Push notifications are the powerful feature a mobile app can have. They are instant, personal, and targetable to users in specific locations. Almost every app requiring frequent user-engagement can use push notifications as a communication channel. They show up even when an app isn’t in use.
So, push notifications are a playful way to get your users opening your app. They play a huge role in increasing the retention rate of an app. But it happens when users’ are sent notifications they really want to know about. Irrelevant and frequent notifications can irritate theme and, they can switch them off too.
It’s not hard to apply push notification to an app. We have technology and developers to do this. No magic is in this. The real challenge is for what purpose you should use these notifications. Let me introduce 7 interesting uses of push notifications and, how these can help a business create better conversion.
#1. PRICE DROP UPDATE
Users love everything offered them cheaply. They do not blindly make purchases. They compare prices and even wait for drops. Some stores allow users creating price-drop alerts and getting them informed through push notifications.
Users or customers opted to notify can be sent notifications containing creative text and image. When the price of an SKU is reduced, the push notifications can be triggered.
#2. Geo-Fencing
Geofencing is another creative way to instantly remind users that a store of the brand they like is just a walking distance away from them and is offering heavy discounts today. It works when a user’s device already has an app which is geo-fenced for a particular area, such as a physical store related to the app or the brand being promoted by the app. Now when the device comes in the set range of that store, the notification can be pushed to show up on the device.
Geo-location helps marketers to have quick conversions just by sending push notifications to users coming within a specific range of their stores.
#3. Bringing users back
Most of the apps struggle with miserable retention rates. They may get a million downloads to their app, but it’s too hard to get continuous user-engagement. A survey conducted in 2017 by Forrester, suggests that of all time users spending on smartphones, 80% is spent only in 5 apps.
And this trend cannot be changed. People do love those apps, which keep exciting them or helping them get the right information. Businesses apps cannot frequently help people in these prospects. But here push notifications can help businesses send reminders to app users and get them back to their apps.
The push notification may contain a simple message, like ‘We are missing you! Come back’ or something more driving, like ‘Come back to our store and get a 5% coupon on your next 3 purchases’.
There may be several creative ways to use push notifications to bring inactive users back.
#4. Browsing history-based action
Many users enter an app, initiate the action but do not complete it. Maybe, they had received an important call. Maybe, the price of a product had discouraged them or maybe, they didn’t find a different choice for the size or color of a particular product.
Push notifications can help in these cases too. If a user left an item added to the cart but has not yet checked out, or because of any reasons that diverted him from making the purchase, a push notification can remind him that he was browsing for a specific item a week ago and, now its price has now reduced.
#5. Weather or season based notification
Seasons keep changing and so do our needs of products, like clothes. We need different clothes for rain, winter, and summer. People buy these clothes when they really need them, but by push notifications, their mind can be prepared to make a purchase several days before the beginning of a season.
Weather-based push notifications can also be sent when a user changes his location where the weather is completely different.
#6. Special day sell
We have a lot of festivals and special days. They also trigger sales of special items. The whole of America, for an example, celebrates the 4th of July as its independence day. People buy a wide range of supplies like decoration, flags, and, bunting. A lot of online stores sell these items online. Push notifications can be created to notify users that the celebration is upon them, but they have not yet bought anything for the day. There are several festivals and special days, like Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Halloween, and Valentine day on which people do make purchases. Push notifications can quickly engage users to make purchases through special offers provided on a special day.
#7. Everything else
There are no set fundamentals why an app should have push notifications. Also, they do not always belong to better conversion or driving users to make a purchase. Sunshine weather app, for example, sends personalized push notification based on users’ tastes. It provides weather alerts, which neither contribute it monetize nor to get any sort of conversion.
Winding-up
So, push notifications can be used in a number of creative ways. They are the fastest way to provide information to customers on their devices. But not all developers are able to do this. Internal development teams aren’t much competition in devising a full-fledged push notification system in an app. If you are one the app owners who quickly want to apply push notification to your app, you better hire an offshore software development company, which is an expert in push notification powered mobile app development.
