(Serhat Beyazkaya, SmartMessage Product Marketing Manager)Back in the first years of this millennium, Blackberry introduced mobile phone users with the experience of push notification. The advance of technology also positively impacted notifications adding new capabilities to user engagement. While Blackberry was targeting only the business-oriented audience, push notifications started to spread to wider audiences through the launch of Apple’s iPhone.
In today’s technology, a push notification can contain plain text, media consisting of images, audio, video, or action buttons allowing marketers to interact with their audiences with rich content. The ultimate goal is to keep the user informed of innovations and developments, to enable the user to interact with the application, to give warnings, to assist or to make the user take the necessary steps on the customer journey to generate revenue.
With technology, there is a lot of choices – users in a market can move to the competitor brands in a short period. To avoid this, companies should keep communication at the top level. The best interaction formula is to send the right message to the right person at the right time. For this, segmentation and personalization are elements that brands need to address consciously and consistently.
Data is the Essence
Like many marketing channels, push marketing requires accurate data collection and management over time.
According to Urban Airship research, 95% of opt-in users who don’t receive a push notification in the first 90 days will churn.
Of course, this statistic does not mean that all users who install your application will want to receive every notification you forward. However, at least in the first opening, dialogue with a Landing Page describing the types and benefits of Push notification and enabling them to specify their preferences for better user experience will be a very efficient source of information to segment the data later.
If you do not have a category break or scenario to do this, the behavior of the members who start using the application as a second step will provide you with valuable information. New users, one time stoppers, active or forgotten ones in time (churn) will at least form 4 crucial segments in the first stages of push marketing.
Other major data sources that will allow you to create segmented lists are campaign reports, analytical tools such as Google, data systems such as CRM, demographic information, interests received during registration, mobile device and mobile reading information.
The next step in segmenting the correct targeting is personalization. Sending personalized messages to people within segments will allow you to increase interaction rates, which are the common goal of each brand.
According to the survey conducted by Localytics in 2018, personalized segment notifications had an opening rate of 8.8 percent, while segment notifications had an opening rate of 4.75 percent, while messages with no segment or customization had an opening rate of 3.17 percent.
Many mobile users want to receive messages that are unique to them, including their past preferences and current behavior. However, because too much personalization does not mean sending messages too often if the right strategy is not followed, it can lead to turning off notifications and, worse, delete the application. Therefore, the methods to be personalized should be chosen correctly.
According to Pew Research, 43% of users reported uninstalling an app after learning how much personal information the app required.
Relevant Content is Essential
As with any marketing channel, you must first create content to reach your audience. Since gaining members is much more difficult than losing, it is crucial to feed them with the right information. As we mentioned earlier, personalization is an important tool to reach success regarding this issue.
To summarize; contents should be created according to the preferences or actions of each member. Here are a few examples of how personal content can be:
Communicating to the user that the ticket price for a destination that he has previously searched for in the travel application has been reduced will be much more effective than a campaign sent to everyone. The member most probably will not be interested in a general campaign.
Instead of saying “You haven’t logged in for a long time, come and listen to your favorite music” to a user who hasn’t logged in to the music app for a long time, sending a notification with the name of the group he listens most will make the user feel more special.
Sending a personal assistant like message such as “You need to go out now to be at the address you plan to reach on time” to the user that activated reminder feature as Google will increase the interaction rates.
52% of consumers say they’d switch brands if they didn’t feel they were receiving a personalized experience. (Urban Airship Study)
The Importance of Delivery Times
Push marketing is a great way to send your users instant messages, but irrelevant timing and location will negatively affect their interaction. Segmentation aligned with your users’ day and time preferences and past campaign read analysis will improve your success. Sending messages to global customers without considering their time zones will decrease read rates. It also carries the risk of losing users due to being marked as spammy.
Benefits of Location-Based Marketing
Having location information and targeting accordingly through a mobile application is perhaps the biggest feature that distinguishes Push channel from desktop or traditional marketing methods. As with SmartMessage Push Marketing, you can send notifications to members within the store or to a location you specify on the map with “Geo-location”, “Geo-fencing” or “Beacon” methods. You can maximize interaction by sending personalized messages with discounts/promotions, information, or referral content to your member because you know interests, past behavior, or simply they go through a point associated with your brand.
48% of mobile app users made an in-store purchase after receiving a push notification triggered by profile data. (Localytics Survey)
Push marketing is a channel with high returns and power to reach big audiences instantly once implemented with the right strategies. Integrated with other channels in automation scenarios, it maximizes the efficiency of campaigns. Managing email, SMS, and push channels from one platform like in SmartMessage empowers brands to use unified data across channels, improving segmentation and personalization to reach engagement targets.
Feel free to contact us to have more information on push marketing.
