A few years ago, apps didn’t exist and calls or sms were the norm. But, all of this has changed with the dawn of the smartphone era and now, we receive push notifications by apps for nearly everything. This is obvious, you probably are asking yourself “why are you telling me that?”
I am telling you that because this is part of user retention strategy and it’s an ally that you can count on. Here are ten tips to increase your app engagement with push notifications!
First things first, what is push notifications?
Push notifications are like messages that user received from apps in the home screen of smartphones. Some apps depends on push notifications, like WhatsApp. The app send it everytime that somebody sends a message.
But, even non social networking apps can use push notifications as a strategy to call attention to the user to engage them.
How to use push notifications?
A good app example is Amazon using push notifications. They send notifications to their users whenever convenient. If there is some new product available or if the user browses a product and leaves the app, they remind the user to go back through such notifications.
But, check it out another ways to approach your user in a way that make them interested in re-engaging with the app.
1- Target your notification
It’s an important topic. Don’t waste your time sending the same notification for everybody. It doesn’t make sense, because the information can be not useful to some users. Think like Netflix does.
They send personalized messages according that’s different for every user. For example, this is one of their tactics “because you watch The OA, we recommend some similar experiences”. It shows to the user that you are attentive to their interests.
2- Benefits to the user
Give benefits to users with mobile push notifications. Create a time limited offer and let the customer know by sending a message to them.
But, think in a good strategy for this push, analyze what offer is interesting to each client, based on what they already bought in your app. Don’t mass send the same message.
If Aliexpress sends an offer about construction material for a person that only buys hygiene stuff in the app would he be interested?
3- App update
Besides using the notifications to promote your app for sales, you can use it to alert your user that the app has an update. Sometimes the users doesn’t “choose” to choose new updates. So, it’s nice to warn that a new update is available.
And, in this push notification service, you can personalize it showing the benefits that the user can have if they update your app.
4- Show to your app that you’re missing them
There are some users that in the beginning use your app a lot and, with the passage of time, stop frequent usage. It can happen because of different factors. People forget, choose for another app, get busy with other stuff, whatever.
The point is: show to that people that you are missing their visit. With a timely personalized message, try to attract this people to your app again.
5- Period and time
Try to always test what is the best period of the day and the hour to send push notifications. It depends on the customer, but study and find a period that can be effective for you that are sending and for who that are receiving.
6- Size of the push
The bests push notifications don’t try to fit in too much information or big texts. Always think that you have to be objective with what you’re trying to pass to the user. Furthermore, people will be lazy to read something big and complex.
In general, these six tips will help you a lot to send push notifications. But, before sending them to anyone, study your public, analyzing, for example, if they use iOS or Android, age, sex, the version of the app that they use and if they are active users or not.
To other strategies about user retention and acquisition, you need to know a little bit more about ASO and the process of optimization.
