Although Web push notifications are one of the best ways to engage directly with your customers or prospects, to get the most out of them, you need to understand and track certain push notification KPIs.
So, now that you’ve set up several Web push notifications campaigns, done the appropriate segmentation and targeting, you’ve developed your communication strategy and all the details surrounding your campaign: timing, frequency, etc. All you have to do now is wait for the results… Well, that’s not quite true!
How to determine the Push notification KPIs to be measured?
Once you have started your notification campaign, you need to determine specific indicators that will tell you how successful (or unsuccessful) your campaign has been. So, what do you want to measure when it comes time to analyze the results?
To find these indicators, you need to base them on your initial campaign goal. For example, for a notoriety objective, you will want to display your message to as many people as possible (view rate) and even, ideally, bring them to your website (click-through rate). For an event ticket sales objective, you will want to measure the conversion rate and the revenue generated, etc. The possibilities are endless!
These metrics you need to determine will be useful for several things, the main one, of course, being to measure the success of your strategy. But also, to know what works with your audience and what doesn’t work so well. So you can use this information to optimize your notifications and your strategy, but also to better understand your subscribers.
Indeed, your target (which is at the heart of your strategy) is constantly changing: it develops new lifestyles, new interests, new tastes, in short, it adapts to its environment and its era. This is why you must have relevant information at all times on which to base your marketing strategies to evolve at the same pace as your target.
Audience metrics
As mentioned earlier, your audience is at the heart of your strategy. And to optimize your strategy, you need to know and understand your audience. Some metrics are therefore less important when it comes to directly measuring the effectiveness of your campaign. However, they are important when it comes to better understanding your target and their habits, which in turn will affect the effectiveness of your campaign.
Indeed, the more you know your target, the more you will be able to send relevant messages that are in line with what interests them. This results in better results for you. This is why these are indicators that you should follow at all times.
For example, the number of notifications sent and the frequency of sending are two things you can track to find out what works with your audience in terms of form. You can then use this information to send the number of notifications that works best with your audience as well as the ideal frequency. This is a continuous learning process, as this data will certainly change over time.
Now, as for the more important metrics…
Top 4 KPI metrics to measure the performance of push notifications:
- Metric 1 : Opt-in rate.
- Metric 2 : View rate.
- Metric 3 : Click-through rate (CTR).
- Metric 4 : Revenues and conversions.
1. Opt-in rate
As with any self-respecting communications strategy, for yours to be successful, you need to have a good subscriber base. This is probably the most important factor of all.
That’s why it’s important not to leave anything to chance. For example, the subscription request window: configure it to the tastes of your contacts, test different placements and display options available on browsers to get a window that will bring you the most subscriptions possible.
The subscription opt-in is an important push notification KPI to measure the performances of your campaigns. Without optimized opt-in, your campaigns will be less effective.
2. View rate
The view rate is the percentage of people that see your notification. This is one of the important metrics to find the effectiveness of your web push notification. The formula is:
View rate = Total view / Total sent
Your goal should obviously be that all your subscribed contacts see your notifications. It should indeed be the case (or at least a very high percentage), unless your contacts don’t browse the Internet for the duration of your notifications. It would indicate only one thing: the timing of your push notifications is problematic.
This would mean that you send your notifications when your subscribers are not logged in. This reflects a lack of knowledge about your audience.
To remedy this, test over the long term to find out what works for you and at what times of the day/month/year. Analyze your data to spot patterns, and then exploit them. These patterns are likely to be different from day to day and month to month over the course of a year, so you will be continually in test and in learning mode.
But the important thing is to listen to what your subscribers are telling you through their behaviour and not to rely on your feelings because your intuition can be wrong, but the behavioural data is never wrong.
Moreover, it is the first metric to be set in case of low efficiency because it influences all the others. For example, if your engagement rate with your notifications is low but your view rate is too, the view issue must be addressed first, because in order to respond to your notifications, you must first see them. This is why your goal would be to always have this metric with the highest possible value.
3. Click-through rate
A second important push notification KPI to follow is, of course, the click rate. Of course, in order for your subscribers to want to click on your notification, it has to be well mounted. Refer to this article which explains the steps to make web push notifications that make people click.
Another element that influences the click rate is the relevance of the offer. If your subscribers are not interested in what you have to offer, there is a big problem. Either your subscribers are simply not interested in your business (but this is very unlikely if they subscribed to your Web push) or you need to find an offer that appeals to your subscribers. This is very important because every push notification you send out is a chance to connect with your users, so take this opportunity and make good use of it.
Here’s the formula for calculating it:
Click-through rate = Total clicks / Total views
A good CTR means more customer engagement, and that’s what every marketer wants: to have committed contacts. The use of offers, discounts and promotions is always a good tactic for this, but it should be used sparingly. Otherwise, retargeting and shopping cart abandonment campaigns are also good ways to get a good click through rate. As well as creating promotional campaigns for a limited time, or for special occasions such as Valentine’s Day for example.
These are a few examples that work well but there are many more, let your creativity run wild and try new tactics. Who knows, you may be surprised at the results!
4. Revenues generated and conversion rates
The revenue generated metric only applies to companies that send promotional content with Web push notifications or campaigns with a monetary objective. If you only send educational content, for example, this push notification KPI will be useless to you. Follow the conversion rate instead. The following explanations apply to both situations.
If your communication is well done, normally your web push notification should point to a landing page once clicked. Of course, your landing page should be relevant and complementary to the message contained in your notification. Otherwise, you will directly lose your visitors at this stage and no one will buy your product or convert.
What’s special about Web push notifications is that they are consumed in real time and therefore they are not stored and once clicked or expired no one will be able to remember what was in it. This is the main reason why your landing page is so important. It must contain all the information necessary for the purchase, even if it means repeating what was on the notification.
So, if you have a high click rate on your web push notification but your final conversion rate is low, don’t ask yourself more questions: the problem lies in your landing page. Follow our tips to build a landing page that converts.
Conclusion
Performance analysis is sometimes taken lightly by marketers because it is a job that seems tedious and less customer-focused. On the other hand, as you may have read in this article, it is also an essential task to have a better knowledge of your subscribers and gives you several interesting insights to always remain relevant.
If you find it difficult to keep track of all the data you need to track, using dashboards can help you integrate all the important metrics in one place and make your job easier. Plus, with Dialog Insight, you can create personalized and automated reports after each campaign you run, saving you a tremendous amount of time. In short, several tools are available. Visit the page dedicated to marketing performance analysis on our Web site to find out everything you can do with the Dialog Insight platform.
