How to Make Push Notifications That No One Can Ignore

Push notification-enabled app users are shown to have higher engagement and retention, along with lower abandonment overall. The only problem with this study-backed information is that 60% of users opt out of push notifications.

What's the point of having such an effective tool if the majority of people opt out?

The main problem is that people are often bombarded with push notifications that have no relevance, value or convenience. If you can portray to your customers that you have push notifications that are worth their time, you are well on your way to notification success.

Keep reading to learn how to make push notifications that no one can ignore.

Send Both Personal and Relevant Messages

Once a user feels they don't receive personalized value from your push notifications, they will stop getting the messages.

What are some of the main reasons users actually subscribe to push notifications? According to Localytics, 50% of users enable push notifications because they know special or exclusive offers are provided. Some of the other main reasons for subscribing to push notifications are:

• To get real time notifications about sales and availability
• To stay up to date with your current products and services
• To view inventory
• To access their favorite brands while on the move (because of Geolocating)

Therefore, focusing on these elements is the first step to making your messaging more relevant. Push notifications still lack some of the more complex targeting features, like for demographics, but if you know your customers, you can personalize the messages and understand exactly why they come to your company for help.

An Example of a Personal and Relevant Message

If you run a company that sells maternity clothing, or just women's clothing in general, don't you think these customers would find a buy one get one sale rather interesting? It's personal since your customers at least have the potential to be mothers, and it's relevant, because people enjoy promotions through push notifications.

Make the Push Notification Convenient and Easy

One struggle many companies encounter is how to convince the users that they should take action after the push notification is sent out. For example, if you tell people that they can receive a free training session at your fitness center, it serves as an enticing offer. However, you lose customers, or make them simply forget when you don't close the deal right there.

How do customers sign up for the free training session? Is there a form that goes through the app, making it both easy and convenient? Could you allow them to download a coupon for saving it to their phone and bringing it into the shop?

An Example of a Convenient and Easy Message

Although push notifications allow for links to other pages in your app (like a reservation form for this fitness training example,) it's important to specify, in words, how the users should go about receiving their promotion or coupon. In this case, I simply stated that the customers could book a time through the app, minimizing confusion and pushing some of the business through my mobile app.

Ensure Your Timing is Perfect

The key to the ideal push notification timing is to look at when and how often you're sending out your messages. First, let's take a look at when to send out your messages. Most of this depends on your industry, but think about a restaurant. If folks are booking times for tables in advance, there's a small chance that users would appreciate a reminder to book a table ten minutes before 10 o'clock at night.

However, if you have a busy Valentine's night, and someone cancels their reservation, an opportunity for a promotion comes to mind. In this case you could give out a free entree, or something similar, if someone books the table within the next 20 minutes. This way, you fill your table and the customer receives a nice gift.

How often you send out your push notifications is also an essential part of your strategy. This depends on the type of messaging. If you're sending out receipts, confirmations or anything of that sort, shoot these out as needed.

However, for sales, promotions, news and other items, choose a frequency, preferably around once a week, and stick to it.

An Example of a Message with Nice Timing

That's it for learning how to make push notifications that no one can ignore. Leave us a line in the comments section if you have any questions about creating interesting messages, or even if you have some tips for other mobile app owners out there.

Joe Warnimont is a freelance tech writer who mans the iBuildApp blog, along with his personal Write With Warnimont blog. When not playing around with apps and gadgets, he's brushing up on his German or riding his bike in Chicago.