Everything app marketers need to know about push notifications

Push notifications are perhaps the best marketing tool a mobile app has. Unlike call, email or SMS, push notifications are not seen as an irritation, as they can be controlled by the user. This makes push notifications a cost-effective marketing tool with handy features that aren’t available in other modes of communication. 

For businesses, the various forms of push notifications help to fulfill many requirements for marketing, advertising, and notifying customers as required. In this post, we’ll see the various types of push notifications and how to use them.

Web Push notifications- These notifications appear on your desktop whenever you are connected to the internet. They appear at the top or bottom of the screen as per the operating system used. Web notifications are fairly easy to use, even those without any technical skills can set them up.

Desktop push notifications- Appearing only on the desktop browser, these notifications show only based on the products you’ve installed on the browser. Making such notifications is fairly challenging, mostly requiring the web developer’s help.

Mobile app push notifications- Just like a web push notification, mobile app push notifications are triggered by downloaded or existing apps on the mobile device. The app owner can send many notifications to the user, but the user can choose to restrict or stop these notifications. Mobile app push notifications arrive at three locations- lock screen, banner, and notification center.

Push notifications on wearable devices- Wearable devices are the newest trend. On these small screen devices, you can sync the notifications you get on your mobile and also control the notifications that you get.

Out of these, the mobile app push notifications are by far the most popular and used ones. These notifications are used in various ways for various intents. Let’s see how these notifications are used.

8 Types of push notification campaigns

Rich push notifications- Here, you can add up to 3 clickable links- the notification itself and two CTAs. Besides this, you can add an image (and even videos in some cases) to enhance the visual appeal of the push notification. Additionally, you also have the freedom to use emojis for a better user experience. You can use these rich push notifications for marketing a new product, advertising existing products, or for any other promotional activities.

Abandoned cart push notifications- Perhaps the best way to use push notifications, customers routinely fill up their cart and not proceed to purchase. Regular push notifications can help e-commerce mobile apps to increase conversions. You could even prod the customer to complete the purchase with an offer or exclusive discount.

Informative notifications- Used by most news and media brands, informative notifications can be used to show news, weather, stock prices, and other updates that the user would like to read or interact with.

Triggered push notifications- These are notifications triggered by any action from the user’s side. For instance, upon making a purchase, the customer gets notified about the order’s acceptance and will get notified of all further steps till the customer receives the product.

Reminder notifications- These are ideal for e-commerce mobile apps where customers have abandoned a cart or if they’ve not completed a form online. This is a cost- and resource-effective way to remind users to complete an action on an app.

Interest-based geo-notifications- You must have got a notification from Google when you visit some restaurant or other public place for feedback. Similar to this, there is software that allows brands to send push notifications to smartphones in the vicinity via GPS.

Mobile-friendly push notifications- This is something different. Not to be confused with mobile app push notifications, these are notifications you can send via mobile browsers without the need for an app. These are ideal for new brands who’d like to advertise without investing in an app yet get increased traffic from mobile browsers.

Time-bound notifications- These notifications help create a sense of urgency amongst the user. For instance, you could set a notification for a promotion that will expire within 48 hours. The link in the notification can be disabled once the offer period is over.

Wrapping Up

Push notifications are the best medium to market your brand without being too forceful or pushy. With these many types of push notifications, you could use a mix of them to fulfill your brand’s goals.