Get More Push Notification Subscribers With The Right Opt-in Strategy [Part 1]

If you are looking for ways to get more subscribers with the right push notification opt-in strategy, then continue reading. Your subscriber count drives revenue or gives visibility to your brand. But, getting users to opt-in for push notifications is a confusing ordeal for many marketers and businesses. And there isn’t substantial information on opt-in strategies available out there to help make this process more effective. To fuel it further, opt-in rates vary from industry to industry.

So, we thought of providing you with a few opt-in strategies that you can implement to get more subscribers to your website through push messages. Here, in the first of the two-part Opt-in Strategy Series, we will discuss the best times and pages to trigger the opt-in, with ample examples to help you understand clearly. Do remember to A/B test and analyze with Google Analytics or other tools to see what’s working best for your website and audience.

So let’s get started.

Best times to trigger the opt-in

First time visitors or customers need some time to figure out what your website is about and what value it would offer them. For a marketer, this is a gold mine to convert your visitor to a subscriber. Your first rule of thumb should be to NOT set the opt-in to trigger the moment they land on your site. But, don’t delay the opt-in to trigger so much so that the visitor loses interest and closes the tab. Then, how do we go about this, you may ask.

Let’s discuss how you can cleverly time when the opt in launches.

Based on user activity or certain user actions

To implement this smoothly, you can set unique actions to be taken before the opt-in appears. This is critical because your visitors need to realize the benefits of receiving your push notifications and the smooth experience they’ll get from your platform.

Here are a few instances where your visitors and customers are likely to become your push notifications subscribers.

1. Viewed a product: An e-commerce website could set the opt-in to trigger after a visitor has viewed an item or browsed through multiple items. This action demonstrates that the visitor finds value in the products your website offers and would benefit from receiving notifications.

2. Read a post or article: A blog or a news website may pre-set the opt-in to pop after an article or a post has been read by a visitor. The viewer is likely to allow notifications in order to receive updates on more such news or posts.

3. Certain session counts or time spent: You could automate the opt-in to appear after a visitor has reached a certain session count or when they’ve spent a set time on your website. At this point, they would have an idea of what your website is about and would know the value your push notifications would give them.

Tips: If your bounce rate if high, it’s better to delay the opt-in appearing in order to facilitate visitors understanding what your website is about. Experiment with setting it to 15 seconds. For best results, we recommend you to experiment with different time delays, along with the ones mentioned above, to decide what works best.

Best pages for the opt-in to launch

You’d want to analyze your buyer’s or reader’s journey to understand your best performing pages that are likely to convert your website visitors to subscribers. These assortment of pages could have different execution styles when it comes to triggering the opt-in.

Here are some use cases to help you understand this better.

1. Order tracking email or on your website: For an e-commerce website, your customers track their shipments through either your emails or your website itself. Use this opportunity to ask them, either within the email or on the tracking page, if they’d like to receive your push notifications instead, to know the status of the shipments or when it’s out for delivery.

2. On the checkout page: Online retailers could also strategically set the opt-in to trigger or give the option to enable push notifications when a customer is on the checkout page. Ensure you tell them that through push alerts, they could track their order easily, get product recommendations or when there’s a sale going on. You might see more people subscribing to your notifications this way.

3. When a product is out of stock or sold out: By asking for permission to send notifications when the particular product or similar products are back in stock, you could have more customers subscribe to your notifications.

4. Breaking news story: If you are a news or media website, have you been noticing hordes of incoming traffic on a particular piece of breaking news? Then use this to your advantage and set the opt-in permission to launch every time a new user spends a certain time on this story. Ask them if they’d like to receive notifications to stay updated about trending or breaking news.

5. Chance to win flight tickets or other goodies: On a travel blog, for instance, when there is a post on a competition or a chance for readers to win something, like flight tickets or other goodies, the odds are favorable to get more subscribers by setting the opt-in to trigger on such pages.

6. After booking or viewing a flight or hotel: If your website is a flight or hotel booking aggregator, then you could set the permission for notifications to appear after a customer has booked a flight or hotel or even browsed through a few of them.Offer them an incentive as to why they should enable notifications from you. For instance, tell them in your permission message that by allowing notifications, you could send them exclusive deals, discounts or vouchers for their next trip.

It’s crucial that you remember to segment your subscribers and customers into buckets based on their onsite activity or the message your opt-in permission contained. They would expect specific notifications, to which they opted in, in the first place. And also, you’ll see lesser churn and grow a loyal user base.

Tips: Ask for permission to send push notifications on your best performing pages or the pages that have high of incoming traffic. It helps you assess your industry and target audience to make this work better.

That’s all, for this part. Stay tuned for Part 2, which will show you other strategies that you can implement to drive traffic to your website.

Originally published on The Marketer’s Last Mile — the PushCrew Blog.

(You can signup and start using PushCrew Web Push Notifications for free here.)