Whether you are trying to connect with your most loyal customers, foster leads or trying to win back old customers, push notification marketing is the marketing channel for customer engagement. On average, over 5% of users who receive push notifications engage with it. However, the important thing is that a user cannot receive push notifications unless they opt-in to receive it. Opt-in rates also differ depending on the devices used by users. To start sending web push notifications to customers, you need to obtain their permission for the same.
The push notification opt-in rate is the percentage of users who subscribe to receive your push messages. Increasing subscription rate for push notifications is one of the major goals for all brands as it implies more exposure to your messages. This blog is a comprehensive guide that will take you through everything you need to make your push message campaign effective.
Why do users subscribe to push messages?
Customers subscribe to push notifications when they realize the value of subscribing to notifications from a website. It means that you have to explain what type of push messages you are going to send them and how valuable they are. For example, if you are going to send updates about specific shows, or notifying your users about special offers, mention that. These types of messages work great than the messages that just ask for a user’s permissions without any valid context.
By displaying the opt-in notification without any reasons will not help to build trust amongst your users. Why should they believe a website they just came across? It is really vital to make your purpose evident, explain the value of your push messages, and let your customers know you are not going to simply spam them with your content. If they are clear about this, they will be more willing to opt-in your notifications. If your push notifications will communicate to your users on a personal level, you can increase the web push notification opt-in rate quickly.
Factors that influence the push notification opt-in rate
As you integrate push messages to your marketing strategy, let’s look into some of the key factors that influence the push notification click-through rates.
Transparency
Now that you know how important push messages are, how do you get the customers to opt-in for your push notifications and receive them? It is not easy to achieve it as a large percentage of users don’t opt-in to receive push messages. Only 59% of android mobile users and 40% of iPhone users opt-in to receive your notifications.
Generally, users don’t want to deal with an incoming barrage of messages from brands all over their web browser. The best way to overcome this challenge is to be transparent with the content you integrate into your push messages. When sending out push notifications, display a clear picture of what your users can expect out of your push messages from the moment they start using your services.
Brevity
To deliver your push messages effectively, you must use short-form content in your messages. Never experiment with long-form content in your push messages. Yes, long content is great to remind your users about your products and services, but brevity is the key to increase the push notification opt-in rate. Who wouldn’t be annoyed if the browser is loaded with annoying messages throughout the day? Annoyed users will opt-out push messages from brands. When they opt out of your push notifications, you lose all your hard work and relevancy. The optimal word count of push messages is less than 10 words.
However, there is no ideal length for push messages. Here are some of the few things you can follow for the optimal delivery of push messages.
- Keep your notifications short
- Add the most important content at the beginning of your message
- Test on devices that your audiences use
You want your customers to see rich content when they look at their browse, therefore keep your message short and sweet to keep them engaged.
Personalized tone
A little customization can go a long way to improve your push notification opt-in and click through rates. Add in a humorous tone or some emojis to give your users the impression they receive a message from their friends if it makes sense in the message context. If the context is right, your users will be more engaged and willing to opt-in to your push notifications. For example, 8tracks saw a significant decrease in their user churn rate and an increase in engagement when they started using a friendly tone in their push messages.
Use emojis
It is proven that the use of emojis in your push notifications boosts the CTR by 128%. However, make sure you choose your emojis carefully and test them before sending them out. Because you don’t want to be sending loads of emojis to users who aren’t receptive or include them in messages are not relevant. But do not allow the statistics tool to fool you. Emojis are not magical in bringing in higher CTR. To reap success when using emojis, you must strategically integrate them into your push messages.
Real tactics to increase web push notification opt-in rates
Push notification strategy is one of the effective ways to reach an increasing number of users and offer them with actionable and immediate value. These messages are not only considered valuable for the brand, but also convenient for users. However, to increase the push notification opt-in rate, you need to consider integrating some real tactics which are already proven to reap success. Here are some of the effective strategies to increase your opt-in rates.
Make it easy to turn notifications from browsers
Most websites and apps depend on the system preferences setting of the browser to manage the permissions to receive notifications. However, this is not the best way as your websites or apps preferences will be mixed with all of the other sites and they aren’t personalized for granular permissions to your site. To get around this, you can add a push message reference setting within the website with micro controls for personalization.
