If you are an entrepreneur, manage a website, or looking for a modern channel to internet marketing, this article will deliver you a one-stop solution to do the same. The aim of this article is to give you a thorough grasp over push notification advertising. We will cover the concept of push notifications from the beginning and understand their anatomy to let you decide the loftiest kind of push advertisement for your brand.
Push notifications- Journey from Email to web push notifications
It goes all the way back to the era of Blackberry phones. Sad to relate, their phones today are not as prominent as they used to be. However, ‘Research in Motion’ pioneered some awesome technologies back then, and we cannot thank them enough for those.
They were the first to come up with Push technology in their Blackberry email service. It offered Blackberry users a way to instantly send and receive emails to other Blackberry devices in real-time.
It was only the success of Blackberry that made all other tech giants implement email Push notifications in their devices. Next in the list was Apple, which further enhanced the foundations and built their own Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) in 2009. Now, the Apple users were using push notifications in not just emails but also on various other Apple applications.
Very soon, Google too drew their swords and came up Google Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) and Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), which enabled even Android users to use the same technology.
Not to be outdone by anyone, the two giants extended their technologies to the open world. As a result, every other mobile app today is using push notifications to send and receive messages over the internet in real-time.
The same revolution also extended beyond and made push notifications available on web browsers (for desktop and mobile), also called as web push notifications. Eventually, letting websites as well send push notification advertising to their users.
Some stats and facts about push notifications
- An average smartphone user receives over 46 push notifications in a day.
- 40% of web push notifications come from eCommerce, media, and publishing sectors
- Android devices receive a 91.1% opt-in rate while only 43.9% of iOS users opt-in to push notifications.
- IOS users need to manually opt-in, while Android users get enrolled automatically when installing an app.
- A website needs to ask the user for permission to send web push notifications.
- Websites trigger opt-in box on the web browser to ask for permission.
- Web push notifications with banner images in the body are called rich push notifications.
- Only Google Chrome browser allows banner images in the web push notifications.
What is Push Notifications Advertising?
This is a bit tricky. To understand Push notification Advertising, we need to comprehend the ways to integrate push notifications in a website/app. There are two ways to utilize push notifications for your website or business.
- Integrate a push notification tool on your website/app
- Your website will start popping up the opt-in box to get new subscribers
- You can create push notifications and send them to your subscribers
- Use Push Notification Advertising from an Ad network
- The Ad network will have its own subscriber base; generally millions of users.
- You can create your push Ads and they will deliver them to their subscribers.
- You don’t need to install your own push notification tool to use Push Ads.
How Does Push Notification Advertising work?
As explained, the push notification Advertisers have their own subscriber base. Most of the time they work as a network, and different push traffic providers combine to form a Push notification advertising network. However, there are also many advertisers who have their own base and they do not partner with push traffic providers.
If you want to advertise using push notifications, you can simply sign up on their websites and create your campaigns from there. You will get various packages, offers, plans, and features to design your campaigns. You can select from types of campaign, types of push notifications, different segments, locations, and demographics, etc. to target the relevant subscribers.
Benefits of Push Notification Advertising
- You can reach visitors who are not active on your site. They are actively used for boosting your revenue without using any intrusive Ad formats.
- You don’t necessarily need a mobile app to use push. You can still send web push notifications through your website.
- No fear of Adblockers or spam filters. Push notification receives 100% delivery rate.
- Since you can’t send notification without getting an opt-in, the users who opt-in are more likely to be interested in your business.
- Push Advertisers have access to billions of users worldwide. You can effectively segment the users and personalize the messages using content, emoji, and visuals
- You can schedule the notifications to be delivered at a specific time. Moreover, you can also set a self-expiring notification for the time-sensitive campaigns.
- Since users need not share any personal information, it’s comparatively easier to acquire push notifications subscribers.
- Notifications don’t require open activity. The content is displayed in the notification itself; it’s more likely that all of the subscribers do see your message even if they don’t click or open it.
