Seven ways to provide value with push notifications

Push notifications give you a one-to-one channel with your customers. You can use this to bring them back to your products and services, improve the customer experience and provide more value. Sounds great, so what's the catch? 

Sadly, only 20% of consumers think that push messages provide value. If numbers are anything to go by, it’s highly likely that your push strategy isn’t as engaging as it could be.

To make matters worse, Appiterate claim that 71% of app uninstalls are triggered by a push notification and eMarketer note that 57% of mobile users unsubscribe from push because of too many messages or updates.

The key to doing push right is to provide value to the customer and do it at the right time. According to AirShip, push open rates are around 60% since the pandemic, since customers are paying more attention to their phone. 

Here are some ideas of how to make sure you do push right:

Update customers on service progress

Letting the customer know about a change a service, for example:  

• “Your taxi is on its way”
• “Your parcel will arrive within the next hour”
• "Your car is ready for collection"
• “Your warranty claim is now being processed”

These are all relevant to something the customer has requested, and therefore it’s highly likely customers will see value in the push.

Tell users about content updates

Alerting a customer when new content is available.

• “One new auction listing matches your search criteria”
• “A new article was published in ‘’Digital Excellence”
• “Jane responded to your message”

The key to getting these updates right is that they must be in line with a customer goal right now. For example, if you’re actively looking for a particular used car you’d want to know when a good match is listed. 

Alert users to problems

• “Your car is unlocked”
• “Someone signed in to your account from another country, was this you?”
• “Your credit card is about to expire”
• “You haven’t backed up for two weeks”

People fear loss more than they anticipate gain. If your service protects people from a loss, then alerting them to problems is incredibly useful. Your well-timed notifications give people an opportunity to react.

Notify people as-it-happens

• “Someone’s at the door”
• “The talk is starting in conference room R123”
• “Our happy hour starts in 30 minutes”

People don’t want to miss important things, so this is about keeping them in the loop so they can make a decision to react. 

Use beacons to notify based on a location change

Alert people when they enter a certain place. 

• “Welcome back, we have a 2 for 1 offer on all drinks”
• “Ready to park? Tap here to pay for parking”
• “Your plane boards in 10 minutes”

The alert can be triggered by a geofence, which is an area painted on a map. Another option is to use Bluetooth beacons; `small devices placed in a physical place that an app can detect and then trigger a notification. 

With Geo alerts, you can send relevant messages, at the right time and in the right place. Powerful stuff.

Send reminders

Telling the customer to do something because time is running out.

• “Your appointment is in one hour”
• “You must confirm your account within 24 hours”
• “Don’t forget to put the bins out”

It’s easy to fall into the trap of sending reminders for things people aren’t interested in. E.g. “Our summer sale ends today, don’t forget to check us out online!”. People will tolerate one or two of these a week, but it’s not very valuable. Better to remind people to do things you know they want to be reminded about.  

Note, we have met companies sending more than this with reportedly good results, but we’d advise you tread carefully.

Push adverts to consumers

This isn't the most appreciated use of push, but we're including it because it's relevant. Since April 2020, Apple now allows companies to send adverts to customers, providing that customers explicitly opt into receiving ads. This is a change since the pandemic.

Obviously, there is a high chance you can annoy customers with adverts, but if they are relevant and personalised, you will avoid driving customers to uninstall your app.

Note, iOS 12 introduced Provisional Notifications (Direct to History) which means you don't have to prompt users to receive these silent push notifications. Instead of alerting the user, they automatically drop into their notification history and the user is given the option to keep receiving them. This is a good idea because users can sample a push to decide if they want to receive this kind of message.

Use silent updates

There aren’t really push notifications as we know them. They are silent messages that only your app receives, but are never shown. They are great to show customers instant updates whilst they are actually in your app.  For example:

• Someone turning up the volume on your TV
• The light was just turned on
• Your home electricity consumption changed

The updates wouldn’t be important enough to warrant sending a regular push, but if the customer is viewing the app you want them to see new information instantly, a silent push will allow that to happen. 

What’s right for your business?

Every business is different, so it might help if you start by being clear on how do you help a person achieve a goal, and what is important to them right now.  By right now, I mean at any given step in their journey when interacting with your product or service. 

First, be clear on how you specifically help people. What goal are you helping them achieve? E.g.

• Getting somewhere
• Satisfying hunger
• Buying a hard-to-find product
• Keeping their house tidy
• Keeping their car safe

Then, think of ways to give people information in a relevant and timely way to support them in this goal.  This way, you are designing your push tactics based on value to customers, which is a good thing to do.

Getting opt-in

Research has shown that it’s best to ask customers to opt into your push messages. People get nervous if they think you’re sending them stuff based on location or by tracking their behaviours without permission. This will increase the chances of them disabling push in your app, or uninstalling it altogether. 

Getting opt-in will mean they receive what they said they want to receive, so you’re less likely to upset anyone. And I don’t mean in an “I agree to your terms” kind of way that nobody reads. They need to clearly indicate they see value in what you send. E.g “Please send me push messages alerting me about the status of my order”.

Be careful how you send promos

Avoid promotional pushes unless it’s something the customer has opted into. 90% of people are willing to receive one push per week without disabling notifications, but any more than that and all bets are off.  

E.g. If a customer is looking to save a few quid on their holiday to Spain in three months, then alerting them when good offers come up is both relevant and timely. Sending them daily blanket promotions is the path to an uninstalled app.

In a nutshell

Understand the goal your customers are achieving with your products and services
Send push messages that support them in this goal and are relevant at the time you send it.

Consider progress, content changes, problems, events, reminders and silence as good ways of thinking about “how can we provide value with push”. Keep promo push messages at less than two a week. 

Hope this was useful.