Ways Push Notifications Can Benefit Your Business App

Sometimes, your app is great but lacks engagement. At other times, app downloads are high in number but retention is too low. One thing is obvious here: you’re not being able to grab the good opportunities to engage your app users.

Now, push notifications can be a great way to engage and re-engage your customers. Provided you use them in the right way. So, let’s first understand the benefits of push notifications first and then their best practices.

Benefits of Push Notifications for a Magento 2 Mobile App

Enhance user engagement

The open rate of push notifications is 50% more than that of emails. This shows that push notifications form a great way to communicate with your app users.

Right notifications at the right time can hit the right chord with them. As they find these notifications useful, your app engagement eventually goes up.

Re-engage or retains users

Many potential users forget the app after downloading it. In other words, they hardly use it. It doesn’t always mean that they are not interested in what you have to offer. It just means that you need to remind them of the intent they had at the time of downloading your app.

Let’s break it down for your better understanding.

Generally, people have lots of apps on their mobile devices. However, they pick only a few that they need the most. They need something valuable to come back to your app often.

It may be anything – personalized offers, reminders or news. And push notifications can help you with sending value, and get your users back.

Escalate sales

Timely marketing notifications are very effective. Sending info of deals, discounts and special offers may instantly grab users’ attention. If users like your deals and offers, they may tap on the notifications and buy your products.

This way, with more users buying your products, your sales go up.

Effective Targeting

Push notifications help you target your users based on their interests or preferences. This kind of targeting can add both a personal touch and relevance to your push notifications.

As a result, your app users may show more interest in your app.

Strengthen customer care strategy

Personalized notifications that address users’ issues are beneficial. People are more likely to open them than generic ones.

Post-delivery feedback, fraud alerts, shipping status updates, reasons for shipping delays (if any) are some examples.

Such notifications make your users feel valued and enhance their app experience. And due to better experience, they may like to come back to your app again.

Track actionable metrics

Push notifications help you keep track of your users’ behavior. They offer you details of open rates, delivery recipients, click-through rates, session time. With valuable insights into such complex data, you can plan campaigns accordingly.

Enhance brand consistency

Push notifications form a good complementary marketing channel. The reason is that you can not only send valuable info but also represent your brand through them.

Including your brand logo can go a long way towards your brand recognition. Every time they see your notification, they’ll easily notice your brand through your logo.

Shortens your buyer’s journey

Deep linking in push notifications can help you simplify bringing your users down the sales funnel. By placing deep links, you can direct a user straight from a notification to a particular page in your app.

If you provide a powerful CTA, your user may perform the ‘buying’ action. Which will lead to better sales?

Now that you have understood the benefits of push notifications, you must also understand one more thing. While push notifications can be highly rewarding, they may fall flat too. Even worse, rather than engaging your users, they may come across as a big put-off at times.

A few reasons why that happens are:

• An excess of irrelevant push notifications
• No permission sought for sending push notifications from users
• Wrong timing of push notifications and several more.

So, understanding how you can use push notifications without letting them backfire is important.

Best Practices to Follow for Push Notifications:

Work out the opt-in design

What would be your reaction if anyone barges into your house? You’ll get angry, won’t you? The same is the case with push notifications. Sending them without seeking recipients’ approval may annoy users.

Therefore, you should never forget to include Opt-In. This is like seeking the user’s permission to send notifications.

The design of the opt-in also matters. Try to think of an innovative and catchy message to tell users why they should opt-in to push notifications. Remember you must provide them with a reason valuable enough to give their consent.

Add the flavor of personalization in content

Picture yourself in a garment retail store you visited for the first time. Will the sales reps be able to show you what you want instantly? Of course not! Because they have no idea of your personality or preferences.

Picture yourself again but this time in a store where you often visit. The sales reps won’t have to struggle much to show you the right apparel. As they already know you and your choices. You will feel that ‘personalized touch’.

The same is the case with push notifications. Once you have sought uses’ consent, try to personalize messages. You can personalize your push notifications as per various factors – age, gender, location, recently viewed items, purchase history, and more.

This personalization will make your customers feel special. Hence, they will like your app and engage with it more.

Time your push notifications well

Hit the iron when it is hot. The saying goes with push notifications too. Sending a push notification but not at the right time may be of no avail.

Let’s understand it with a practical scenario.

Picture yourself as a fashion e-store owner. You have decided to hold an end-of-season clearance sale. What if you don’t time them properly? What if you send them later only to find out the sale is about to end in a day or two?

Would your push notifications be as effective as you expected them to be?

Well, the answer is ‘NO’. Because most of the users may have already availed the sales and discounts on other e-stores.

And the remaining users may not make a big difference to the sales figures. They may even consider you incompetent as you couldn’t inform them what they wanted at the right time.

So, the timing of push notifications is equally crucial.

Acknowledge users’ value openly

In this highly competitive world, users are spoiled for choices in everything. And apps are not an exception. Even your loyal customers may sometimes deviate from using your app. And start finding an alternative app to yours.

Here, you need to understand that despite being your loyal customers, they may require ‘nudging’ from time to time. For that, you should let them know how much you value them. Don’t shy away from showing that you missed them and want them back.

Give these dormant users some solid reasons to come back to your app. Pursue them to check out the latest deals, new products or features, etc. Or let them know the good deals they have missed.

Try out FOMO strategies

FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) marketing is highly trending these days. Different FOMO strategies like:

• Showing them the recent purchases
• Showing them the best-selling products
• Showing them limited-time offers with a clock running
• Showing them the remaining stock
• Showing them exclusive offers can elicit instant actions.

The Final Takeaway

Push notifications can not only help engage app visitors but also trigger instant purchases. With more instant purchases from your Magento 2 mobile app, your sales escalate and boost your business. Good luck with push notifications!

Author Bio:

Maulik Shah is the founder and CEO of AppJetty, a fast-growing app and extension store for various technologies. He writes about multiple aspects of eCommerce technology and is enthusiastic about making online business management easy