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Though, Push notifications are still new to the marketing world, both marketers and users have seen its positive and negative impacts. When wise marketers were using this tool for customer engagement and building brand loyalty, many others took a different path. At the end, the divergent marketers ended up annoying their users to the frustration-level, and thus losing their subscriptions, users, and conversions.

Many marketers have been using push notifications in the same way they have been killing their SMS and email marketing campaigns. If you think, you too have been doing injustice to your push campaigns, this infographic can help you detect those mistakes. You can boost your campaigns wisely in the same way as Netflix and other big brands have been doing.

Understand the threshold of size and frequency

Users hate when bombarded with push notifications. Here is the problem. Any average smartphone user will have his/her phone loaded with several mobile apps. Let’s assume the number of apps is 20 (though it’s more than that). Now, if every app pushes 2 notifications a day, the user will have at least 40 notifications.

1. Do you think a user will read all 40 notifications?
2. Don’t you think, he/she will just clear off all the notifications in one go?

Things go bad when apps trigger notifications every other minute and get worse when some apps push the same alert again and again.

If you have been doing this, remember the following points:

• Over 62% of app users find push notifications annoying.
• 46% of your users will block your notifications if they receive 2-5 notification in a week.
• 32% of your user will uninstall your app if you trigger 6-10 notifications a week.

Users like to have a control

Another thing that users hate about push notifications is the irrelevance. Just take for instance. Facebook sends you a notification when ‘someone likes someone else’s’ photo’. Unless you are interested in either of the ‘someone”, that notification is irrelevant to you. To counter it, Facebook offers many preferences to let users have a control on what they wish to receive and what not.

The same situation occurs with every push notification marketers send. While your notifications may apply to many users, there could be a section of the audience who has nothing to do with them. The latter section is more in population.

Counter the irrelevance by using these two methods-

1.     Send preference-based notifications

Lessen your behavior based triggers and give more and more options to your users. Let them choose the notifications they wish to receive. For example, if you run a video streaming app, let your users decide if they wish to receive notifications about “new shows and movies”, “New episodes”, or even “Resume watching reminders”. 

2.     Segment you users

Classify your users into different groups and send alerts relevant to that group only. There are many ways to segment your users. You can create groups based on- location, time-zone, age, gender, and even the preferences. For example, categorize all the users in one segment who have opted to receive the alerts about “new movies uploaded’. In this way, you would not be annoying the users who wish not to receive the same. 

Notifications that work are specially tailored

Tailor your notifications to sound relevant to the corresponding segment. Besides the above measures, you can make your notification more personalized by following the below tips too-

• Sent location-based alerts using geo-fencing. Ex: alert revealing belt number to collect checked-in luggage at the destination airport.
• Address users with their names.
• Use utility alerts besides promotional content. Ex: related health tips, life-hacks.
• Keep it human. Don’t make it sound like a bot-generated text.
• Keep it clear and brief. Don’t create notifications past few words.
• Tigger at the right time. Consider the time-zone and avoid sending notification at night.

Push notification marketing is new, but not entirely an infant. It inherits many of characteristics and best practices from its predecessor- Email marketing. You still need following those best practices, which applies to all forms of marketing. Segment and personalize to the most stretched extent. The more are the segments, the lesser is the irritation for the audience.