A few weeks ago, we wrote an article on web push notifications to help you understand what it is and the benefits of using it. We are now continuing this momentum by answering the following question: How to create an effective web push notification campaign? By effective, I mean that increases the subscription rate and decreases the churn rate.
1. Subscription request
First, before thinking about the notification itself, it is important to think about the subscription request. To get as many subscribers as possible, do not ask your visitors to subscribe in all the pages of your website. You could make yourself out for a spammy business, which is not desirable.
Analyze your website statistics to target the pages where your visitors spend the most time to ask them to subscribe. It is important to choose your pages wisely so that they are strategic and bring you many subscribers without annoying them.
For example, an e-commerce site could put this request on the pages of items out of stock, adding a product to the wish list and products on sale, to be notified when an item falls in sale. Experiment and modify according to what works best for you.
Also, remember to wait for a certain delay before showing the subscription request. Give your visitors time to soak up some of your content before asking if they want to sign up. This will make it easier for you to get new subscribers at their own pace.
Then, depending on the page selected, take time to write what your visitor would benefit if he subscribes. Be strategic! For example, for an airline company, on the purchase confirmation page for a flight, offer to stay informed about the delays of the flight purchased by authorizing web push notifications.
2. The goal of your campaign
Now let’s get to the point of the subject. The first step in getting started with web push notifications is to determine the purpose of your campaign. Several types of web push campaigns exist:
Nurturing campaign
If you are a service company, you must inform your users about the benefits of using your services. Sending informative content to your prospects and customers will position you as an expert in your field and increase the confidence they will have in your business.
A great way to get there is to do a drip push notification campaign. In other words, set up a series of informative notifications that will be sent at regular intervals. You can also use an RSS feed to put your content forward.
In this series of notifications, you can:
- Inform your users on the benefits of getting your products and services
- Show the different functions of your product and make tutorials on how to use it
- Showcase business cases with successful client using your products or services
- Present customer testimonials that have benefited from your products and services
In short, use this automated sequence to highlight your products or services by informing your users of their benefits. This will increase your reputation and the confidence your users have in your business.
Promotional campaign
Make a promotional campaign to promote a new product, service or event. Such a campaign should be sent to all your users since this is a novelty.
Make a promotional campaign to:
- Announce a new feature to an existing product
- Announce the addition of a new product or service in your existing range
- Promote a sale or promotion
- Share the recommendations of your other customers
Leverage promotion to generate sales is an excellent strategy to use regularly. It is also the most used by companies.
Transactional campaign
The main goal of the transactional campaign is to build customer loyalty by optimizing the purchase process and offering after sale service’s that encourages the customer to buy back from you. You can use web push notifications to:
- Confirm a product purchase or subscription to your services
- Welcome your new subscribers to your services
- Thank customers for buying your products
- Send transaction tracking to keep your customers informed of their order status
- Confirm purchase delivery
- Ask your customers for advice after a purchase
Alert campaign
Create an alert campaign to entice your users to take action on your website. Several uses are possible:
- Notify your users who have shown an interest in a product out of stock when it is newly available
- Warn your users when there is a price drop on a product they added in their wish list or cart without buying
- Make an offer to users who left products in their shopping cart without buying
- Keep your users informed about how your sales are changing, when they are about to end, to create a sense of urgency and encourage purchase
3. Creation
Then, we must rely on 4 pillars to create a web push notification:
- Target (To whom the notification is sent)
- Content (Title, message, CTA)
- The time of sending
- Relevance and settings
Who is your campaign for?
It is now time to determine who your message is for. Of course, all users are different, so sending the same message to everyone is never a good idea. Segment your contacts based on several criteria and send your message to the most appropriate segment. This will help target users so they feel more engaged with your message and increase your clickthrough rate.
Your segmentation may be demographic: age, gender, location; or behavioral: device used, actions taken on your website, etc. The latter is one of the most effective, especially when done dynamically.
The segmentation of your contacts also makes it possible to send more personalized messages according to the representative persona for each segment. Here are some ideas of personalized messages that you could send based on the behaviors:
- Abandoned shopping cart: Target people leaving your website with items in their shopping cart without buying them. Personalize your message with the name of the user, an image of the product (s) left in the cart and a call to action leading to the order page.
- Buying behavior: Analyze the buying behavior of your customers. Categorize your products, then select other products that are complementary or superior to them and offer them to your customers in a notification.
- Search history: You can use the same product suggestion strategy for users who are not yet customers and are looking for products on your website.