- Cost of push notification advertising is comparatively lower than SMS, Paid emails, or traditional native web Ads. They can be as low as $0.01 per click. Optimistically, you can expect to reach over 300 000 users and get more than 20,000 clicks for as low as $250.
- You can run your Push Ad campaigns alongside all other types of Ads you want to run. They do not intrude or affect any of your monetization tools you might be using on your site. It is 100% independent and aligns with Google compliance protocol.
The Drawbacks of Push Notification Advertising
- Push Ads are no different from regular web push notifications. They can be easily intrusive to the users. If marketers do not pay attention to push notification best practices and user experience, the irritated users may just opt-out of the list.
- Can’t use Push Ads in iOS. It’s not like iOS does not support web push notifications. They can be sent through mobile apps, but app push notifications are often susceptible to reporting and leaving negative feedback on the App store. Consequently, the app might get banned from the platform.
- Push Ad networks generally charge on a pay-per-click basis. However, higher click through in push campaigns do not guaranty a higher conversion rate.
- Most of the marketers these days know about the profitable reputation of push Ads. Consequently, the competition getting bigger, the bidding cost with it.
- Push notifications are short messages. You can’t really write much in them. Longer the notifications more are the chance that text might get cut off, and users can’t comprehend your message properly.
Who are prominent users of Push Ads?
Push Advertisements have a lot of scope in almost every industry. In fact, there is a huge scope to work with CPA offers using push marketing. Some of the major industries that make the perfect use of push advertising are as follows:
- Coupons aggregators
- Affiliate Marketers
- eCommerce websites
- Bloggers
- Dating app/websites
- Medicine stores
- Finance and banking
- Gambling & Betting
- Video Streaming
- Health & Beauty
You can follow an array of communication strategies and magnets to not only generate leads but also ensure conversion. Depending on the aims and objectives, businesses may choose to send the notifications like:
- Abandoned cart recovery with discount coupons.
- Retention and engagement notifications such as News flash, new products, new features, new article posted, new videos added, etc.
- Sales — Reminders and alerts such as back-in-stock alert, Price drop alert, Low stock alert, etc.
- Transactions — Notify about order confirmation, latest order status, delivery status, payment confirmation, etc.
- Geo-fencing –Acquire some immediate sales and new users by triggering geo-targeted alerts.
How to Start your Push Ads Campaign?
Now that you are well-versed with the working of push notifications, their types, and who can use them, it’s time to put our comprehension into actions.
There is no doubt that the technology behind the working of push notification is incredibly complicated, but you need not fear anything as such. You will be using a ready-made tool and setting your Ad campaign is as easy as creating a push notification. In fact, it’s even easier than launching a Google Ad campaign.
You’ll need 4 things:
- An offer
- A push notifications tool
- A traffic source/ Network
- An Analytic tool to track the campaign.
While the requirement 1 is purely your discretion, you can acquire 2, 3, and 4 altogether in one by choosing an all-in-one push marketing tool. There are push notification tools in the market that also provide Push Ad services. They already have their own network, so you need not do anything. You can simply sign-up and create your campaigns.
Difference between CPC and CPM Push Ads?
Before you go ahead and choose a network or tool, it’s crucial to understand how Push Ads pricing model works. Most of the Ad networks offer two major types of campaigns: CPC and CPM.
With CPM, the cost is calculated as per views gained by the Ads. You will be paying for the number of times the Ad is displayed to the audience. It doesn’t matter if they get a click-through or conversion, the price is fixed for just showing the Ads.
On the other hand, CPC Ads are charged for the impressions that lead to clicks. You will be paying only when a user clicks on the push notification and lands on your targeted URL.
How to calculate the cost per visitor in Push Ads?
The aim of both kinds of Ads is to gain visitors for your website or App. Hence, whatever be the model, you need to focus on the quality of your copy, to ensure that visitors are clicking on them. As per the cost is concerned, Ad networks offer both per click and per impressions plans.
The CPC and CPM plans can be as low as $0.005/click and $0.01/impression respectively. If you want to calculate the price of the traffic on these Ads, ensure that you also consider the value of the targeted conversion you get for a summed amount.
