You can send real-time push notification to your subscribers anytime you wish to. No scheme can bar you from connecting with your subscribers. However, regardless of the freedom you have, is it a good idea to just push your messages at any random time?
Don’t you think it’s best to also consider the best time to get most of the push engagements?
It doesn’t matter if they use a mobile phone, tablet, laptop, or a desktop, there are certain aspects that either make or break a typical push notification campaign. And one of the biggest aspects is considering the “best time to send push notifications”.
Why time matters for push notifications?
Nowadays, everyone is using push alerts to increase sales, improve customer retention, or engagements. They have basically become a primary tool to overcome stiff competition and attract massive new and repeat sales.
While sending alerts and push notifications best practices can get you the desired results, overlooking the same for time checks can make the results upside down. Everyone is sending push alerts these days. On a typical mobile phone notification panel, one can find at least a dozen of them waiting for the attention of the user.
In such a situation, the user might get annoyed and clear-off all the notifications at once without checking. Worst, he/she might simply opt-out from those insanely frequent websites or apps. If you ask me, what I consider while opting-out from the particular publisher, my response would the following:
- First, I check if these notifications are valuable or relevant to me.
- Second, I consider the frequency of the notifications from the app/website.
If notifications are not valuable, I completely opt-out from the particular app. However, if they are little frequent but useful to me, I either mute the notifications tone, or turn them off for a particular period.
The whole point behind explaining this scene is letting you know that users today have got ‘N’ numbers of ways to avoid push notifications. In all this, if some users are still opting-in, it means they are your biggest assets. Hence, by any means, you cannot just send push notifications randomly at any time; even if they are relevant to the users.
How to send push notifications at a correct time?
Well, there is no harsh rule for it. However, there are certain guidelines that you can follow as per your industry, message type, and location to avoid annoying the users and get the best engagement stats. The first recommendation is following every possible push notification best practice. Besides that, use the below-given advice to deduce the best time to send push notifications.
Don’t ignore the time-zones
With several trials, errors, and A/B testing, you might find out the best suitable time for your notifications. However, not all of your users might come from the same time-zone. I mean, if 7 AM in the US is the best time for notifications, it doesn’t mean your UK customers will also be observing the same time at that moment. The time at which your subscribers get your notifications is a significant aspect for the success. So don’t ignore the time zones, if your prospects are scattered globally.
For example, if a business decides to launch a ‘peak hour discount coupon campaign’ in all operating locations, it has to consider the time zones. The peak hour for the US customers might not be the same as the South African customers, for instance.
One of the best ways to deal with the time zones is using push notifications scheduling option. Create multiple campaigns, and schedule them as per respective time zones. Below is how PushMaze allows users to send push notification to Chrome, Firefox, and other web browsers after scheduling them.
Plan and schedule in advance
It’s not just about planning your push marketing campaigns but also your overall marketing strategies should align with the same. Say, you run a ride-sharing app and you have planned promotion on multiple bookings.
Sending this promotion in a non-peak hour is not in your interest. You need to plan in advance about your campaigns and when to inform the users about the same. If you are launching the promotion on Friday evening’s peak hours, send the alerts one-two hours in advance, when people would be planning for the Friday night parties.
Leverage the upcoming events
Events give the ultimate opportunities to customize the messages and even experiment with the best time to send push notifications in most of the cases. You can utilize certain events to make attractive and more compelling propositions to your prospects.
For example, generally, you should avoid sending alerts late in the night. However, you may schedule a Happy Birthday notification to a prospect right at the midnight. Make it even attractive with a surprise birthday special discount coupon.
Similarly, you can leverage several other events to not only send personalized messages but also mass communications. For example, Independence Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc.
Regulate the frequency of alerts
Now that’s quite tricky if you ask me. The optimum frequency of notification depends on the type of industry. Hence, it is different for different types of businesses. I have segregated the desired frequency of the notifications based on the type of industry and purpose in the following section:
- News: Depending on the type of news, 3-4 times a day. May increase the frequency based on the criticality of the news.
- Games: Based on the time slot at which users are more likely to play a game, once in a day is optimum for the games.
- Travel: Depending on the preferences, 2-3 times a day. May experiment with one additional promotional notification.
- Fitness: Daily morning reminders could be helpful to the users.
- E-Commerce: Differs a lot based on the type of alert. Can experiment with 2-3 engagement notifications and one additional flash sale or discount alert if any.
Choose the right push content
Content and timing go hand in hand. Especially when you are working with as real-time as push notifications, you cannot avoid the importance of tailored content.
Not just the nature of the content, but also the word choice matters while sending push alerts. For example, you can use words like “Good Morning” in the morning messages. You can use words like “Lunch” in the afternoon alerts. Paying attention to the tiny details in your content can align your notifications with perfect timing.
You can send browser notifications like below to a prospect who would most probably be working on his/her desktop at that moment:
Avoid one-size-fits-all approach at all cost
No matter how credible is the source, nobody can tell your best time to send push notifications. It’s volatile and different a lot from even the minute alteration in the conditions. If we trust an old data from Localytics, then push messages between 10 A.M and 12 P.M. to get the highest average click rate; that is 15%.
However, it doesn’t mean you should blindly trust the data. The whole purpose of mentioning about their research is that even you can carry out similar tests on your samples. I am certain that it will not match their results, because you have a different sample, and you would be tested under different circumstances.
I also believe that the same test again on the same sample but in today’s scenario will produce an entirely different result. Even the circumstances change with time. That’s why my final advice for your push campaigns would be carrying out your own experiments and finding the same for your kind of audience. Just keep align with the best practices and the result will be favorable.
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