As the popularity of mobile devices among consumers and businesses continues to soar, brands are looking for ways to better their mobile marketing strategy. Mobile apps remain on a consumer's device wherever they go, giving a brand a lot of potential to communicate with their audience while they are on the go. Sometimes users need a little nudge to reintroduce them to an app they may have forgotten about and this is where push technology can help.
A push notification is a message sent to users that have installed your app. There are some bad examples of push out there where messages are sent to the user without any thought or strategic planning - these are the companies giving push technology a bad name.
Mobile apps allow brands to develop a personal relationship with their audience through in-app preferences and other types of analytical data. By carefully assessing your audience's personal preferences, you can send out timely and relevant notifications to add value to their day.
For example, through geo detection a brand can discover when a customer last visited their store or when a customer is nearby and then push out a relevant notification: "Come inside and get 20% off. Today only."
By looking at users' habits you will be able to narrow down your audience into different groups and push out a targeted and relevant message to each different type of group. For example, if a certain group of users purchase films by a certain director, you could send out a relevant push with a discount on the director's latest film.
As well as ensuring your content is relevant and timely, you also need to educate your user on push notifications. As soon as the app is opened, users should be informed if the app uses push notifications and can decide whether they want to opt in or out. You can also extend this by offering users a place within the app to choose which types of push notifications they'd like to receive and on what topics they'd like to receive them. For example, a sporting app could offer their users push notifications on the latest sports results. A user may opt in for football results but not cricket. Giving the user this choice will make them more likely to opt in for push notifications as they are guaranteed to receive information that is relevant to them.
According to push technology start up Urban Airship, a relevant push notification has a 3x faster response rate than email proving that push could one day be as popular as other types of communication channels.
Clair M O'Neill works for Mubaloo, a mobile app development company specialising in Android, Windows, web, Blackberry and iPhone app development.
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