Did you know that 84% of customers will not receive your Push Notifications if they have not interacted with your app in the last four months?
A study conducted by MoEngage found that while these customers might have opted-in to receive your Push Notifications, they could still not receive your Push Notifications for several reasons. This causes your Push Notification deliverability to plummet, hurting your key marketing metrics.
This blog will discuss the Push Notifications deliverability challenges, why this happens, and how to boost your customer reachability.
The Push Notification Deliverability Challenge
As marketers, we spend hours crafting engaging Push Notification copies and optimizing the Notification. These efforts are futile when a large chunk of the Push Notifications go undelivered.
Low Push Notification deliverability is a significant challenge in Southeast Asia and India, where popular Android smartphone brands like Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Huawei have a large market share. These OEMs have OS-level and device-level restrictions preventing Push Notifications from getting delivered.
Some reasons why your well-intended Push Notifications may not reach your customers:
- The customer may not have enabled the option to receive Push Notifications
- Device-level restrictions set up by the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)
- There are connectivity issues between Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) and the customers’ device
- There’s a long gap between the last device activity
Read more about why your Push Notifications go undelivered and how it impacts critical marketing goals here.
Impact of Low Push Notification Deliverability
The E-commerce industry is already under stress due to high cart abandonment rates and product returns. Low Push Notification deliverability aggravates this existing problem.
1. Negatively Impacts Your Key Marketing Metrics
When the Push Notifications go undelivered, it impacts customer engagement, conversion, and retention metrics, and ultimately, revenue generation. This would also mean lost opportunities to win back cart abandonments or convert wishlists into purchases for shopping apps.
2. Customer Engagement Drops
Due to OS and device-level restrictions, this also leads to customers’ devices marking your app Notifications as low priority. And this further reduces Push Notification deliverability.
This hurts key marketing goals of your shopping brand, especially during the holiday season when maximum sales transactions occur. At least 84% of the E-commerce industry uses the Push Notification communication channel for announcing offers and discounts.
A low Push Notification deliverability means your customers could miss out on receiving alerts about these offers and shopping on your app. That’s a lost opportunity to reduce cart abandonment and increase conversions for your brand. There is also a high probability of customers switching to competitors.
Another critical impact is a lost opportunity to cross-sell and upsell based on the customers’ recent purchase history and send product recommendation Push Notifications.
3. Increases App Uninstalls
For shopping apps, Push Notifications are excellent reminders of the value your app offers customers; from alerting them about the latest offers, order updates, or reminders to purchase items in their carts.
Low Push Notification deliverability reduces brand recall. To add to that, limited device storage, low app engagement, and battery consumption increase the chances of your app being uninstalled.
4. Inflates Churn
Push Notifications play a critical role in nudging customers to purchase items from their wishlists, product recommendations, or when there are offers.
Without Push Notifications, customers may not even remember their wishlist items. Due to the reasons mentioned in the previous point, they can quickly churn.
To navigate these challenges, let us look at some best practices that you can implement to boost your shopping apps’ Push Notification reachability.
How Does MoEngage’s Push Amplification Boost Push Notification Delivery?
MoEngage developed the technology ‘Push Amplification’ and used it to help push notifications delivery rate across devices. The technology, which got an update in 2019, was called Push Amplification™ Plus.
What this tech did was help overcome the challenges of marketers regarding push notifications and allow these notifications to be delivered directly to a user’s mobile device, especially when standard options failed.
Best Practices to Amplify Push Delivery For Shopping Brands
1. Increase App Activity
App activity and your Push Notification deliverability have a direct relationship. Increased app activity indicates that your customer is interested and engaged with your app.
Android devices (which have over 82% of the mobile OS market share in Asia) have refined background app activity. This limits Push Notification deliverability based on the user activity. The latest updates from Android even ask the device owner if they want to disable Push Notifications if they have been dismissed frequently.
