PushOwl recently on The Cut’s Shopify podcast— The Shopify Dropify podcast to talk about the power of push marketing and how merchants can use web push notifications to generate more sales and communicate better with their customers.
You can listen to the podcast below.
To make it easier for you to execute these web push tips, we’ve transcribed the podcast for you. Skim through the content below as you listen and easily turn these ideas into actionables.
Introduction
PushOwl is a web push notifications app that is hooked straight to Shopify. Web push notifications are a frictionless and easy way to market your store, allowing you to earn more for your store. At PushOwl, we are on a mission to make this channel available to all merchants— from the small merchants to large eCommerce stores.
Merchants who are just starting out can get on PushOwl’s exclusive Early Stage Plan that gives new merchants the PushOwl business plan for a year.
A push notification is a message that appears on your screen, via mobile or desktop. It is sent by the browser. It consists of text, image, brand’s icon and the link that takes them to the store. It appears on the shopper’s screen and it’s a visual and enticing message to interact with.
They don’t have to open an email or a website. It opens up on your screen.
It is immediate, with fewer barriers between the merchant and their customers. Web push notifications remove the friction that is typically related to communicating with your customer.
Web Push Advice For New Shopify Business Owners
We recommend setting up your brand icon first with the PushOwl settings.
Next, look into the automation that we are offering, especially the Abandoned Cart Reminder sequence. This allows you to automatically remind your shoppers about their pending cart and bring them back to your store to recover your orders. This feature sends a sequence of 3 reminders, with copy customized by you, to recover lost revenue.
Your web push notifications can help you in building a relationship with your subscribers and retain your existing customers. Merchants need to think about how their customers want to engage with them and what their communication will be like. Read this blog on different types of web push campaigns you can send.
Figure out your copy and understand the value you’ll be adding. Are you helping your customers save with great deals? Or are you helping them find the right pair of headphones? Flesh out your brand personality and reflect it within your copy. Read the different tones of voice you can use within your web push campaigns
Don’t forget to create conversation with existing shoppers. This actually takes priority over always finding new customers. The goldmine is your existing shoppers and by targeting this segment of your subscribers, you can successfully increase repeat purchases. Read about the different segments you can set up with your PushOwl subscribers.
The most important thing to remember is that with web push, you can’t just promote a few times and then be silent until you have another discount to send them. Engage with them on a regular basis and think of campaigns that will add value (like blog sharing). Shoppers need to be used to your frequent communication and be eager to engage with you.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Inconsistencies in marketing messages and product descriptions, emails are highly common among eCommerce marketing copy. These inconsistencies make your potential buyers feel unwelcome. Merchants need to make sure they address their shoppers in a proper way and personalize the message to each shopper.
Get your language right, figure out your brand identity, send relevant messages, and avoid generalizing your messages to all your subscribers. A shopper who just wants a general shopping experience would just go to Amazon. With your store, you need to deliver a customer experience in a customized and personalized way.
The most important factor to take into consideration when trying to succeed is to nail your approach. Tap into why people are choosing your store. If something has worked for you, stick to the magic formula that has added value to your buyers and has helped accelerate your growth. Don’t keep trying to innovate when you’ve already found the tactic that is helping you succeed.
Benefits of Web Push Notifications
Opting in: The opt-in prompt for web push notifications is from your browser. It is secure, no personal details needed. This makes subscribers less hesitant about subscribing. Opt-in rates for web push are 3-5% on average.
Web push notifications: These notifications are highly visual, giving you the option to add images of your products, add a CTA that compels click-throughs, with short copy that gets straight to the point. With web push, you can send campaigns for Christmas sale, product announcement, review from a customer, birthday wishes, and even blog share. The delivery is also immediate, meaning your sales get instant attention.
Abandoned cart recovery: The reason merchants come to PushOwl is because of the abandoned carts they see in their store. About 70% of carts are abandoned and merchants are in dire need of a solution to this problem. They find PushOwl as one of the solutions and with web push, you can target abandoned carts even without the abandoner’s personal details. Before you would need their email address to send marketing messages but with web push, this barrier is solved.
Besides abandoned carts, they can send back-in-stock alerts, price-drop updates, and even integrate with other apps that they use.
Subscriber information: While the subscription from your customer is anonymous, PushOwl syncs this subscription with shopper’s data that Shopify has already collected. You can use this to segment the subscriber based on their orders, behavior, whether they haven’t purchased yet. Merchants can learn more about their customers and send relevant promotions. Read about Segmentation.
Shopify Flow is a highly useful app to create IF- THEN workflows that pull behavior and triggers that start actions. You can build beautiful customer journeys based on their behavior. If someone moved up a tier on their loyalty program, they will get a push notification with the update.
Examples of Rich Custom Content in Web Push
There is no spam filter on your web push so you can write your best copy, use as many emojis as you want and use words that might get caught within spam in your email campaigns. Web push is unregulated, allowing you to send campaigns you wouldn’t be able to with Facebook ads or emails.
Proozy is a Shopify Plus brand that sells fitness gear and apparel. They have an audience of fitness enthusiasts who would look for deals on the products. In the first 4 months they started using PushOwl, they generated a $299 return on every $1 spent on PushOwl. They had 63000 new subscribers, and their campaigns had a CTR of 3.6%.
We learned that Proozy was sending notifications about their fast-selling deals. They added descriptive stories about their products and highly scenic product images.
Proozy also fine-tuned their abandoned cart reminder sequence. They made changes to the wording, tested new copy and added emojis to recover more carts and recovered $26,000 because of this.
3 PushOwl Insights
1. Pay attention to BFCM and create a buzz to bring shoppers back on your store. This is also the time they are shopping for Christmas. So, use your web push subscriber list to drive attention to the deals you have during BFCM and even set up smart campaigns leading up to your sale.
2. Get the attention of your subscriber with emojis in your push notification. Emojis are a powerful way to add more visual triggers to engage your customers.
3. Hero images are of different dimensions on desktop and mobile. PushOwl lets you upload different dimensions to optimize the appearance of your push notifications.
We hope this podcast helped you approach your web push strategy in a different way!
This article was originally published by our friends at PushOwl.
