PUSH
NOTIFICATION
BEST PRACTICES
Reaching Beyond the App to Add Value and Increase Customer Intimacy
by Jose Santa Ana, Director of Product Marketing, Message Systems
Apps Are a Great Mobile Play
Mobile apps have one of the fastest adoption rates of
any new technology introduced in recent times, making
them one of the most effective communications channels
available to marketers today.
In 2012, just 4 years after the launch of Apple’s App Store in July 2008, consumers had already downloaded 25 billion mobile
apps on their iPhones, iPads and other Apple devices. And from the Android app store? Another 10 billion apps.
Today, a new generation of apps is changing how we shop, how we consume media, how we communicate and how we spend our free time. In January 2014, Americans used smartphone and tablet apps more than PCs to access the Internet — the
1 http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/28/technology/mobile/mobile-apps-internet
first time that has ever happened1. According to data from
comScore, Inc. (www.comscore.com):
The smartphone is now an indispensable personal device unlike anything humankind has ever created — and apps are a big reason why.
In addition to creating amazing mobile experiences, apps offer a way for businesses to extend their influence beyond the walls of the app itself by using push notifications or “push.” This e-book explains how using push can extend
business reach, even when a user isn’t actively engaged — and will tell you what makes push a win-win for you and for your customers.
In January 2014, mobile
devices accounted for
55
%
of Internet usage
in the United States.
of traffic came from
mobile apps
of traffic came from
mobile browsers
8
%
Getting Noticed Isn
’
t Easy
ABI Research reports there are now at least 1.79 billion apps across the four app markets — Google, Apple, Windows and Blackberry, with Google (at 800,000 apps) and Apple (at 775,000 apps) offering the vast majority.
For brands and app owners it’s a tough battle to get the user engaged. Just getting your app to their device is a challenge. According to Flurry Analytics (www.flurry.com), a typical user has 65 apps installed on his or her smartphone. With no shortage of new apps in sight, it’s easy for apps to get lost in the crowd. And users frequently clear out the old to make room for the new. Even if your app makes it to a device, it doesn’t mean it’s there to stay.
Like you, users determine the value of an app by how relevant it is to their needs. Applying Push correctly increases that relevancy and the chance that your app will remain on their “must have” list.
Push notifications allow businesses to communicate to the consumer via the app after it has been downloaded. Notifications from the servers of third-party applications are forwarded to mobile devices using push technology through a constantly open IP connection. Such notifications may include:
These notifications show up on the mobile device even when the associated app is not open.
What Exactly is Push?
SOUNDS
CUSTOM TEXT ALERTS BADGE INCREMENTS
Making Apps More Useful
The value in adding push messaging to a well-designed application is that it remains useful and relevant by regularly demonstrating value through delivering
timely and meaningful content to the user. If a user has opted in to your push messages, you have the chance to deliver a little bit of value and draw them back into your app on a regular basis — no matter how deep in the app pages an icon might be buried.
Word of Caution:
When customers opt in to receive your push
notifications, they are giving you permission to send messages directly to them — even when your app isn’t open. While the allure of push notifications is that they require the user to take immediate action by opening the application, poorly executed push messages have the potential to annoy and alienate users, such that they delete the mobile message or turn of push notifications altogether.
Push technology enables a variety of conversation types, including broadcast messages to all customers, segmented messages to certain customers and personalized one-on-one conversations — all customized to the user’s preferences.
Push messages can be used for a wide range of communications opportunities including:
Content That Calls for Push
Customer service alerts Reminders
New content availability notices Confirmations
Social updates
Relevant and requested offers Breaking news
Weather and traffic alerts Location-specific information Banking alerts
While all these use cases present opportunities
to use push, the strengths of mobile app and push
notifications lie in:
App
Re-engagement
Geo-targeted
Mobile Messaging
Update Alerts
Social Alerts
Transactional
Messages
Fraud Alerts
That’s because these types of messages deliver personalized experiences that drive customer engagement. Just as marketers learned that mass-produced, generic messages don’t work in email, they’re learning too that mass-produced, generic messaging doesn’t work with push.
