Avoid being pushy! The Fumbling Push and How to Offer A Hand

Push notifications were born with a great promise to add to the user engagement in the world of mobile computing. And it’s been some time since these short messages generated by a server without the request of clients have been effective in achieving the intended goal. However, since mobile computing offers client-server experience at the personal front, app industries may end up annoying users and consequently reducing traffic if proper care is not administered in broadcasting push messages.

A recent survey by the makers of mobile-marketing software Kahuna, reveals how some app industries are performing significantly better (up to 4X) compared to others. A glance at the survey reveals a comprehensible discernible pattern.

Mobile computing offers a very efficient and portable solution to a variety of personal needs. In a world where almost everything can be done on a mobile device, push is bound to earn an intuitively prejudiced vibe from users. In the midst of such a colossal amount of engaging experience, it’s fair to expect individuals to want more tools to improve professional productivity, and essentially a zero-interference in their social lives. So push notifications that are not relevant to the apps or don’t share some valuable info tend to shred the trust of users, and thereby reducing the traffic.

The prejudice around push is largely industry dependent. Let us take a few examples. In the current era, knowing about the time of arrival of a cab via push or learning the latest info surrounding someone’s favourite football team is deemed valuable and essential. Not only does it save time, but also adds to the user experience by keeping users more informed about things that actually matter to them. And it won’t be far-fetched to say that this is basically an important tool in improving the quality of life. Such app industries enjoy the benefit of being surrounded by a positive bias when it comes to push notifications.

But when it comes to social apps, push earns a negative bias inherently. Sometimes it is beneficial and relevant to know about a friend’s birthday or knowing that a friend has uploaded a photograph. However, since our social circle today involves a lot of people in addition to our actual friends, this experience can be very rusty at times. And the notorious candy crush requests only aggravate the situation.

Bottom line is, it’s all about what users want to experience. And in a competitive market as today’s, the client does have the upper hand. The solution in these situations is to work on the old-fashioned quality improvement by employing latest techniques.

Here are a few ways how push-notifications can be used effectively to strengthen the ever-so brittle client trust.

1. Education is the key

Let your users know about various push services that you provide and make it easy to turn them ON or OFF. Chances are you will make a good first impression and expand the foundation of trust among them.

2. Understand User Requirements

Tailor the push messages to lie in sync with what individual users want to experience.

3. Keep Multiple Watches in Your Pocket

A 9 a.m. Monday in New Delhi is a 10:30 p.m. Sunday in New York. So synchronize the clock settings of push notifications in accordance to the time zone in which a user resides. No one likes to hear the constant beeps of a notification while one is asleep.

4. Geo-Marketing

Geo-Marketing or marketing based on the user’s location is a smart strategy to make push-notifications more effective. For example, sharing info related to famous restaurants or food-joints of an area when a person is present nearby is a safe choice.

5. Avoid being pushy

After your users opt-in your push services, ensure they only get what they need. Don’t take undue advantage of their consent and send in any random stuff. If your app tends to have a high frequency of irrelevant notifications, you can’t really expect users to continue using it.

6. Label Your Stuff

If there are different types of push messages in your bank, make sure to bring them under a certain label or type. It makes them easy to access and appeals to the eye.

To put it in a nutshell, focus more on the improvement of end-user experience rather than trying to improve your traffic. If the users are happy and satisfied, you will automatically find the user engagement increasing.