20 Must-Do Push Notification Best Practices For Ecommerce Marketers

Mobile marketing is the recent buzzword and push notification is definitely an indispensable part of this promotional journey. Reaching the users out of the app usage was not an easy task but the push notifications have made it possible. It has the power to stay apart without getting lost in the colossal crowd of unread messages. Although push notifications are the ideal way of grabbing user attention, they can be easily manipulated - if, in wrong hands, it has more influence to do wrong than anything right.

Problems

According to a report published a year ago, people find push notifications really annoying. The fact is push messages are nothing but attention seekers. They like to grab user's response being a direct communicating line between the customer and the app. It is important that only relevant messages reach the app user without infuriating them. The problems that usually arise in case of push notifications are-

� When the user is giving consent for push notifications, marketers must ensure only the relevant updates are reaching the customer by knowing their set of preferences.

� It must be realized soon that push notification is a privileged tool that must not be used for spamming users with all day frequent messages.

� Wrong timing can annoy a user and make them instinctively delete the app. To avoid any such thing set the timer right for relevant alerts.

� Before sending any push messages certain criteria like age, time, basically all user info is must because otherwise you are bound to send wrong messages to wrong people.

� Push ads through notifications are a complete no for any user who wishes to stay with you and likes your app.

� Late messages can annoy people to the core.

� Marketers must ensure that opting out of push messages must be as easy as opting in for notifications. Easy settings can stop the customers from deleting the app completely.

Industry Overview

The year 2015 was considered as the game changer for push notification industry. From general push messages, the focus shifted to segmented notifications to target users based on their preferences. The changeover from spammy, unrelated push messages to planned tactical ones significantly enhanced consumer engagement, retention, and experience. Every industry must be flexible enough to remain in the forefront of the varying flows of customer needs. The fashionistas and creators struggle to imagine the subsequent popular trend, whereas, the medical scholars try to retort to nature's hardest queries. To become a leader in a particular industry setting trends is more important than just following them blindly.

Push notifications are the most economical and best way to drive app retention and engage your customers. But, often it is applied in a thoughtless, insensitive, and honestly indecorous manner. A new report from Accenage that is based on more than 38 billion push messages suggests, if such notifications are applied and used fittingly, push messages can be very influential on Android (until the launch of Android M OS), with 100% opt-in rate.

20 Interesting Solutions

The Push Notifications are as important as the user experience (UX) of your app because the researchers believe that more than 71% of the app uninstallations are usually triggered by the push messages. The bottom line is bad push practices can be harmful as push notifications directly hit the users and not the devices. So let's check out few of the best push practices to hit the bull's eye.

1. Respect to the Specific Local Timezone

It is quite easy to think and act according to your own time zone like "its 8 p.m. in India so let's start circulating the push messages". The push notification doesn't work that way. When your customers are involved it becomes vital that your messages hit the user at the right time when they are ready to receive it according to their time zone. A decent push service will definitely reduce the server load and stagger the messages over a window if required.

2. Internally Prioritize a Message

What is prioritizing a message? The marketers often think, the more, the better. Right? It is not the same in all cases. Many times, more can reduce your revenue, your users, usage, feedback, and everything. Sending 23-50 pushes a day to the customers can not only irritate them but also make them uninstall an app. Thus, internally prioritizing a message to 5-10 maximum per day can help and suit most of the applications.

3. Avoid Generic Pushes

Considering a hard limit to multiple pushes per day can be an effective practice. You might be thinking of sending various services that can help your app interact with the user, inform them and gain user preference knowledge. But, generic pushes can be termed as bad practice. Giving preference to the transactional messages can grab more attention of the user.

4. Value Your User's Sleep

As far as night is concerned, people usually want a good night's sleep in order to start a fresh day. Mobiles are usually put on silent or do not disturb mode while people are asleep. Considering this, do you really think people really have time to go through all the push messages pouring in throughout the night or in the early morning? So, marketers must also value the user's sleep and limit the notifications till day time. Maybe a summary push notification in the morning can be more effective than 10 odd messages at night.

5. Personalise Content For Users

The push messages can be personalised and sent to the users to make it more valuable. Except for junk and irrelevant messages, news alerts, deals, and chats based on user preferences can create a positive impact. Numerous marketing automation are possible with some very basic data inputs. Like how long the app is installed on your device, what level of the game you are at present, your last usage, and many such small things can help in personalizing push messages for the users.

6. Favour the Transactional Pushes

The 1:1 push messages that are usually directed to the single user and are not commonly unique with audience division, is termed as a transactional push. For instance, their package is being shipped or there's a new like, and more. Such notifications are seamlessly bespoke as per the definition. Yet, timeliness is one of the best practices that one must adhere to.

7. Personalize with User Name

When a message is purely meant for a user and is indicated with the user's name in the push messages, like Ronit, it is time for your doctor's visit in another 4 hours; people take it more seriously and truly like such notifications.

8. Make it Simple and Short within 10 words

To create impact in minds of the users, 10 words are more than enough to convey the right message what you wish to let your user know.

9. Correct Implementation of the Technology

To keep the 71% stats shown above at bay, implementing the notifications rightly is very important. It is not just about certificates and provisioning.

10. Seeking Permission is Indeed Vital

The pop-up alert appearing at the beginning of installing an app seeking permission is ideally the most vital checkpoint. Without the permission of the user notifications cannot be pushed.

11. Seek a 3rd Party Service

Setting up push notifications is not an easy task to do it on your own. Seeking help from the 3rd party service is the best option in terms of topping, consistency and good features.

12. Opt Content Preload

If you are directed to some in-app content by a push message, preloading it with available API is most likely to do. This can delay the push by few seconds but you get the ready to go UI, without waiting for the irritating loading screen.

13. Easy Availability of the Notification Settings

Difficulty in locating the notification configurations can be annoying for the customers. Easy availability of the setting to turn off or on the notification is vital.

14. Personalize Message as per Location

Appropriate location-based significant messages will develop engagement with the customers. Personalizing messages according to the location of the user can be a great practice.

15. Out of the Box Thinking

It is important that you deliver specific value and unique content to end users while incorporating the push notifications in your planning strategies. This requires out-of-the-box thinking. The push ads are not just a slice of your communication approach; it is a portion of customer's mobile involvement with your brand.

16. Smart Segmentation

The CRM software or the in-app behaviour must be the intelligent factors for smart segmentations. The user behaviour and profiles are both required for a solid division planning.

17. Defining KPI

The mobile key performance indicator can help you understand the real engagements, long-term retention or conversion, and lifetime or revenue value of the product whereas, the click and conversion rates just helps in understanding the preliminary achievement of a campaign.

18. Content plays a Major Role

The content of your message creates a strong impact on the success of push notifications. Such as, "off", "discounts", "promo code", etc. have a strong interest of the consumers.

19. Rich Pushes

Apart from the text content, the Android forever lol and iOS 10 brings forward rich pushes. Now, your push previews can include GIF images and videos. For arbitrary views from your iOS 10, you can study in detail.

20. Expired Message Removal

Once the message loses its relevance, it must be automatically removed. For instance, 50% off on shoes was an offer valid a week ago but at present is of no use to the user, so it must be removed automatically.

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 By Moupriya Das

Article Source: 20 Must-Do Push Notification Best Practices For Ecommerce Marketers