Five Steps to Ensure your
Push Doesn’t Become a Shove
While push does give you unprecedented access to reach your customers directly, it should be used wisely and judiciously. A push can feel like a shove if done incorrectly. Your customer can easily turn off push notifications if they get shoved one too many times; or even worse, uninstall your app completely.
Here are 5 steps to help ensure your push doesn’t become a shove:
Adapt to fit the customer’s situation
Your push notification program needs to allow your customer two things: first, that they be able to set specific times when they want to receive your notifications. Your apps should have an easily accessible control panel where users can define a quiet period when no messages are delivered. For example, between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. They should also be able to specify which days of the week they want to receive messages, or block out do-not-disturb days.
Second, push should adapt to the context the customer is in. Mobile devices, by their very nature, are on the move; so a person’s location changes frequently. But a change in location by itself is not cause for a notification. No one wants offers pushed to them with every step they take. Apps need to consider everything they know about the user, including current location, where they’ve been before, behavior, stated preferences, past purchases and more. Adapting the message to fit the customer’s change in context provides an opportunity to deliver content that is fresh, engaging, well-timed and
Applying both of these principles builds trust and loyalty.
Each time a customer gets a push message that matches their expectations for timeliness and relevancy, loyalty grows and builds toward the ultimate goal of increasing total lifetime customer value.
Engage customers with relevant messages
Corollary to step number one and context, you need to ensure that the push messages your customers are receiving are relevant to them. Think about what the customer wants to hear, not what you want to say. The easiest way to deliver relevant messages is by allowing the customer to tell you what is relevant to them through a set of customizable controls.
So in addition to time preferences, give them a preference center to customize content at a granular level. Let them tell you what they want, how much of it they want, and when they want to get it. When you factor in the granularity of information and time preferences, every person will end up with a different configuration that matches exactly what they want. In this way, it becomes possible to transition one-off notifications into multi-step engagement processes. A “Low Account Balance” alert, for instance, could prompt a balance transfer, all handled through an exchange of notifications. This is one-to-one marketing at its finest and what makes this medium the very opposite of mass communication.
Stay consistent across channels
Consistent communication in voice, tone and appearance over time and across channels is a key element in building a strong brand. Your push notification program should not be a standalone program independent of your other communication channels (like email, SMS, social media, direct mail, advertising, etc.) but should work in tandem with them. While organizational silos and technology differences for each of these communication channels can make this challenging, it is critical that marketers assign resources for ensuring adherence to this step.
Being able to coordinate all messages through a unified digital messaging platform brings three clear benefits: 1. Ensuring Consistency. You are better able to
enforce consistency in voice, tone and appearance to support your brand.
2. Avoiding Message Fatigue. Coordinating all messages regardless of channel through a common message management system ensures you avoid message
fatigue — i.e. bombarding your customers with too many messages when the email program doesn’t know what the SMS or the push notification program is sending to the same customer.
3. Allowing Customers Choices. You are able to provide your customers a choice of how they want to receive a certain type of message by providing a preference center. Certain types of messages can be sent via email, while other more urgent types could be sent via SMS or push, with the message being generated in the correct format
Deliver an engaging experience that allows
them to respond
Your customers are looking for a payoff when they engage with a push message. You want them to look forward to your push messages and act on them by engaging in your app or responding to you. Just like email or search marketing has proven the value of effective landing pages, push messages that lead to rich, interactive experiences will also more successfully engage customers. Upon opening a message, the user should arrive at an engaging space, with rich media related to the content of the
notification. (See “Pulling” p. 13)
While push technology is inherently one-way
communication, you can design your app in a way that allows them to respond back to you. Other protocols are available that enable your customer to actively respond to a push, and for you to process that response.
A bank, for example, could send a fraud alert to the app owner — notifying the customer that a transaction has occurred that appears suspicious to the bank. Rather than asking the customer to call an 800 number to verify that they indeed authorized the transaction and to let it through, resulting in inconvenience and unnecessary call-center support costs, the customer could simply reply through the app and verify his/her transaction. The messaging platform processes the response, the transaction is authorized and everyone is happy.
