5 Highly Effective Push Notification Tips for E-Commerce Businesses
Get More Opens, Clicks, and Conversions With These 5 Simple Push Notification Tips
Push messages are weirdly underrated. Just check out these statistics, and see if you don’t agree.
The average person checks their phone 110 times each day. This means they see their home screens and lock screens — and the push messages on them — often. As a result, using push notifications gives apps a 171% engagement boost, driving sales and registrations.
These are incredible results — and yet only 1 in 4 US companies have a push notification strategy. Many ignore them altogether; an expensive mistake in modern e-commerce.
Fortunately, you can do better yourself (and show others how to sell more) after you learn how to use push messages properly with these 5 tips.
1. When to Send Push Notifications for Better Open Rates
All your marketing channels have days and hours when messages get the most views, clicks, conversions. These are your optimal posting times. If you prioritize sending push messages at these times, you’ll see improved results.
Here’s an example of how open rates vary by day (from a Tapajoy study):
Of course, Tapjoy’s table is based on the data they have. This means that your own results may vary from those above. To make sure you’re always in touch with what works best for you, collect and analyze your own in-app data.
Until then, remember that:
- Monday and Tuesday are generally the best days for push messages
- Users don’t like too many nor too few push messages. Don’t go above 5 messages/week or below 4 messages/month.
- Time zones exist. Send your messages when your target audience is the most likely to be awake and off work.
The next push message element to optimize is…
2. Using Push Notification-Specific Power Words
Certain words trigger strong emotions, associations, and compulsions in readers. Common examples in marketing include “free”, “now” and “stop”. Using these words can give you an edge in open rates and conversions, as they’re proven to improve marketing performance.
That’s why I suggest you open and bookmark this list of 380 highly persuasive power words. The list will improve your results, and potentially save you a lot of time.
Just remember that lists like this one are not geared towards any particular channel. For better results, experiment and find words that do well with push messages. You may be surprised what you discover.
(For example, Tapajoy did their own research and found that “Rewards”, “Gift” and “Get your” all work well — even though these are not power words in e-mail marketing.)
And remember that, in addition to the words themselves, you can…
3. Use Push Notification Formatting to Your Advantage
Push messages aren’t limited to ASCII symbols. This means they can include hyperlinks, emojis and other elements that aren’t letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. Thanks to this, you can:
Use Emojis to Boost Conversions. Emojis work on several levels. First, most people associate them with personal messages, which means they’re better at getting attention. Second, emojis act as a visual aid for your text, helping users digest and memorize your message faster. Adding them boosts conversions by up to 85%, making emojis a valuable tool.
Use Deep Links. “Deep links” work like hyperlinks on the web. The difference is, they don’t direct people to a page; instead, they take them to a specific asset inside your app. This can static content, interactive content, a product page, an offer; anything you like.
Using deep links emojis, you can improve your list’s engagement while also taking them to targeted resources inside your app. This is helpful in itself — but even more so when paired with…
4. Personalized Push Notifications
Brands that personalize their push messages see open rates skyrocket by up to 800%. This may surprise traditional marketers because their methods — targeting by name, profession, etc — are irrelevant in this channel. Instead, push notification personalization is about:
- Previous actions
- Location
- Preferences
- Past Purchases
Using all these to personalize your messages will improve your results across the board. For example, a live broadcast re-targeted previous page visitors and saw a 483% boost to viewership. In another example, location-based special offers improved an e-store’s conversions by 34%. Overall, personalized content gets viewed 393% more often.
These are remarkable results — Right!
And the best part is, only 34% of marketers use context to any degree in their push messages. This means that simply doing anything to personalize puts you ahead of most brands!
Last but not least, let’s talk about the final aspect of personalization; the “glue” that will make the 4 tips above deliver their best results.
5. A/B Split Testing Push Messages
The entire blog post thus far is based on data that other brands got from running experiments. That data is useful, but it’s secondary as far as your brand as concerned. It will never be as valid as the primary data you collect internally.
This is why A/B split testing — the process of running disparate marketing messages to the same segment and comparing results — is so important. Here’s how it works:
- You take a “control” message which is what you’d usually send in a given situation.
- You take a “test” message which is what you’re testing.
If the test performs better, it becomes the new control. If it doesn’t, the old control stays. This simple process helps you arrive at the best possible push notification strategies over time.
When you get to that point, you’ll start to see even better results from your push messages. Just remember; they’re only one part of a smart-and-balanced app marketing strategy. If you’re serious about getting an edge in the booming mobile e-commerce space, you need a full set of instruments to work with.
Download our App Marketing Toolkit
As luck would have it, we’re giving our App Marketing Toolkit away for free, here. Download it now and start enjoying the improved results that come with our very own app marketing insights!
