Many digital marketers have deemed web push notifications (WPN) the “king of communication.” Having a well-designed WPN increases ROI significantly, because it’s a fantastic way of interacting with users. When done right, it is a non-intrusive approach to let customers know more information about your discounts, promotions or content. This is because WPN is a permission-based subscription service.
However, the opt-in rates of WPN are only as successful as long as the marketers/designers utilise key strategies. Aside from constantly analysing the key performance indicators (KPI), you will need a subscriber base that trusts you. Here are several guidelines for ensuring that your WPN opt-in marketing campaign is fruitful.
- Placement
A large part of your opt-in rate depends on placement of the notification. There are a variety of templates you can choose from. Here are the 3 most common ones:
- Safari-style boxes refer to the top-center of your website
- Large Safari-style boxes appear smack dab at the center of your website
- The floating bar appears at the bottom bar
Browsers don’t want to feel like opt-in boxes are intruding their screens while surfing. Try out different placements and perform some old-fashioned A/B testing to find out where the optimal placement for the opt-in box is. It will require some time to do so, yes, but doing so now will improve your opt-in rate later down the road.
- Activity
Your subscribers will most likely be from all across the world. Each of them with their own schedule, in wide and vast time zones. This is the value of sending notifications while users/visitors are active. You can do this by segmenting users, based on their geo-location, to send them notifications during their active hours.
- Sending Personalized Notification
People are savvy. It’s easy to tell which sites have a generalized “Hello [visitor name here], welcome to our site!” Once upon a time, this was a unique (and stellar) tactic for personalizing notifications. Because it’s become the norm, the personalized effect has weaned.
A much more organic tactic is to send your visitors a personalized, tagged with an additional discount on a product or service that’s related to the pages’ contents they’ve visited. Push notifications let you send subscribers personalized notifications for any particular campaign. Once you send them the opt-in, your chances for them handing over their information increase greatly. This is because you’ve already established yourself as a warm, inviting face who provides useful information. Higher CTR is guaranteed by making your site as human and interactive as possible.
- Stick Rate
People do not go to sites hoping to be blasted with prompts, promotions, pop-ups and attempts at their information. We go to websites when we want to know something or figure something out – or when we are interested in a product. If your site has interesting, relevant content that they find useful and can relate to, the bounce rate of those pages decreases (which is good). Then you can prompt them to enter their information. There is no “best answer” of time for prompting the web push opt-in. So frequently analyse your analytics tool to find out the average duration of each visitor’s session. If they find value in your site first, they’ll feel less harassed about opting in.
Conclusion
Web push notification, as a marketing channel for customer acquisition and retention, is far more effective than emails. Some have reported a higher subscription rate (10-20%) compared to emails, which were in the single digits. Every industry stands to benefit from pouring all their efforts into maximising their web push efforts.
