Why Should Internal Communicators Care About Push Notifications?

It wasn’t but a few years ago when internal communicators would say, “Oh, but our employees would never download a company app on their phone.” I think today we can all agree they wound up being wrong. Mobile apps for internal and employee communication are on the rise.

And I’d also hear, “But if they did, they’d never turn on push notifications.” They may have been right on that point back then, but the good news is that behavior is changing.

In late August, comScore released its 2017 U.S. Mobile App Report. The report does not focus on internal communications but there is real value for communicators in understanding how people (i.e. their coworkers) are using mobile apps.

And what I found particularly interesting is their data around push notifications. Whether you’re on iOS or Android, you have the option of opting in or out of push notifications from each app that has them. The good news for communicators is that people are more likely to now choose to accept push notifications — up 60% since 2016!

What happened in 2016? I’m guessing people were getting annoyed with push notifications. And since then, app publishers learned some necessary lessons about what type of information is valuable enough to push, and also what type of push notification will actually engage users. You can see the results for yourself in 2017.

In 2016, only 27% of app users were likely to accept push notification. But this year, that increased 60% to almost half of users to 43%.

So what does this mean for internal communicators?

If you’re already managing an IC app, you might want to revisit your push notification strategy. At SocialChorus, we recommend you send 2–3 pushes a week as a way to re-engage users and highlight new content.

If you’re curious about the benefits of a mobile app for internal communications, push notifications enable your company to deliver timely and relevant triggers to employees. Push notifications should have clear calls to action but also have some fun as well. It’s a chance to be creative and see what will prompt your employees to react. You don’t want to abuse the feature but you also don’t want to ignore it. It’s a delicate balance.

Once you find the balance, the opportunities are endless. You have the ability to target and personalize push notifications down to the individual employee level. You can also send out large broadcast pushes to create awareness. It’s up to you.

But whatever you do, include an emoji or two. This might be new to your company but people like them. 👍

If you’re interested in the mobile app space (and hopefully you are) the rest of the report shares some great insights into how different age groups use apps, where they put them on their phones, how they organize apps and other great data points. To learn more about how some of the biggest brands in the world are using push notifications to engage their workforces, chat with a SocialChorus team member.

Originally published at www.socialchorus.com on October 6, 2017.