Push notifications explained

It doesn’t get any simpler than this: push notifications are short automated messages from apps and websites that appear on a user’s device or browser.

The science behind the magic of push notifications focuses on creating triggering messages to elicit a target audience’s immediate reaction related to a brand’s product or service.

Push notifications are among the most popular customer communication channels, offering multiple opportunities for automation and personalization. They can display dynamic rich media messages, use real-time reaction triggers, target audiences based on their online reported behavior, their demographic traits, or other predefined measurable factors, and even contact users their preferred time of reach.

As they require less effort by the users to read and react, don’t need users to own a specific type of device or software to be able to receive and open them, and alerts can be delivered even when a device’s screen is locked or when the app or website that is sending the push notification is closed, push notifications are an ideal way to achieve higher click-through rates. In fact, both web and mobile push notifications, enjoy a click-through rate (CTR) of 40%, which is 8 times higher than that of email marketing!

In a brief comparison between web vs mobile push notifications, web push notifications have a broader reach than mobile app notifications, as users can receive alerts on their computers, laptops, and mobile browsers from websites they have authorized. Mobile push notifications, on the other hand, have a shorter reach than web push notifications, as users must install an app and opt-in to push notifications. Mobile push notifications can be displayed in the lock screen, notification center, or banners on a mobile device, triggering a sound or vibration.

Apart from the high user engagement and high click-through rates that businesses who use push notifications in their marketing strategy can enjoy, they can also improve their business revenue growth, strengthen customer retention, boost re-engagement of idle or lapsed users, enhance customer experience through efficient segmentation and personalization, increase traffic to their brand’s website or app, and empower their brand identity.

A business can capitalize on push notifications putting in action its vast functionality (web overlays, web push, email, mobile, in-app, and SMS) using a powerful push notification service like Routee.