Best Practices for Push Notifications to Get the Best Results
- Mobile
- October 24, 2016
Developing an app doesn’t end at launching it on the App Store. There are a lot of updates you have to do, and you always have to maintain your relationship with the users. A great way through which you can do that is to send your user push notifications.
These will give helpful information to your user, either if they’re tips on how to use the app, reminders about a game they forgot they were playing or just funny messages to make them not forget they have your app installed.
However, sending these push notifications are very tricky because they might annoy the user sometimes. You have to think about a lot of things: how often do you send out push notifications, are you making them personalized for each user, or general for everyone?
We decided to help you out a bit with this process, and give you four essential tips on how you should go about push notifications.
Give them the option to decide when and what notifications they receive
This might seem lazy, but it’s actually a very good idea for both your app and your user. He/she will feel like a part of the process of creating the push notifications, and when they will see a sign from you, they will smile a little bit thinking that they decided they wanted that notification.
So, create yourself a control panel in which you let the user easily choose what content they prefer and give them a week’s calendar so they can choose which days they want push notifications from you, and in which days they don’t want to be bothered.
Trust us, they’ll enjoy it. If you don’t trust us, trust Starbucks – they use a preference center in which they let the user decide what they want to receive, and things are going pretty well for them, don’t you think?
Read also: Push Notifications Can Re-Engage Your Lost Customers and Avoid App Churning
Have you heard of conversion? It is everything you need
Conversion is a marketing term that specialists use to refer to customers that do exactly what you wanted them to do. This means that you need to have some actions in mind that you would like your user to do: start a new game, click on something, buy something, check out something – all can be achieved through push notifications.
With those actions in mind, you need to create an engaging push notification – after all, people are not stupid, they will click on something only if they feel they want to.
So, think about how your push notifications will look. Sending a simple message might work, but in today’s world apps already include emojis, photos, videos, anything that is relevant to the action you want the use to make.
Read also: How to Design the App Notification Strategy to Increase User Engagement
Location can be used in very smart ways when it comes to push notifications
If your app gathers info about the location of the users, you can use it to send smart and helpful push notifications. For example, if your app delivers news, it is nice to send out specific area news, that the user might be very interested in.
If you’re a restaurant, whenever he/she is in the area, you can send him/her a reminder that they’re close to you and they could pay you a visit.
There are tons of ways to use location as a way to get close to your users, and they will definitely appreciate your effort to deliver notifications that they would actually need.
Conversion is essential for your success, but not enough. You also need KPIs
If you don’t know what KPIs are, the term comes from Key Performance Indicators, and they help you out with your long-term marketing strategy.
Conversion rates will give you some info in the beginning, which will help with the marketing at that moment, but after a while, that’s just not enough. You need to look at KPIs like long-term conversion, revenue, engagement and more.
All of these will help you better understand how your app works in the hand of your targeted user, and use that information to give them better push notifications.
Conclusion
Push notifications are actually a lot of fun to create, but don’t forget about the ‘science’ behind it: you need to check out who your user is, what he/she likes, what kind of language they would prefer, and more importantly, what is useful to them. When giving out push notifications you’re looking to not nag the user, but actually be helpful to them.
Don’t forget to give him/her the option to decide what sort of notifications they want to receive, as well as the days when they don’t want to receive any push notification.