This is the easiest way to allow you to take control of the push notifications they want to send out. Even if you might be hesitant to give your customers control over such things, if done, it helps your customer to trust your brand and ensure you deliver the true value they seek.
Time it right
One effective way to increase push notification is to find when to prompt your users to subscribe to your push messages. Asking your visitors to subscribe to your push notifications within seconds of their first visit to their website is not a good idea as it can cause people to hit “Block” on the prompt. Instead, give your users enough time to browse your website before asking them to subscribe to your notifications.
Giving time for users to explore your website allows them to understand what they would get if they subscribe to your push messages. For example, if you have a travel website that allows users to book last-minute deals on a budget, it is best to wait until the user clicks into a deal before prompting them to opt-in to your notifications. You can use a push notification service that offers different ways to promote your users to subscribe to your web push message.
Create value from receiving push messages
Prompting customers to opt-in to your notifications can be tricky as you only get one chance at it. If a user denies your request to opt-in to your message with the website, they can subscribe again only by manually changing the settings.
That is why it is imperative to make your users understand the value of getting push messages from you before requesting them to subscribe. Your website can guide your users to discover your brand value is by taking them through your site. For example, if your site contains plenty of guest blogs from popular contributors, you could wait to promote an opt-in until they have discovered a blog they really liked.
If the user decides to save your post, you can ask them whether they would like to be notified of new content from your website in the future. If they accept, immediately send them the message prompt to subscribe to your push messages.
Obtaining user permission
You might be familiar with how push notifications work. The first time a user opens your website, they will be prompted to allow the site to send your push messages. The design and content that ask users to send push notifications are set by the system, generally, you won’t have control over customizing it.
It is non-customizable and if it’s dismissed the users must go to the browser preferences to re-activate push notifications for your site which most users won’t bother to do. To combat the challenges of this web push notification opt-in rate process, here are 3 best practices to increase the opt-in rates of users to choose to receive push messages from your website.
The two-tap subscription process
One effective opt-in process is a two-tap process for businesses to increase their web push message user base. The two common steps are as follows.
Ask user permission– This is normally set by the website owner. This is configurable and can be asked multiple times.
Confirm subscription– This is generally set by the system, and not configurable. This can be asked only once.
Instead of loading up the website with hard ask dialogues overlaying the web page content, it would be better if you can present custom banners on other inline page elements. This permission is under the control of the website owner and could simply mention the site would like to have the permission to send them notifications which they could easily ignore. By allowing your users to choose a soft opt-out that’s under your control before asking them to confirm the subscription, you retain the ability to ask them permission again another time.
Optimizing the permission ask
To ask your users to opt-in to your push notifications, there are different forms to craft permission ask from switches to banners to inline dialogs. This allows you to offer your users better expectations of what they will receive. You could link the banner to a web page informing them about the type of message content they can expect. This helps in creating a smoother onboarding flow. If customers have a better understanding of what they are signing up for, their willingness to receive notifications from your site will increase.
Asking permission in context
By analyzing the user journey, you can identify where to boost your communication and integrate contextual messages that deliver real customer value. This potentially leads to different ways to ask for notification permissions. For instance, you might already be sending emails to users when their packages ship. In that case, you can offer them to enable shipping push messages when a product goes out for delivery.
Another possible use case is a product page for a sold-out item you could allow customers to sign up for a message when the product is back in stock. This can be presented as an alternate to the “Add to Cart ” button following a similar design with alternate content.
When you contextually ask permissions, make sure the push message content you send will match the expectations you set when you get the permission of the users. Understanding the context implicit in a customer’s choice and respecting it will lead to a better long term user experience.
That’s all folks!
When used correctly, push notifications will help increase your web push notifications opt-in rates and click through rates. Craft your push messages in a way it urges your users to take necessary actions. Your push messages are the medium to help beat your user return issues, so use your messages wisely. Remember, testing is crucial to measure the success of your push notification strategy. Every business today must stay tune to the key metrics that drive business growth.
Once users have agreed to opt-in for your push messages, keep the content-specific and customized. While receiving user subscriptions is great for your website, bad push notification strategies can easily drive customers away from your site forever.
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