Continuously evaluate and improve
The value of data and analytics cannot be understated. When push messages are sent, how were they received? What actions, if any, did the customer take? Customer responses need to be analyzed to fine tune the program and ensure successful engagement.
What types of engagement were triggered by push? How many app opens occurred?
How much time was spent in the app?
Which messages caused immediate app opens versus delayed app opens?
Additional variables to analyze include behavior of opt-ins versus not, and one platform versus another: Since some of your customers opt in to push and some do not, you can compare these two audiences against one another and determine the level of engagement from those who receive push messages versus those who don’t. You could also compare how Android users respond vs. iOS users.
Once differences are understood, you can take action to test different
Step 5: Evaluate
A reminder about app design:
Your app should include an easy-to-find
control panel that allows the customer
to specify the granularity of information
and conditions for when they should
receive a push notification.
Pushing and Pulling
You can communicate with your customers through your app even without a push notification. You can deliver rich content such as videos, surveys and pictures directly into the app and hope that the users open the app on their own to discover the new content. This is sometimes referred to as “pulling” and is a less intrusive way of delivering content — but also less immediate. The users get to the content in their own time.
For example:
If you deliver fresh content on a regular basis, like grocery coupons every Sunday at 4pm or event details each
Monday at 8am, there might not be a need to alert the user that the content has arrived. If they value your content and are engaged, they will check the app on their own when they expect the new updated information.
For other non-regular or non-recurring content however, such as details on a flash-sale or a breaking local-news alert, a combination of push and pull works best. You need to ensure however, that the content has indeed been loaded into the app first, before sending a push notification. Otherwise the intended experience of transporting your user into an environment that is fresh, engaging and entertaining will fall flat.
Momentum
One more factor to consider is the degree to which your messaging infrastructure can offer automated, cross-channel communications tools and capabilities. Message Systems is one of the few vendors that does — through their mobile engagement solution, which includes Momentum. Momentum is the core messaging platform for sending single-channel or cross-channel communications and integrating the full range of digital messaging streams — email, push notifications, SMS/MMS text and more — with existing solutions, data sources and business processes.
Momentum improves customer interactions and
simplifies the execution of your mobile engagement
strategy by:
Providing rich cross-channel, real-time two-way communications capabilities
Allowing a real-time view into your messaging processes, interactions and results
Easily integrating with existing campaign management tools and systems
Push notifications are a highly effective way for you
to communicate with and engage your customers
— arguably more so than with any other marketing
channel out there.
But remember, you are dealing with your most loyal and devoted customers. These customers have specifically asked for you to reach out to them. Unlike email where best practices might indicate double opt-in for marketing emails, push messages can be thought of as triple opt-in communication channel because customers (1) proactively search for your brand in an app store, (2) go through the download and install process and (3) click ‘Allow’ to receive push notifications.
It’s critical that you give the customers the experience they expect. Give them what they want and they will do the selling for you; shove them around and watch out — your most loyal and devoted customers can quickly become your most vocal detractors — often using social media to voice their concerns.
©2014 Message Systems, Inc., all rights reserved.
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To learn more about best practices and solutions for your email operations,
call
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or visit us at
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About Message Systems
Message Systems solutions power many of the world’s largest, most complex email, mobile and cross-channel messaging operations. Our solutions enable companies to integrate messaging with any number of data sources and applications in order to orchestrate real-time, two-way customer interactions through any messaging stream. The result is more effective customer communication that boost engagement, drive down costs, increase revenue and build closer relationships.
Message Systems is the leading provider of messaging infrastructure to the world’s largest social networks and e-businesses, including Facebook, and many Fortune 500 leaders in banking, consumer technology and telecommunications. In fact, over half of Message Systems clients send at least 10 million email messages per day. Taken together, at least 20% of legitimate
(non-spam) business and business-to-consumer email traffic worldwide gets delivered through the Message Systems Momentum platform.
