The Power of Push Notifications: Engaging and Retaining Mobile App Users

Ethan T. Lewis
April 3, 2024

As a digital marketer, have you considered leveraging push notifications, a strategy that brings your marketing messages to the fingertips of your target audience?

While brands struggle to retain users’ attention with a soaring number of apps, push notifications have emerged as a powerful marketing strategy. Do you know that push notifications boast an opening rate 50% higher than that of emails?

Successful marketers and app developers deploy push notifications as a tactical tool to capture the attention of users. In this guide, let’s explore how you can leverage push notifications and engage your mobile app users.

Key Push Notification Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

Before exploring effective push notification strategies, let’s take a look at these statistics.

  • 68% of users downloading an app receive push notifications from the app
  • As much as 90% of individuals receiving these notifications open them
  • 40% of users are likely to respond to push notifications within an hour after they receive them
  • 52% of recipients search for relevant details from the brand
  • As much as 60% of mobile app users are comfortable about receiving push notifications

Whether you reach out to your existing customers to launch a campaign, push notifications continue to be a powerful marketing tool. With the right approach, marketers can ensure a higher degree of engagement on mobile apps.

What Are Push Notifications?

A push notification is simply a message sent to the handset from a mobile app, even when a user isn’t actively using it. These notifications pop up on the screen, resembling a text alert or message.

The best part about push notifications is that they even show up above the lock screen. This grabs the attention of potential customers, driving them to take action.

Around 73% of iPhone users and 95% of Android users opt-in to receive push notifications. 

notifications

Push Notifications on Android

Push notifications on Android devices engage users with enriched media. Marketers use personalized messaging tactics and choose from flexible delivery options. Features like robust analytics and deep linking empower marketers to create compelling campaigns that drive user interactions and boost retention.

Apple Push Notifications

Push notifications on Apple are crucial for engaging iOS users. They are featured by:

  • High opt-in rates
  • Grouping for streamlined experiences
  • Interactive notifications
  • Persistent Alerts
  • Advanced Customization

Thus, push notifications on Apple devices foster long-term user engagement and loyalty.

Why To Use Push Notifications For Marketing?

Digital marketers and app builders largely use push notifications for marketing, as this strategy brings several benefits to the table.

1. Better visibility of the message

Since push notifications pop on the screen, they become visible to your target audience instantly. Even when users are inactive, marketers can send time-sensitive updates to foster better engagement.

For instance, restaurants send geo-targeted push notifications to customers when they pass close to their establishments. This way, push notifications increase the chances of customers making unplanned purchases.

2. Instantaneous communication

 Push notifications are delivered instantly to the devices of your users. This ensures real-time communication where timeliness is crucial.

Stock trading companies and finance organizations often send instant notifications to their clients to keep them abreast of market fluctuations. This ensures that users receive immediate updates on their invested assets. 

3. Better user engagement

Push notifications keep users hooked to your apps, providing updates, relevant information, and promotions. However, it’s imperative to tailor notifications to the individual preferences of customers, that enables brands to reach a larger audience. This justifies why established brands extensively count on push notifications during festive seasons to optimize reach.

4. Higher retention level

One of the key perks of using push notifications is their ability to motivate users to return to their app. This goes a long way in elevating user retention rates and reducing churn.
Reputed virtual retailers like Ubuy strategically implement push notifications to nudge their customers on daily offers, which significantly enhance the footfall.

Forward-thinking brands, backed by data analysts, deliver timely notifications on product updates, new stock arrivals, and discounts on prices. This substantially boosts user engagement, thereby retaining traffic on the apps.

5. Personalized marketing

Marketers customize push notifications based on the individual preferences of users. Working closely with data analysts, they deliver targeted push notifications to enhance the open rates of these messages.

This tactical approach prompts users to take the desired actions, like interacting with the app or making a purchase.

Best Push Notification Practices to Maximize Reach

Now that you know why marketers count on push notifications, let’s explore some of the best strategies to maximize their impact.

push notifications best practices

1. Categorize Your Audience

Segmenting your audience while sending push notifications is one of the most impactful ways to engage them. Generally, data analysts and marketers coordinate to categorize their target audience based on demographics, preferences, and purchase behaviour.

When you target specific groups of users with personalized messages, you can boost the effectiveness and relevance of your brand.

2. Categorize Your Audience

The success of your push notification campaign largely depends on timing. It’s crucial to send these notifications at the right time to have maximum impact on user engagement.

So, marketers need to factor in aspects like user behavior patterns, time zones, and peak usage times while scheduling the notifications. Well-times messages significantly reduce churn rates and boost the retention rates of apps.

3. A/B Testing

Digital marketers often incorporate A/B testing while strategizing their campaigns with push notifications. It pays to test different tactics like message timings and visuals to understand what works best for your customers. Marketers and analysts can experiment with different versions of the same promotional message and fine-tune their approach. This can improve the effectiveness of their notifications. 

4. Consistently improving push notification strategy

For app developers, it’s essential to maximize app engagement with push notifications while driving user retention. With detailed insights into the behavior and preferences of your customers, you can tweak your push notification strategy.

Successful brands have shown the way, segmenting their audience and optimizing time to boost the impact of their strategy. Thanks to advanced analytics, marketers can now make data-oriented decisions to streamline their tactics.

5. Use dynamic content

One of the key perks of using dynamic content is your ability to personalize push notifications based on the interests and actions of users. For instance, successful marketers include the location name, or references of past interactions of customers while personalizing push notifications. This makes the experiences more personalized, capturing their attention.

With dynamic content and real-time personalization, marketers can expect a higher level of engagement on apps that eventually drive conversions.

6. Optimize push notifications for various devices

 Make sure that the push notifications you send are optimized for different mobile devices. For instance, users access these messages from tablets, mobile phones, and laptops. Customizing the push notifications for each of these platforms ensures a seamless user experience.

7. Clear and concise messaging

 The text content in your push notification should be clear and concise. Focus on the brevity and value that you deliver to the receiver through these messages, It’s wise to avoid hard sales pitches or jargon in push notifications. Try to keep the text clear and action-oriented.

Push Notifications and Real-Life Success Stories 

Here are a couple of case studies that reveal the success of push notifications as an engagement strategy.

A retail app, TipRix, recorded a 35% boost in click-through rates after incorporating push notifications. It enhanced the company’s sales by 20% within the first quarter as the brand offered tailored recommendations to its customers.

A subscription-based service called Jura witnessed a 25% increment in user retention, doubling its click rates compared to email marketing. Using push notifications, they recommended personalized content and sent timely updates to their customers.

 Wrapping Up

 With the right approach, marketers can leverage the power of push notifications to the fullest and enhance engagement in apps. As you struggle for attention in the competitive digital age, using push notifications as a strategic tool can make the difference!

Now that you know how to streamline your strategy, it’s time to loop in your experts and strategize your campaign!

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