What does this mean for you? Increasing app activity is critical to maximizing your Push Notification deliverability. Here are three key ways you can do this:
2. Ace The Onboarding Experience
A great onboarding translates to a great experience with your app and reduces app uninstallation chances. A research conducted by MoEngage has found that over 56% of E-commerce app uninstalls happen within the first week of app install, and about 23% are uninstalled within 24 hours.
Push Notifications are critical in creating a valuable onboarding experience. You can use them to give a first-time purchase discount, nudging customers to complete their profile information and setting their preferences for personalization. This would help push casual browsers into becoming paying and repeating customers.
Tip: After your app has been installed, if Push Notifications are disabled on the device, showcasing the value of in-app Push Notifications would help persuade customers to enable them.
3. Send Relevant Push Notifications
Relevant, engaging, and personalized Push Notifications attuned to customers’ interests and preferences are vital in boosting app interaction. Leading brands across industries have witnessed up to 4X conversion rates for personalized Push Notifications.
Shopping brands can boost their Push Notification relevancy by sharing personalized product recommendations based on previous browsing history data or purchases and wishlists.
For instance, for a customer who has added fitness and sports equipment to their wishlist, you can send them Push Notifications of an ongoing offer for gym apparel or similar product recommendations. This would increase app interaction and nudge them to make a purchase. You can also use AI capabilities, such as Predictions, to predict what your customers want.
4. Improve Clicks on Your Push Notifications
The clicks your Push Notifications receive directly impact your app activity and your customer reachability. But how do you make your Push Notifications grab attention and click-worthy when on average, customers receive over 65 Push Notifications in a day?!
The key is in crafting and sending aesthetically intriguing Push Notifications! You can experiment and test various interactive Push Templates that garner the most clicks. From adding product carousels and creating product grids to using an array of visually appealing templates, Push Templates make your Push Notifications fun to interact with and make it easy for customers to connect with your brand.
5. Analyze And Replicate What Works
Based on previous purchase and browsing history data, you can analyze what type of Notifications drive maximum engagement. While personalized Push Notifications drive app engagement, analyzing the type of Push Notifications customers have engaged the most with previously would give you an additional boost in engagement and retention metrics.
Tip: Use analytics to get insights about related purchases to create opportunities to cross-sell and upsell.
For example, for customers who have browsed or purchased blue jeans, you can recommend white sneakers to complete the look.
6. Improve Relevancy And Frequency of App Interaction
The recency and frequency of your push notifications will determine whether a customer will interact with them or choose to ignore them. Amplify push notification open rates by sending a proper app notification at the right time, at strategic intervals.
Here are some ways you can improve interaction with your push notification service:
- Encourage relevant app installs by showing a QR code to your customer to download your app inside your store during checkout or even share the code with them on physical bill receipts.
- To avoid opt-outs and app uninstalls, it’s essential to stay away from sending too many Notifications, especially those that are irrelevant and not in alignment with the preset preferences and interests.
- Share relevant content recommendations based on customers’ interests and preferences.
For instance, an online store can send DIY hobby-based content to persuade customers to buy art and craft products. Similarly, a clothing brand app can consider sharing a travel-themed fashion blog that will give customers outfit ideas for their next trip.
Here is how you can use Push Notifications for content recommendations and alerts.
7. Time it Right
Timing your Push Notifications is critical in determining whether your customers are likely to engage with them, dismiss them, or worse, disable them. The best time and days to send Push Notifications vary for different apps.
Also, when you want to send Push Notifications to a global audience, setting up the optimal time and day for Push Notification delivery can be tedious. You have to find the best time and configure it based on the regions’ time zone. You can make it easy with Artificial Intelligence capabilities to find the Best To Send (BTS).
Tip: Ensure that you set optimum time intervals between successive Push Notifications.
8. Prioritize Device And Location-based Segmentation
According to the extensive research in The Push Notification Delivery Prediction Framework, specific Android versions and city tiers see a higher Push Notification deliverability than others. You can segment your customers based on device manufacturers, OS versions, and city-tier-based locations to maximize Push Notification delivery rates based on these specific attributes.
