You may have heard of push notifications before. You might not know what they are or how they work, but you’ve probably been bombarded with them when browsing the internet on your smartphone. But do you know how to use these little alerts to boost engagement? Push notifications are short messages that pop up on your phone’s screen out of nowhere and can be sent by anyone, including marketers. Think of push notifications as the ultimate “call-to-action” button.

For instance, if you’re running a Kickstarter campaign, you can use them to remind people that they have 5 hours left in their pledge period. You can also incentivize your audience with limited-time offers like an exclusive discount on your product for the next 24 hours only!

To successfully utilize this marketing strategy, it is essential to understand what’s working and what isn’t. For example, if you send out too many messages in a day or week, then chances are high that people will turn off alerts from your app altogether. Not great news when you’re trying to encourage engagement!

So what is the secret sauce that makes these messages so effective? Research has shown that push notifications can increase user retention rates by up to three times, which means they’re one of the most powerful marketing tools today.  What’s cool about them is how easy they are to implement – just set up a few triggers, and you’ll be on your way!

Push notifications can be a great way to engage with your audience. They are the next best thing to being there in person! However, they are not always successful at driving conversions.

Here are some tips for making push notifications work for you.

1. Make sure your message is relevant and catchy

Push messages should be personalized and relevant to what people care about or find interesting. Since it works by sending messages to someone’s phone without opening the app, you want to make it crisp and interesting enough for them to open it up and read it. You want to make sure what you are sending matches the users’ demographics. For example, if you simply send them advertisements of products they have already purchased, there wouldn’t be much of a point in doing that.

Be personal- Make sure it seems like  developer or business themselves are speaking to the user and not an automated messaging service. A great trick is to use the person’s name in the message since this makes them seem more human and less like a robot

2. Keep your message short

The shorter, the better it is for pushing notification messages; otherwise, people will just ignore them. Nobody wants to read another long message, especially when it’s not something they expect to pop up on their phones. A short, meaningful message goes a long way when it comes to push notifications. Here’s an example:

You’re scrolling through your feed when this notification pops up on your screen. You open it, find out about their latest release, click on the link in the notification and buy a subscription! That is precisely what Nike wants you to do. If they can get their product into your hand before their competition does, then they have increased their chances of making more money off of you. What helped them was a crisp and straightforward message that appealed to their target audience.

3. Be creative

It’s always good to use different colors, pictures, animations, or whatever else you need to make an engaging experience that catches the users’ attention.

4. Don’t abuse it

If you send too many notifications, people will not only stop opening them but might even uninstall your app. Also, don’t send push notifications more than once every hour or two hours because this is not only annoying, but you will also lose customers.

5. Don’t forget to track it!

Use Google Analytics or other tracking tools and see which types of messages work best for your business message. This will help you find the best time for your business. You can find out what demographic group likes your message and are interested in what you have to say.

In a nutshell, if you want to engage with your customers through push notifications, then it’s vital that you have a strong strategy in place. The key is making sure that your message is relevant and catchy, so they feel compelled to click on the notification. You also need to keep things short – no one wants an essay from their phone! Finally, be creative with what content you send out via push notifications; don’t just rely on generic marketing messages about discounts or new products. To help make all of this easier for yourself, sign up for our mailing list, where we share tips on how to get more engagement using push notifications.