You’ll be losing a large audience base if you are not making an effective use of push technology. It won’t be wrong to say that email messaging campaigns are bygones now. With spam filters capturing most of the email marketing messages, and due to large volume of such emails, many customers have become unsusceptible to email marketing. As far as the text messaging is concerned, it offers great potential; but, again, consumers are often unwilling to provide their contact numbers and subscribe.
Push technology, however, offers stupendous potential if used correctly. According to a recent marketing survey, 68% of the consumers who download apps typically proceed to the next step of enabling the push notifications option. As a fact, among consumers in the age group of 18-34, about 80% enable the push notifications.
This clearly indicates the significant opportunities this push technology offers to marketers. According to another research, an app’s average lifespan is just 30 days which a quite a short time span. If used appropriately, push notifications empower you to extend the expiration date on your app, thus motivating more users to keep coming back.
Push technology was originally developed by Apple and the very first launch was made for iOS 3.0. Since then, it has been modified for use in Android. The push technology allows marketers to send direct messages to individuals who have installed their application on mobile devices. These messages can even be delivered when the app is closed. The notification may appear as a pop-up message, a badge or an alert notifying users they have a message.
Push technology enables the marketers to engage directly with customers by providing relevant information and reap the benefits. Such information may include breaking news, discount or other special deals, game challenges, information of new products, coupons, incentives for retail purchases, special contests, etc.
When developing a marketing strategy based on push technology, ‘context’ is perhaps the most important factor that marketers should take into consideration. It is this context that makes consumers gravitate towards a mobile device over a PC. By taking advantage of the user’s surroundings, including activities, location and timing, this amazing technology makes it possible for consumers to benefit from an enhanced experience.
Here are a few tips for marketers that can used to effectively leverage push technology.
Value is highly significant
You need to make sure that the notifications you send to your users are of significant value to them. If the notification is not valuable, they will simply turn off the notification option. You need to remember that this notification is more of an interruption. So, ensuring it’s worth it, is really essential, or you may lose your users.
Relevancy counts
Besides ensuring that your notification messages are valuable, they must be relevant too. Value and relevance have different meanings. Each message that you send to your users should be based upon the data you have about them. Give enough time on evaluating what your users have downloaded, purchased or shared in the past. Other information, including location details, is particularly helpful in determining the relevancy of messages. Highly targeted messages can increase the response rates multiple times.
Maintain brand consistency
Push notifications are nothing but an extension to your other marketing channels. So, you need to make sure that your brand remains consistent across the board. Devote enough time to think about the best voice for your push notifications.
Deliver an engaging experience
Do you know why your users subscribe to push notifications? Think of as many possible reasons as you can before framing your push notification messages. Try to provide timely and relevant information like sports scores, latest news, special deals, etc. so that your users genuinely look forward to your notifications. Also, keep your messages fresh, interesting, and engaging.
Improve over time
As in the case of any other form of marketing, be sure to track the open rates of your push notifications. This will help you analyze which notifications are liked by your users and which failed to attract them. Based on this analysis, you can fine-tune your notifications to provide a more engaging experience for your users.
Given that push technology can be used to deliver a more engaging experience and build a stable customer base, it is indeed a powerful marketing strategy that should be used to its fullest advantage. But, as with our marketing processes, it is required that you use it carefully and smartly.