9. Use The Push Amplification™ Technology
Push Notification deliverability is mainly dependent on FCM. When FCM fails to deliver Push Notifications to customers, Push Amplification™ Plus can help you reach more customers by bypassing restrictions that FCM encounters. This tech can give you an uplift of about 44% in Push Notification delivery rates. With Push Amplification™ Plus, you can:
- Bypass the device-level restrictions
- Overcome connectivity challenges
- Maximize Notification delivery
Read how Bigbasket saw a 3.5X increase in Push Notification reachability with Push Amplification™.
10. Use Analytics to Predict Churn
Every swipe, tap, and click that a customer makes on the app has a reason and purpose. If customers’ interest in your app wanes, they are quick to uninstall it.
Here’s where you can use analytics for dissecting historical data. You can also use this to predict future events like customer churn or how a segment interacts and engages with your Push Notification campaigns.
Check out how Behavioral Trends can help you understand the meaning behind every customer action.
11. Test Push Notifications!
It takes multiple reiterations to derive patterns that show with certainty how different segments of customers respond to Push Notifications.
You can A/B test different Push Notifications for various segments that help you identify engagement patterns and get visibility around the customer journey. AI and Machine Learning capabilities are ideal for getting such accurate insights.
Tip: An AI such as Sherpa can help you automate and chart out optimized campaigns for different customer segments.
Practices That Hinder The Success of Your Push Notification Campaigns
Sending Too Many Push Notifications
Too many Notifications can feel spammy, intrusive, and irritating. They are a surefire way of frustrating customers instead of impressing them. But sending a few well-timed and personalized Push Notifications compel customers to engage with your brand in a more meaningful way.
Avoid Long Gaps Between Sending Push Notifications
While too many Notifications can be annoying, a long time gap between sending Push Notifications isn’t ideal either. This leads to long gaps in app inactivity that can hamper custom re-engagement and reduce Push Notification deliverability.
Don’t Send Broadcast Notifications
Broadcast Push Notifications with vague messaging and generic content can increase opt-outs. It creates an impression that the brand does not relate to the customers’ interests and preferences.
Key Takeaways
- 84% of customers will not receive your Push Notifications if they have not interacted with your app in the last four months
- Low Push Notification deliverability negatively impacts critical marketing metrics
- Increased app activity maximizes your Push Notification deliverability
- Push Notification recency and frequency determine Push Notification reachability and app interaction
- Device and location-based segmentation improve Push Notification delivery rates
- Push Amplification™ Plus can give a Push Notification delivery uplift of around 44%
- Using analytics helps you identify what’s working and establish customer behavioral patterns
Frequently Asked Questions on How to Amplify Your Push Notifications?
What is Push Amplification?
Push Amplification is a technology developed by MoEngage. It helps to amplify your notifications to your end user or a specific user. Push Amplification™ Plus, launched in 2019, is the next leap forward in the Push Amplification™ Technology.
What is a push notification?
Push notifications or pop-up messages sent to mobiles by an app are called push notifications. To implement push notifications, you need platforms like MoEngage, which Push Amplification™ Plus powers. The technology helps to improve the delivery rate of push notifications to specific users using android devices. The technology helps amplify the push notification delivery rate by using custom properties of certain android devices, especially in India and Southeast Asia.
What is the difference between SMS and push notifications?
Push notifications are brief alerts triggered by apps a customer has downloaded on his or her mobile device. You can customize push notifications, including videos, QR codes, and images, and trigger push notifications whenever the user performs a specific action or behavior. If you want to amplify your push notifications delivery rate, MoEngage has developed a technology called Push AmplificationTM, which delivers push notifications successfully over android devices.
On the other hand, an SMS is often limited to 160 or 180 characters and may or may not be specifically triggered by an app that currently exists on a customer’s mobile. For example, a customer might not have their banking apps on their mobile devices, but they still get transactional SMS (successfully enabled by the bank) on their devices.