For example, if you purchase a bid for $10 at $0.05/click, you can expect to receive over 2000 visitors. Now, if your revenue per conversion is as low as $5, you can easily recover your $10 by merely making 2 conversions from the 2000 visitors.
CPC
If you are going for the CPC model, you can directly calculate your cost by the bidding value:
Number of Visitors = Total Cost / CPC Bidding value
Cost per Visitor for CPC Ads is same as your CPC Bid
For example, if you have done the bidding of $0.005/click, and you were able to get 2000 visitors, then your Cost per Visitor is same as CPC bid i.e. 0.005.
CPM
The calculation for cost per visitor in CPM is a little tricky. Here, your cost depends on both the bid and CTR received. Moreover, the bids are comparatively lower than CPC. They are done for bigger amounts such as cost per 1000 impressions.
Number of Visitors = (Total Cost / CPM Bid x 1000) x CTR
Cost per Visitor = Total Cost / Number of Visitors
So, if you got a 2% CTR and your bid is $0.01/impression, then you can get 20000 visitors for just $10.
$10 / $0.01 x 1000 x 2% = 20000
$10 / 20000 = $0.0005
Hence, cost per visitor = $0.0005, but you got 10 times more traffic than CPC for the same cost.
Which one works better, CPC or CPM Push Ads?
CPC is the safest option to play without risks. You don’t have to care about CTR here, but the cost per click is higher. On the other hand, CPM is the cheaper but riskier one. Its success depends on the CTR but has the potential to give ten folds better result than CPC. That we saw in the above section.
So, what’s the conclusion? If you want to bring some lesser but assured traffic under a predictable expenditure, go for CPC.
However, if you are meeting the following aspects, go for CPM –
- willing to take a risk
- Certain about getting good CTR
- Hoping to acquire bigger results in lesser investment and
- Not concerned about unpredictable expenditures
Top Providers of Push Notifications Traffic
- Mobidea Push
- PropellerAds
- PushCrew
- PushEngage
- HilltopAds
- MegaPush
- Ad Maven
- Adcash
- RichPush
- Zeropark
- DatsPush
- Adsterra
- RTX Platform
Check my article on “Push Ad Traffic Sources” to learn more.
Best practices of effective Push Ads campaigns
Push Ad work exactly the same as normal push notifications on your website/app. You want to achieve a great result with your push Ad campaigns, focus on improving your push copies and push notifications best practices. I have some resources for you to learn more effective push marketing strategies, you can check them out-
- 5 Push notification engagement hacks
- Best Push Notifications Practices for Travel Companies
- Mistakes to avoid in your Push notifications copy
- How Consumers Perceive Push Notifications (infographic)
- Set up a great push notification marketing strategy?
How to create a Push Server and Subscribers base?
Push notifications traffic sources are undoubtedly a great way to obtain quick results in lesser time. However, most of the time, you can’t be sure if their subscriber base aligns to your relevant prospects. I mean, the Ad networks have their own set of subscribers, whom they acquire from various sources.
There is no doubt, you get instant access to billions of users, but you cannot be ever sure if all those subscribers are really relevant to your business. Of course, push Ad networks to provide ways to segment the users based on various aspects, but even segmentation get obsolete if the base itself is not relevant.
There could be an alternate way to leverage push notifications advertisement and relevant subscriber base at the same time.
Why don’t you create your own subscriber base?
It’s quite possible to create your own subscriber base and send push notifications. You don’t even need a mobile app to create your push subscriber base. You can use a self-hosted web push notification tool and create your own push server right on your website.
PushMaze is all you need here. You can install it on your web server and simply add your website domain to start pushing right from your website. One of the biggest benefits of using PushMaze is its self-hosted nature, and one-time cost; no monthly rental or subscription cost.
You never know, you might just build a massive subscriber base and start earning by joining a Push Ad network or doing affiliate marketing for big brands. One tool with three benefits. Your own relevant subscriber base + earnings from ad networks + Affiliate marketing, it’s not a bad deal I guess.
Check out Pushmaze’s free demo to experience its amazing features.
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