When properly planned and executed, push notifications let users engage with an app thereby increasing conversions and maximising profits. Undoubtedly, this handy tool has become the marketers’ choice of today! Although most marketers irrespective of the industry and domains rely on push notifications for success, not all are able to reap the desired benefits. And, this is because of implementing them in a wrong manner. But, don’t worry as these mistakes are easily fixable and we have pointed them out below for you alongside mentioning the way you can fix them.
1.Sending too many notifications
Sending out too many notifications is not just damaging in the first place but is the most common mistakes made by marketers. It might seem to be beneficial initially with an increase in the number of subscribers in a short span of time but it leads to a lot more opt outs in the future.
How to fix? As too many notifications do more harm than any good to your users, make sure to send out notifications only for communicating the information which is relevant and useful for the users at that point in time and they must be able to derive a value from it. Also note that there is no specific time and number of notifications which must be sent out.
2. Adopting the ‘one size fits all’ approach
As marketers, we all must realize the fact that all human beings are different in almost every sense, i.e. from demographics to our interests and behavioural patterns.So, when sending out push notifications make sure to personalise them as per your audience. Not doing so is one of the main causes of them opting out. Hence, the one size fits all approach must be given up as soon as possible.
How to fix? There are numerous ways through which you can get to know the preferences of your audience. One such method is by asking for preferences as soon as one subscribes and then categorizing them accordingly. For example, elearning industry retargets its audience by sending them notifications spreading the word for a new course or providing a free trial of something the user is looking for. And, when surfing the internet via desktop users are notified even when they are on another web page thereby increasing its vitality. There are various other ways in which push notifications prove advantageous for users and you can check them out in this elearning browser notification guide.
3. You’re not tracking the right metrics
Simply tracking click rates and believing those immediate numbers is a major issue on the part of marketers. With this, you’re missing out on the actual conversions and value derived by your business.
How to fix? Make sure you track all your purchases, free trails, filled forms, and ad clicks among others. Carefully analyse all your data you obtain via Google Analytics and find out how your website visitors are performing these actions and how many come through push notifications. You’ll be able to determine and obtain relevant data only after evaluating this way.
4. Only relying on mobile push notifications
While most of us are aware about mobile push notifications and tend to resort to them for marketing, we overlook the other channel, i.e. browser. Yes, this functionality exists for browsers as well. As per Google’s 2015 release of Chrome Version 42, website push notifications allowed users to opt in for updates from their desired websites thereby allowing marketers to effectively re-engage with them.
How to fix? Harness the full power of push notifications by adopting all the channels available. Complement your mobile push notifications with browser push notifications and vice versa for best results.
Now that you’re aware of the best ways to implement your push notification strategy, start with rectifying your errors and optimize your approach.