Finding the correct method to use mobile push notifications is both a science and craftsmanship. In this article, we will uncover what you have to consider. 

Push notifications are often observed as an invasive and disruptive annoyance. These notifications will come at annoying or inconvenient occasions. Sometimes people could also get annoyed due to the irrelevant information or may not feel personal to the customer.

In this segment, we’ll discuss how to create engaging push notifications, the best time to send your notification and some of the best practices that have proved to be effective.

Maximize value from your push notification

Ensure that in any event, you’re incorporating these factors into the push-notification strategy:

1. Provide Value: Make sure your customers get some value out of your push-notification. It could be some exclusive sale or latest update or some new addition, but it should be clear and have some potential value that non-users won’t get. 
2. Add visual elements: Adding some interesting pictures or videos to your push notification can give more impactful storytelling by stirring the emotional response in customers that a basic text message can’t. A study states that adding visual elements to your message increases up to 56% of open rates. 
3. Personalize: A mobile is a personal device, so communicating on the device with the username will give a more personal feel and one-to-one conversation. When compared with the generic counterparts, personalized push notification has higher open rates. 

Determine the ideal time to send your notifications

Customers across the world are living in different time zones and with different behaviors, hobbies, and activities. Customers don’t prefer to engage with all apps at the same time, so make sure to send your push notification at the suitable time of your users. 

There are three options for your push notifications: Send across immediately, or send as per the user time zone, and send at optimal time.  Especially, if you’re using intelligence, Behavioral intelligence  can engage with your customer’s at the most optimal time. Basic Metrics of appICE help marketers about the trends of their app like how customers are using your app and help in analyzing when and how you should engage with them.

If you are going to send a push-notification to your customer regarding a midnight sale, then you should send them by noon or by evening, else users might receive the notification while sleeping. 

Examples:

Users mention their typical bedtimes inside the app and this helps for the app to send reminders accordingly. This is a simple reminder with a more personal touch. It keeps the app front where users open more frequently. 

Use Rich Media In Push Notifications

Push notification with rich media allows the users to add short videos, images, icons, or some action button. Since customers are not going to click into your notifications very often, you should make sure to incorporate the necessary strategies within the push notification to get the desired outcome. For instance, recent sports updates or pictures of a product that’s lined up for upcoming sale and show them how incredible they are that they will be missing out. 

Push notification with rich media is a powerful means to enhance the user experience. A study states that push notifications with media have a higher click rate of around 9%. 

Make Use of Emojis

Adding Emojis in your push notification can help in increasing the user experience and higher engagement. Studies state that certain emojis can increase the open rate of your messages. You can either replace a suitable emoji instead of a word or place some relevant images either in front or back of the sentence to drive the meaning of the message. 

For instance, in the below notification by Plot, the emojis replace the word pizza and donut which triggers the users to click on the notification.

Make Sure to A/B Test 

 A/B testing lets you test your customer’s reaction to a specific type of message. This will also be useful to check what works and analyze their outcomes and make changes in the strategy accordingly. A/B testing is recommended for one variable at one time to analyze the outcome in a better way. It will also help you to check what’s more influencing the results. 

For instance, 

In type A, a notification can have its message, title or picture

In type B, a notification can have the same title and message, but there can be a change in pictures. 

By testing these, you can determine which type of message influences more by creating an impact on engagement and conversion. A study shows that push notification sent after A/B testing has a 10% higher open rate. 

Segment your push notifications 

Segmenting your customers based on their behavior or geographic location can have a higher engagement level among your users. This works effectively if it’s reaching users who it is relevant to. 

For instance, The Guardian utilizes location-based notifications to its best. They analyze the locations of their users and send custom notification choices for those markets.

Location-based or behavioral-based information can then be utilized to send targeted push notifications to users at the appropriate time for their morning brief read.

Notify users about a price drop

Send your users about the price change of their favorite item, or item in cart or most frequently brought. This will get their immediate attention and with the proper message, there are high chances of opening the message. 

For instance, a notification from Flights notifies users about a specific price drop and mentions how much it had dropped avoiding the effort of calculation. 

Remind customer to complete an action

Remind your customers about the items in the cart, because sometimes users add products in the cart and tend to forget about it later, so a gentle and impressive notification can make them visit your app sooner. 

For instance, Amazon sends push notification about the products in their cart along with the item name, this will help users remember the product before visiting the app.

Jet sends push notifications about the items in the cart without mentioning the products’ names, by respecting the users’ privacy. Sometimes there could be some personal items or medical products that users don’t want to get exposed to publicly.

Take away 

In order to maximize your app performance and your push notifications, you should focus more on what your audience wants. Make use of the analytics, user-centric information, and best practice to create effective push notification.