Mobile Push Notifications: A potent weapon for business growth
A major chunk of online users is shifting their platforms from web to mobile and it has been estimated that over 49% of online users will be on mobile by 2020. And this is a great time for businesses to get expand their brand.
They can easily get access to a wider customer base by becoming available on the mobile platform, and the best approach is to turn your website into an app for their own brand. If you are wondering how to make an app for your website then get in touch with AppMySite to easily convert your website into an app.
Suggested Read: A Complete Guide for Business Managers — From Scratch to Success with Mobile
The returns on getting a mobile application for your business are immense. Read more about the top factors that determine the success of your mobile application here.
Speaking of native mobile applications, one of the best features of a native mobile app is that you can send push notifications to your users. They are short prompters acquainting the users you’re your brand’s offers, features, greetings, events, launches and a lot more. Push notifications have immense potential to boost your business growth and brand value.
Here are some of the best ways to utilise push notifications
1. Build brand recall value
Every business realises the importance of brand recall value. In today’s market, there are many different businesses that are directly competing with each other. This makes it extremely difficult for brands to build their recall value.
It takes a lot of efforts and monetary investment from business to make customers remember a brand name. And push notifications to come to your rescue when it comes to building brand recall value.
Push notifications are a very cost-effective way to improve any brand’s recall value. Well-timed regular push notifications to your customers can direct your customers’ attention to your business. It is not only a great way of re-establishing connections with dormant users but a powerful tool for a sustained top-of-mind recall for anything related to your domain.
2. Improve Conversions — Capture Impulse Buyers
A well-planned push notification can result in multiple conversions at the same time. This can be done by capturing impulse buyers at the right time.
By leveraging the insights from the in-app user data and geo-location data, businesses can push targeted messages to the users at the right time.
For example, a travel app can notify users about their hotels and car rental services to user placed near an airport, or a local business can push city-specific codes depending on user location.
This gives your brand a unique edge to reach your customers at a time when are looking for your product/service. Another great strategy brands use is by sending notifications around midnight for an exclusive midnight sale, which can prove to be a great strategy for clearance sales.
3. Augment Returning Customers
Mobile apps are a relatively new customer-retention channel. And when it comes to improving customer retention and returns, push notifications should be your go-to tool.
Marketers can grab user attention with their mobile applications using the push notification feature.
Targeted promotion of your products, services, sales and offers has never been so easy. Push special offers and discounts to your existing users to make them come back to you for more.
4. Connect with your Customers
Messaging in notifications can be used as a great tool to connect with your customers. Correct messaging strategy at the right time can make your customer realise that your brand genuinely cares for them.
This encourages customer loyalty and a loyal customer will always choose your brand over your competitors, even if your competitors are selling similar product/service at cheaper rates.
Marketers are finding new ways to connect with their customers and promote their products or services, and push notifications can be one of the best tools for making a solid connection with your customers.
Suggested Read: How Online Stores and Businesses Can Benefit from Push Notifications
5. Emotional Engagement
Always remember that customers mostly make purchase emotionally and seldom logically. And this is a great tool to develop that deep and emotional bond with your customers.
Seasonal and festive messages go a long way to develop a bond between your brand and your customers. A customised message, like adding the first name or location-specific notifications work wonders. Little tweaks to your messages can make a huge difference.
Few different types of push notification message customisations are listed below.
· Use of the first name to address the customer.
· Offer time-sensitive offers such as midnight sales or food delivery apps notifying late-night delivery options.
· Special messages on occasions like celebratory offers on festivals and birthday special discounts.
· To highlight special App-only event for members.
· Prompt availability of user-preferred products which were out of stock earlier.
You can also make good use of emojis, audios or videos to personalize the brand message and make it more affable.
6. Re-Engage Inactive Users
In addition to increasing user interaction by improving retention of existing app users, push notifications can help re-engage users that have reduced their interaction with the app or have stopped using it altogether.
While using attractive ‘welcome-back’ promotions and discounts is a common practice in the retail industry, push notifications help in communicating this message directly and instantly to end-users and shoppers.
A variety of apps (like shopping, news, health, games, and instant messaging) use push notifications to reach out to inactive users and re-engage them.
7. A/B Testing
Now that you’ve understood the best practices and basic framework for your push notification strategies. However, there is no ready cheat sheet for knowing how the customers will respond to your messages.
And instead making presumptions, the best way to know the truth is to perform A/B testing on all aspects of push notifications like — content (discount focused vs variety focused), type of message (emoji heavy vs image heavy), salutations (hello vs hi), use of colors (brand color vs multi-color), timing and so on.
The results and real-time feedback from these A/B tests will guide you to the best approach to follow. The test that performs better should be adopted for an enhanced success of your push notification strategy.
Conclusion
There you have it, the best practices for your push notification strategy. Do remember that we are dealing with real people here, hence, this must be approached in a strategic manner. You must build your brand’s reputation with more relevancy in your push notifications than frequency.
Push notifications are a double-edged sword and its overuse can also bring more harm than good. Too many notifications do have a tendency to irritate the users and they may just end up turning off your push notifications, or worse uninstalling your app.
We hope that now you are well equipped with the push notification strategy for your business. Businesses need to constantly innovate on their interaction techniques and keep their users actively engaged with the brand and push notifications to do just that!
For more assistance, do not hesitate in getting in touch with us for more help on your push notification strategy or anything related to building your mobile application to marketing it for success.
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