivery.

3) Sendpulse

Поддержка Google Chrome, Mozila Firefox. Понятный и легко осваиваемый интерфейс на русском языке. Минимальная стоимость от 5$.

4) Pushcrew

The service supports the browsers Google Chrome and Mozila Firefox. There is a free plan designed to send an unlimited number of notifications to no more than 500 subscribers. There are also 3 paid plans, the cost is calculated by the number of subscribers. The minimum price is $ 25.

Convenient service. The interface is in English.

5) Gravitec

Its main advantage is its availability in 6 languages: Russian, English, Spanish, German, Polish and Ukrainian. There is a free plan with no restrictions on time or number of mailings. The service also offers 4 tariff plans: Start (free), SMB ($ 15), Medium ($ 49), Enterprise ($ 99). In the free version, Gravitec supports Google Chrome, Mozila Firefox, Opera, Yandex.Browser. Safari also appears in the paid version.

The service is very convenient and provides fairly detailed statistics. We chose this to work with our projects.

The process of creating push notifications in the Gravitec service

So, we create a title, write a notification text, specify a link where you go when clicking on a push and a UTM tag.

You can track all changes in real time, that is, how your notification will look in different browsers:

Next, we plan to send push notifications by date and time, and then add additional links:

We recommend using UTM tags for further analysis. Open advanced settings if necessary. The functionality of this service allows you to set targeting for various tags, select specific countries, cities, browsers and even operating systems.

After all the settings, you can send a text push notification.

An example of a ready-made push notification:

Below is an illustrative statistics provided by the service. Study it and make adjustments to improve the effectiveness of your mailing:

The key performance indicators of push notifications

To analyze the sent push notifications, there are a number of indicators by which you can track their effectiveness.

• the percentage of deliverability and openness;

• the number of subscribers and unsubscribed users;

• the percentage of conversions.

After having analyzed the activity of your subscribers, determine the most optimal submission time. Regular analysis of key indicators will allow you to:

• retain subscribers while updating the base;

• advertise your products and services;

• communicate with users, informing them constantly about discounts, promotions, news;

• notify about the status of the order and send a reminder about the abandoned cart;

• report on seminars, course recruits, trainings and webinars;

• spread hot news and notify about new publications.

How do I create push notifications that aren't annoying? (instead of conclusion)

To create an effective push campaign, you need to:

• segment your target audience - divide subscribers by gender, age, language of communication (Russian, Romanian, English), type of browser and operating system, geographic features;

• interest and attract – with a tenacious and concise title, emoji, short selling text (the limit for characters is specified in the lines, you can also see how the notification you create looks like);

• add a visuals - catchy photos, pictures in pleasant colors, a logo (* important, since the image takes up 30% of the space in the notification window);

• register UTM tags - this is necessary for a clear analysis of statistics;

• send advertising along with interesting and useful content;

• use the functionality of the service to the fullest - convenient setting for each target audience group;

• important - do not be afraid of regular unsubscriptions, this allows you to update the subscriber base; after a year of using push notifications, you must update the database by at least 50%.

An example of a ready-made mailing with a CTR (click through rate) = 3.61%

Sending push notifications is a fairly low-cost internet marketing option when compared to other types of online advertising. And don't forget that your first push notification campaign may be far from flawless - the whole point is practice. The experience gained from the first setup and submission will surely help you to use this Internet marketing tool to the maximum in the future. Sending push notifications is a convenient and fairly simple tool that you can start using today. We have a lot of interesting articles! For example, you can read our material on how to correctly compose a commercial offer for creating a website.