How To Use Push Notifications In Driving Retention Effectively?

What's the best way to make sure that your target audience or a specific set of app users stay connected to your mobile app on their smartphone? Two words - Push Notifications!

Push Notifications are not the one and only option to connect with the best mobile applications. However, they are a great asset that can help you increase your user and app retention rate.

Nowadays every mobile and web application consists of push notifications as a necessary part of their User Experience (UX). So, why not make this necessary part even better to make the app users come back to the application over and over again?

These notifications can sometimes be annoying:

• When the notification shows irrelevant information to the user.
• When the notification pops up way too frequently from the same app.

Sometimes the end-user gets so frustrated with the constant push notification updates that they end up uninstalling their web or mobile application. Nevertheless, once you get the hang of it, you would see customer engagement like never before. Here’s why push notifications are the best!

Main Benefits of Push Notifications

As mentioned above, push notifications are an incredible way to invite users to never stop using the app. Here’s why it is the best approach.

1. Higher Interactivity

With push notifications, companies have the power to draw a user's attention to their message and transform that user into a potential customer for their app. But this mainly depends on what content you are presenting the user and how you are presenting it.

2. Lower Cost

Push notifications are comparatively low priced. Because many companies tend to send mass messages to their customers, it is possible that they can get extra services from their service providers to send push notification ideas. 

3. Instant Response

Push notifications are a great way to provide the information almost instantly to the users. Once the information is displayed, the response of the user is mostly instant. If the user is intrigued by the content and wants to know more, they can click the displayed notification. 

As mentioned by the Head of Search, Learning, and Intelligence at SLACK, Noah Weiss,

“A great push notification is three things: Timely, Personal and Actionable.”

You can easily use push notifications wisely to increase your app and user retention rate but you just need to follow a couple of tips when it comes to sending notifications to the users.

Always remember the fact that push notifications best practices are the ones that make sure that the messaging is a win-win situation for both i.e. for your app user and for your mobile app itself.

Here are some questions that you need to ask yourself first before heading towards your push notification content:

• What is the goal of the notification? What do you want the users to do after clicking the notification?
• Is the message in the notification relevant in content and in a timely manner?
• Will this notification message will be able to add more value to the app or not?
• How should I target my audience with this push notification engagement?
• Should I use interactive icons and buttons to collect some extra insights from the users?

Top Push Notification Practices 

A number of people say that these push notifications are a blessing as well as a curse as they can remind the app user that the application has been installed. And it can also remind end-users that a particular app is installed from their mobile device. Listed below are some of the best practices for using push notification marketing strategy: 

1. Get an opt-in feature

The very first thing that you need to do is select the opt-in feature for the push notifications feature because app users don't appreciate getting constant updates from the apps that they have not opted for. An opt-in is the best way to get the user's confirmation for push notifications from the app.

2. Relevant Notifications

Instead of sending a basic bot-generated content for every user, try to make them more personalized and user-specific by adding a few personal details, like the name of the user. Your push notification marketing content should be unique and should creatively greet the user.
Example:

3. Select the Keyword that matter

Sometimes, it's all about picking the right words when it comes to the content of push notifications or personalized user messages. Always make sure to create content that is interesting to read and adds value to the app. While generating content, the use of the right tone is important. Moreover, unlike these lengthy blogs, your push notification message should contain no more than 10 to 12 words.

Here are some easy tricks to help you write amazing content:

• Have a crystal clear call-to-action.
• Be as precise as possible.
• Choose 10 to 12 words very carefully and smartly.

4. Be Informative to the User

Make sure that your app users know that you missed them since they haven’t interacted with your mobile application in a while. This is easily one of the most overlooked practices in push notifications features, but even a simple message like this can be a great way to increase user retention in your app. Uber does this just right and then there’s 8Tracks that took it to another level altogether.

Note: The Design and structure of push notification marketing strategies are also observed by the end-users. Redesign your push notification bar often, i.e. in every couple of months, so that your users do not get bored with the same pattern or design.

Important Statistics Related To Push Notifications

As per a new study conducted by Localytics, listed below are some of the statistics in relation to push notifications and their role in mobile applications:

• Users who enable push alerts are more engaged than users who don't i.e. push-enabled app users logged into 53% more monthly sessions in comparison to users who didn’t enable push notifications.
• Approx. 60% of push-enabled users returned to the app one month after they downloaded it, meaning that the first-month retention is much stronger in comparison to second and third. 
• Three months later, more than 40% of push-enabled users were still using the app, meaning push-enabled users have higher longevity rates. 

Top Apps That Are Acing The Use Of Push Notifications 

Here are some of the examples of push notifications that are doing an impeccable job in maintaining constant user interaction.

• Lyft - This cab-hailing service notifies its customers to book a cab by the message:

• The Weathere Channel - This is the message The Weather Channel uses to deliver timely weather forecast: 

• Amazon - Whenever a user leaves a product review, this is how Amazon thanks the user:

• Tinder - If you get a match on Tinder, this is what Tinder has to say in its notification:

• Spotify - This is how Spotify sends push notifications to its app users:

• Expensify - Whenever a transaction occurs in your linked account on Expensify, the user gets notified by:

Final Thoughts

If you are a mobile app owner, these notifications can be your greatest assets in driving the retention rate of your mobile application, but only when they are used strategically. Basically, a notification is a way of reminding your app user about the app's existence or informing the user about a new update or feature on your app that they should definitely check out.

So, these are some of the best practices that you can surely try to drive your retention rate using the push notifications on your web or mobile apps. You should also take a look at the best push notification campaigns for your app to drive user engagement. 

To read more about interesting articles on driving customer retention and push notification marketing, click ‘Subscribe’ and stay tuned with MobileAppDaily to get notified by our new updates. Relax, we don’t spam, so don’t worry!