- Custom transaction: When your customers make a purchase, sending them a notification with the details of their purchase can be a good idea if you want to increase their satisfaction with your brand. Then send notifications to keep your customers up-to-date on their order, for example, during delivery.
Let’s go to content
The title is the most important part of your message. Since the number of characters is limited, take time to write a short and catchy title that encourages people to click directly. Creating a sense of urgency is a good way to do it.
The message is your value proposition. It should, therefore, be complementary to your title and explain the benefits of clicking on the notification. The text should be short, convincing and straightforward. It must also reflect the content of the landing page to which you are directing your contact. Personalization is a good way to get your visitor’s attention and increase your clickthrough rate.
You should also always add your company logo in your web push notifications to create an identity reminder in the heads of users.
Adding an image to your web push notification makes your message more attractive. Even if it is optional, it helps to get a better click rate.
You must make it clear to the user what to do. That’s why adding a call to action at the end of your message is important. The goal is always to click, so choose a catchy CTA that gives the taste to know more. Direct your contacts to a relevant landing page related to your campaign. Thus, you will not let any subscription escape.
Bonus little trick: Using emojis in your web push notifications makes the thing more personal. According to a study, inserting emojis in your messages would increase the conversion rate of web push notifications by 85%.
The sending time
Engaging your contacts at the right time is an art. A web push notification that is sent at the wrong time may seem intrusive and may lead to the unsubscription of the contact. Rely on your different segments to determine the best possible moment for each of them. Then, do some tests to see which one works best.
If you have contacts around the world, segment your audience by time zone, to make sure you do not send a notification at night by mistake. It is also very useful when you make sales delimited by hours. Make sure you have the right hours for the right segments to avoid confusion.
Relevance and settings
Finally, always be sure to direct your users to a relevant landing page, which is related to the content of your notification. In addition, web push notifications are not stored anywhere and the user can not review the contents of it after clicking. Your landing page should contain all the information that the user needs to do the desired action.
Then, think about putting an end date to your message. In fact, your users are not online 24 hours a day. So, planning an end to your offer will prevent your users from receiving too many notifications when they reconnect. It also saves you from sending expired offers to your users who log in after that date.
4. Why not automate everything?
Automating your web push notifications allows you to reach the right users at the right time and in the right way. At each stage of the purchase cycle your users go through, you should send a message that initiates an action to take the user to the next step.
By automating your web push notifications, you make sure to send a relevant and personalized alert according to the actions performed by your users. These triggers can be multiple:
- Abandoned shopping cart
With such a campaign, you can re-target users who have left items in their shopping cart without making a purchase in the hope that they will eventually do so. Determine the amount of time you want before sending your message. You can also add a discount code to prompt the user to take action.
- Purchase of product or service
You have the option to send a notification automatically after the purchase of one of your customers. This can be for the purchase confirmation, thank them for their purchase, sending a discount coupon or for tracking the delivery. In any case, your customer expects to receive this type of message after purchase.
You can also wait a little longer to send your customers suggestions for complementary products or higher range to encourage a second purchase.
- Subscription
Create a series of educational content and send it to your users who have subscribed to your newsletter or who have recently purchased your products or services to educate them. To do this, use an RSS feed that automates your sending of content.
You can also use web push notifications to automatically welcome new subscribers. You will create a link with each of your subscribers as soon as they register.
- Visit of your website or a product page
Take advantage of the magic of automation to send a product demo or customer testimonial to visitors who have viewed a specific product page on your website. Give them additional arguments to encourage purchase.
Also, why not send a notification to your users who have not visited your website for 2 weeks to tell them they miss you? Maybe they just do not think about it and sending them a reminder could make them go back to your website. You can target a specific page to better personalize your message and return to the right page, such as the blog.
Conclusion
We’ve provided you with several examples, now it’s time to take action.
Here’s a list of things to check before sending your campaign so you do not forget any step in the creative process:
- Choose strategic web pages for your subscription requests
- Segment your target audience based on predetermined criteria
- Send contextual notifications according to your segments
- A short and catchy title
- A message related to the title
- Integrate your company logo
- Add a large enough image related to your message
- Use a clear call to action that encourages clicks
- Check that the link is pointing to the correct landing page
- Make sure your landing page is relevant and contains all the information you need to convert
- Be sure to send your notifications at the right time according to your targeted segment
- Determine the time of appearance of your notification (20 sec is usually the best choice)
- Determine an expiration date on your notification
You are now ready to fly on your own. Get started! Do several tests and adjust everything according to the results. For those who want to share their first experience with web push notifications, write your findings in the comments!
If you need help to set up your web push notification, do not hesitate to contact us, one of our experts can certainly help you.
