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A Quick Guide To Push Notification Marketing

People group on white background.

Digital marketers often focus on channels like email, social media, and text, but push notifications can play an equally important role in strong digital campaigns. In fact, push notifications are particularly effective for certain kinds of messaging, and they’re easier to set up and manage than ever before.

With that in mind, this article will cover everything marketers need to know in order to develop better strategies for push notification marketing. Keep in mind that the best ways to use push notifications depend on a number of factors including your audience’s preferences.

What Is a Push Notification?

Push notifications meaning is ambiguous. They are most commonly associated with phones and tablets, but push notifications are compatible with these devices in addition to desktops and laptops. You can easily send push notifications to all subscribers or only a specific group depending on your needs.

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First, you’ll need to configure your site to ask visitors if they’d like to see push notifications. From there, you have full control over who to target with each message. Browser push notifications can be set up very easily, making them particularly effective for small businesses with limited resources.

Why Are Push Notifications Important for Advertisers?

Push notifications are somewhat similar to notifications sent within websites, but they don’t require users to check your website in order to view the message. Instead, your notifications will show up as soon as each user connects to the internet with the browser running.

Users can subscribe to push notifications without providing any personal information, so they don’t come with as many barriers to entry. It’s no surprise that push notification marketing generally leads to higher opt-in rates than alternatives like text and email. Getting leads in the door can be one of the most complicated aspects of the customer journey, and users who subscribe to push notifications are more likely to convert later on.

Unlike with mobile apps, you can send push notifications to devices of all kinds, helping you reach out to the largest possible number of subscribers. In short, browser push notifications are an incredibly powerful way to update your audience with a wide range of information.

Push Notification Marketing Strategy

Push notifications are designed to elicit an immediate reaction, so they’re especially effective for certain messages. Instead of simply using push notifications to distribute the same ads that you publish on other channels, look for ways to take advantage of its unique features.

Personalized Offers

Personalization is more important than ever in digital marketing, and customers expect relevant messaging from their favorite brands. This is particularly important for push notifications since they’re generally more intrusive than other channels and it’s easy for users to unsubscribe from your messaging.

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With that in mind, make sure that your push notifications are well-targeted and relevant to keep the irritation to a minimum.

Abandoned Cart Recovery

The majority of online shopping carts are abandoned before the purchase, and this is one of the most important sources of lost revenue for ecommerce businesses. Even converting a small percentage of abandoned carts could have a significant impact on your bottom line.

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Set up a push notification an hour after a user leaves your site and include free shipping or another offer to incentivize the sale, and use email to follow up from there.

Shipping and Order Information

Online shoppers expect notifications for things like order confirmation and shipping information, but you don’t need to send an email or text to let them know. These channels are more intrusive, and most people already receive more emails than they really want to read.

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A great push notification is perfect to let your customer know that their purchase is en route without forcing them to go to their email client.

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Push notification marketing leads to a more immediate response relative to other platforms, so they’re perfect for urgent messages. Discounts, new products, and other promotions are meant to encourage short-term conversions and capitalize on that sense of urgency.

Of course, not every user is ready to convert, so it’s critical to send these notifications to leads who are already engaged. Every notification should be developed based on each subscriber’s current position in the customer journey.

Increasing Subscriptions

Every digital marketing campaign relies on strong outreach. Unfortunately, the opt-in form is set by each browser, so you don’t have as many options when it comes to sign-up content. That said, there are a few effective ways to increase push notification subscriptions.

Most brands display the opt-in form as soon as a user accesses their website, but this approach doesn’t give you enough time to generate interest in your brand. Think about it—you probably wouldn’t subscribe to notifications if you didn’t have any experience with the business.

Delayed Popups

Instead, you’ll likely achieve better results by configuring the opt-in form to pop up once the reader has spent more time on your site. For example, you could set it to display after one minute or after they’ve accessed a certain number of pages.

Exit-intent Popups

Additionally, more and more companies are adding exit-intent popups to their digital marketing practices. These popups are designed to appear as soon as a user appears to start leaving your site, giving them a chance to re-engage. Exit-intent popups are supported by a number of marketing tools.

Visual Overlays

Drawing attention to your sign-up forms is always good for increasing subscriptions. A clear visual overlay pulls each reader’s eye away from the rest of the site and directs them toward your push notifications. Interrupting their visit gives them more of an incentive to consider signing up, especially if they’ve had time to check out your website.

Push Notification Services

A number of marketing services offer support for browser push notifications and other types of outreach, so you can implement push notifications without adding much overhead. There’s no single “best” way to approach push notifications, so look for a program that offers the specific features you need.

Amazon’s Simple Notification Service, for example, is compatible with some of the most common devices and offers one million free notifications. It also offers basic features like message filtering and encryption. On the other hand, omnichannel platforms such as Omnisend provide more robust tools including A/B testing and marketing analytics. Moreover, by using this platform, you will be able to create seamless automated workflows and combine push notifications with emails and other channels.

Optimizing Your Approach to Push Notifications

The tips above will help you get started with push notifications, but every campaign has room for improvement. No matter where they are right now, the best marketers are constantly looking for ways to improve their approach to push notification marketing and differentiate their brands from the competition. These are a few ideas to help you achieve better results with push notifications.

A/B Testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a reliable tool for identifying the strategies that resonate with your audience. Split tests involve comparing two or more variants with respect to marketing metrics.

If you’re trying to improve your subscription rate, for example, you could set up an A/B test to compare the results of exit-intent popups and time-delayed popups. Once you’ve tested the two options on a small scale, you’ll have an idea of which one is likely to be more effective in the future.

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Without A/B testing, it’s extremely difficult to determine which aspects of your approach are having positive and negative effects. Companies that fail to implement split tests are less likely to adapt and often continue to make the same mistakes. Fortunately, contemporary digital marketing tools make it easy to set up a variety of tests.

Customer Persona

You can’t develop sophisticated personalization campaigns until you understand your customers on a personal level. Customer persona helps you market to each segment of your audience based on their unique preferences.

Marketing Persona ecommerce marketing

In addition to customer data, you’ll need to gather feedback in order to create a sophisticated customer persona. The more you learn about your audience, the easier it will become to create relevant messaging. Start with one or two personae before adding more as needed.

Copywriting

Brands often overlook the importance of engaging copy, and good writing is even more important in such a limited space. Most push notifications only provide enough room for a sentence or two, so it’s crucial to make every word count.

Push notification marketing is all about getting users to click through to your site, so you should focus on providing a unique value that’s relevant to your audience. Discounts and new products offer a clear incentive for users to click on the link.

With that in mind, there are some types of content that don’t work well as push notifications. Welcome sequences, for example, generally include too much information about your brand to be condensed into a push notification. They’re usually more effective as short messages with a strong sense of urgency.

While push notifications aren’t supported by iOS, they’re still a great way to drive sales and clicks. These ideas will help you get started with push notification marketing and add another channel to your marketing toolkit. Don’t forget to consistently evaluate your results and adapt your tactics in response to industry trends

This article was originally published by our friends at Omnisend.

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