It's fair to say that since 2008, consumers have embraced mobile apps with huge enthusiasm. Last year, Apple announced that it had passed its 50 billionth app download. The Google Play Store is showing similar success – Apple was first, but the Android OS has a larger user base.
App usage is also on the rise. Mobile app use increased 115 percent in 2013 (according to Flurry Analytics), and the average smartphone user has 26 apps on their phone. However, another study, by the Pew Research Centre in the US, found that 68 per cent of users have just five or fewer apps that they actually use at least once a week.
In other words, mobile users are habituated to downloading apps, but not necessarily habituated to using all of them so that once an app is installed, the challenge for marketers is to draw consumer’s attention to it and keep them coming back for more.
Push notifications, which deliver app related messages right to a smartphone’s home-screen outside of the app experience, are one often overlooked engagement tactic that can sustain usage levels, keeping consumers interested and helping marketers hit tactical goals like in app purchases or by developing the value of the app inventory. Whatever the KPI the value of a push notification as a sign-post cannot be underestimated.
Moreover, the key benefit of push notifications is their ability to generate a sense of urgency in the user to open an app. Yodel has seen push campaigns that more than doubled app usage and engagement of users who had opted in.
The difference between getting it right and getting it wrong can be as thin as a cigarette paper. It is how a message is executed that is the key to unlocking push as an effective marketing channel.
Push messaging best practice: 5 Golden Rules
Despite the opportunities, many companies shy away from push. Take the travel sector. We’ve been looking a lot at this area recently and it’s a prime example of a vertical sector under-appreciating what push can do.
With a sample of 20 travel apps from the top 20 travel brands we received just one push message over Christmas and into early January. Isn’t that when consumers are planning their travel for the year ahead? Travel as an industry is missing the boat.
Part of the reason could be caution. Get push wrong and the consumer will delete your app – an app marketing disaster. So, here are our five golden rules for getting push right…
1. Get relevant
Send a push notification that isn’t relevant to the recipient’s life, and they’ll slate you on Twitter and may delete your app. Marketers need to be upfront with their consumers by going deeper into their notification preferences – ask them what subjects they would like to receive push notification on and how frequently they would like to receive them. Turn a potential annoyance into a value-based service, and you’ll achieve much higher re-engagement levels.
2. Track and optimise
Track your messaging campaigns, and the behaviour beyond the message. What happened next? Did your message lead to a conversion, transaction or significant dwell time? By working out these and other parameters, you’ll develop a useful engagement benchmark that will help you adjust your strategy as the campaign unfolds.
3. Join up your strategy
Integrate your messaging campaigns with other messaging platforms such as email marketing and SMS. Each platform is different – push is far more appropriate for spontaneous in-the-moment interactivity; email affords more time for a user to consider a more complex offer and follow a link.
4. Be transparent
It’s vital to show consumers where the exits are by giving them a simple opt-out option. An opt-out at a general level is a complaint – so analyse the types of messages that are initiating opt-out. Don’t perpetuate a bad brand experience.
5. Make opt-in contextual
Pop the opt-in question when the user is best in a position to make the decision. It might be preferable to wait until the user is deeper into the app experience – for example, if you ask whether they’d like to be updated on football results when they’re actually checking the half-time scores, they’re far more likely to understand the value of opting-in, because the context works for them.
Ultimately, consumers are savvy enough to understand that by downloading an app (especially if that app is free), they are entering in to a value-exchange. We need to use push responsibly – and make consumers an equitable partner in that value-exchange. Add consumer value, and they’ll reward your brand with value in return.
By Tim Pemberton, media operations director at Yodel Mobile.
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