Push notifications double the return and user engagement, but this effective marketing tool is underutilized in the apps of Russian brands. Below are tips from The Pocket Guide to Good Push Messages.

Strategy and planning

Develop a strategy and plan for sending push messages. Dallas mobile app development company Develop metrics to measure performance and keep records. There are good push messaging strategies for any application, for example:

• Online stores: order status notifications, personal offers for interesting products;
• Podcasts: airing your favorite programs;
• Cellular operators: information about the balance, enabling options in roaming;
• Banks: card transactions, personal offers of bank services;
• Reservation services: information about changes in reservations, profitable offers to interesting destinations.

Push messages should make the user’s life easier and better. By agreeing to receive notifications, users allow the application to invade their personal space at any time. Therefore, if you send irrelevant messages too often, then the application will delete or disable messages.

Push notifications are one-on-one communication with the user. Good messages are personalized, interesting, and relevant. Bulk mailing of the latest news or sales is a direct way to uninstall the application. How do you make notifications well?

Usefulness of push messages

Send what the user needs at the moment, not what you want to tell him. For example, Burton Snowboards sends out snow notifications. Snowboarders love to ride on freshly fallen snow.

Bad example when an imaginary snowboard brand sends a bunch of messages “10% discount on snowboards”, “New collection of boots.” One user just bought a set, he doesn’t need another one, and the other is on vacation at sea and snowboards to him for sure is worthless.

Another example about interests and personalization. Different users are interested in different messages, there is no option that would suit everyone.

Two tweets in which one user threatens to delete apps for pushing about William and Kate’s wedding, and another complains that she was not informed that they showed the child.

The right way to deliver the right messages is to ask the user what they are interested in. Burton clarifies the region where the snowboarder lives, the resorts where he rides and the level of snow on which it is interesting to ride. Plus, the application specifies the days and hours when the user can ride (for example, all weekend and Friday evening).

Configuring push messages

Let users customize what messages they want to receive. For example, the ESPN Score center application informs about the results of sports matches. Push notifications settings allow you to choose a sport, favorite teams, when and what results the app will send. Setting the results is very detailed, you can set up notifications: about the start of the game, about each goal, about the results of the set and about the result of the match.

When users customize posts in a way that interests them, they bind to your app. This distinguishes push messages from mass communication. But in everything you need to observe the golden mean. On the one hand, detailed settings are good, but on the other hand, most users will be lazy. Think of how to set up notifications without showing the settings panel. For example, a user gradually marks teams as favorites and receives minimal notifications about their games. After a couple of open messages, suggest turning on more detailed notifications.

Push message sound

iOS and Android allow you to change the sound of incoming messages. This feature can be used, so that the user, without taking out the phone, will understand that a message has come from you. The sound should not be long or harsh.

Landing pages for push notifications

What happens after the user clicks on the notification? For example, Lamoda sent a notification about discounts for the old collection, but when he tapped, the user was taken to the main page of the application. The correct way would be to direct the user to the collection page.

If the push notification offers a specific product or category, take the user to the page with that offer. If this is a push with news or a special offer, enter a separate window in the application with additional information.

Push notifications content

Be specific. Provide detailed information in the notification: the name of the product and its price, the date of the start of the sale, etc.

For example, Fancy, a social network about products, sends the message “There are new offers in your product feed” once a day. Compare with the more specific post “Personal 3D printer and 20 other items in your feed”.

Push statistics

To understand the results of your actions, you need analytics. Questions your push analytics system should answer:

• Percentage of push notifications (open rate);
• Time spent in the application after opening;
• What types of push are the most effective;
• Percentage of users who subscribed to push notifications;
• The frequency of visits to the application by subscribed and unsigned users;
• Most popular push notification settings
• Difference in response from iPhone and Android users , differences in responses from smartphones and tablets;
• day of the week and time of the most effective messages.

Be sure to flag users who opened the app from a push message to further analyze their behavior in Flurry or Google Analytics separately from other users.

To conduct push analytics, you can use the services Urban Airship, Parse, Push Woosh. Parse provides great reporting and powerful functionality.

Testing push notifications

Constant testing will help improve the performance of your push strategy at times. Test different forms of subscription, time of sending notifications, notification text. Follow user reviews about your application in the AppStore, Google Play or social. networks, they will show you how to improve push messages.

“Incoming messages” for disabled push notifications

In order to be able to return users who disabled push notifications, create an icon with incoming service messages. Upon entering the application, users will see your messages. If the user reads messages from their inbox, invite them to subscribe to messages again and offer to customize the content of these messages.

Notification subscription form

Test the subscription form and dialog. A non-standard subscription dialog can increase conversion by 20 times.

 Do not show the notification subscription dialog during application start. The user has not yet figured out if he needs your messages.

For example, at the ticket search engine Avia sales, the user subscribes to the destination and dates. If the ticket price changes, the app sends a push notification with the new price. The push subscription form is shown to the user when he activates his first subscription. That is, he first expresses a desire to receive notifications and only then he is offered to subscribe.