Push notifications can make a huge impact on your company’s success. But first, before we get into why you need them, you may ask, what exactly is a push notification?
Push notifications, also know as push messages, are a brief message or alert that is sent to a user’s notification panel through a mobile app and allows you to reach a large audience at once. These notifications are a great marketing tool to enhance your mobile app as they provide you with the ability to engage with users in real time.
We’ve put together a list featuring some of the top reasons why you should be incorporating push messaging into your mobile strategy.
4 Reasons Why You Need Push Notifications
1. Enhance the User Experience
Push messages serve as a useful instrument to connect with your audience when they’re not on your app. While it’s easy to highlight upcoming events or announcements within your app, sending out a notification helps to further promote these events and keep them top of mind.
Using topic based messages can help you decide when to send out certain notifications. An app for the city of Nashville may want to categorize notifications about severe storms under emergency alerts, but keep notifications about upcoming music festivals under events. By keeping your audience aware of announcements they may otherwise miss out on, your app can generate additional value for your users.
2. Increase Engagement, Acquisition, and Retention
Push notifications are an effective way of reaching out to your user base due to their high opt-in rate. A study by Airship found the overall opt-in rate for push messages on iOS and Android devices to be 60%. Delivering relevant messages to users can prompt further engagement and interaction with your mobile app. However, sending too many push messages can drive users to turn off notifications, or worse, remove the app entirely. Striking the right balance between frequency and relevancy is key to maintaining an engaged audience.
Radio station Magic 98 was able to find this balance by implementing a “Santa Tracker” feature into its app. On Christmas Eve, the app sent out notifications to its users alerting them of Santa’s location. The notifications were a unique way of encouraging users to open the app and interact with its features.
3. Improve Internal Communication
Aside from using push notifications as a marketing strategy, notifications can be used to improve communication with employees. Companies with workers constantly on the move may find it difficult to keep them updated on the latest information. Through push messages, employees are instantly notified of any new announcements.
For our client, Stoneco, it’s important to stay connected with employees on the road. Through their app, Stoneco uses push messaging to keep employees aware of changes in hours, equipment issues, or other developments on the job site.
4. Create Targeted Messages to Your Users
To create successful push notifications, you have to make sure each notification speaks to your audiences. It’s easy to send targeted push messages because (with permission) your app can have access to your user’s profile. Segmenting your audience based on factors such as demographics or location helps you create relevant messages that are more likely to garner a user’s attention.
While using segmentation can be great for marketing, it can also provide benefits logistically. A manufacturing company with plants across the midwest region may only wish to contact workers in Wisconsin. By segmenting according to location, only those within the relevant area will receive the alert, making push messages a functional way of delivering information.
Push notifications offer a variety of benefits, both as a promotional tool and as a functional tool. Whether you’re using them to boost app engagement among consumers, or to easily communicate announcements to your workforce, these alerts have the potential to elevate your mobile strategy.
Originally published by Jacobs Media
