8 Push Notification Tips for Higher User Engagement and Sales

Push notifications are everywhere! By the time you read this sentence, your smartphone may have buzzed and lit up. It’s a new notification (Tada!).

Once you receive a push notification, there are three possibilities.

1. You can either ignore it at a glance.

2. Uninstall the app as these notifications are sucking your blood like little nasty arachnids. (I bet you don’t want either of the two for your own app.)

OR, the third possibility, which is a utopian situation for every app owner or marketer.

3. You check the notification and respond to it.

I guess it’s the number 3 that we all want. And in this article, we’re at your disposal to help you craft perfect push notifications to boost user engagement and sales.

Here are the top 8 tips for your push notifications. Live by these 8 tips and you’ll notice higher user engagement and sales.

1. Be Creative

Push notifications are just like any other piece of marketing or advertising content. So, what is that one thing you need for a compelling piece of content? It’s creativity. A creatively crafted push notification can improve the user engagement rather than just a simple dull message. Check this genius push notification by Amazon.

2. Evoke Excitement

Triggering emotions helps you to connect with your users in a better way. And positive emotions like excitement have been proven to improve user engagement with the content. So, if you have an event or a sale coming up, start sending push notifications about the event or discounts to built up the excitement and curiosity among the users.

3. Personalize

One of the of the biggest mistake most people do is firing a generic notification to the user. These notifications would serve no better than spam emails or text. In fact, according to a survey, 78% of the users felt that the push notifications they received were irrelevant.

On the other hand, personalizing the content would make the users feel involved and engaged with the app. Use the valuable user data such as name, gender, age, location, preference, activity, wish list, in-cart items, etc to personalize the content. Localytics have curated some of the best-personalised push notification in the following infographics. Take a look.

4. Utilize Location and Time

Location data, when combined with other behavioural data, can be used to improve the user experience of your app. If your app has permission to access the location of the user, it can be helpful to deliver the relevant notification. For instance, you can promote your product based on the weather and the geographical location of the user.
Even time is a great tool for sending a relevant notification. For instance, a music streaming app can suggest motivational music playlist in the morning or a playlist of chill songs during evening drive time. Not only that you can even send the notifications according to the festive seasons.

5. Make Users Feel Special

Everyone would love to feel special. You, me, the person sitting next to you, your office boy, each and every one of us. You can make your users feel special by sending them exclusive offers, discounts, news and information in form of push notification. And it works because they feel they are valued by a special discount or feel like an insider reading exclusive news and information. And this will boost user engagement as well as the sales.

6. Ask a Question, Make the User Curious

Do you know what makes the users click on your notification? You already know the answer. Questions are a great way to start a conversation. Asking questions is a simple and effective way to improve user engagement. It evokes curiosity and triggers the answering reflexes in humans. So, the user stops for a while and thinks about it. Which may even result in opening the app to know more. A well-drafted question can indeed improve user engagement.

7. Use Emojis and Images

While you communicate in person, you can convey your message verbally along with your facial expressions. However, in notifications, you communicate with your users with text which lacks liveliness. And it is quite difficult to convey emotions with just plain text. Here emojis and images can bring that missing spark in your push notification. They are a great tool to convey the mood, facial expression, theme, and emotion. Emojis can even come handy to keep the text brief and exciting at the same time. So just remember, adding emojis and images can provoke emotions which is a major factor influencing the users’ decision.

8. Make the User’s Life Easy

Apps must provide a solution to the problem of the users. It must provide utility and functionality. So should be your push notification. It should be useful to the user and make their life easier. For example, calendar app notifies about the upcoming events or Google Maps updates about the traffic. Many fitness and calorie tracking apps notify the users when it’s the time to work out, fuel up with the food or time to consume water. All these make the user’s life easy as it provides utility. A push notification reminds your user the important tasks to take care of, which otherwise are overlooked in the busy schedule.

Wrap Up

Since Apple introduced push notification in 2009, push-notifications has come a long way. Now, they are an integral part of any application on every device. It is a great tool that can help you to boost user engagement and sales if used correctly. Keep the above tips in mind for your push notification to get the maximum results. Hope you enjoyed reading it and would utilize the tips in your own app. If you have any query or would like to know more about incorporating push notification in your app development feel free to contact us. We are Techuz, a top mobile app development company in India.