Pump Up Your Mobile Program With Push Notifications

The best way to market to your mobile application users just might be through push notifications. 9 of the Top 10 in the 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500 use push notifications as part of their program to market to consumers, making push notifications the most-used feature among that group. Digging deeper we find that 136 of the 500 use push notifications.

Push notification use continues to grow with mobile applications and are something you should discuss with your mobile application developer. A study published this past Spring by OtherLevels found that the number of retail apps utilizing push notifications increased 48 percent from 2012 to 2013. Additionally the study went on to further detail that 66 percent of the top 100 retailers in the study with a mobile applications utilized push notifications.

Beyond just being popular amount top retail companies with mobile applications, push notifications have been shown to increase engagement and retention among consumers. In a study from Urban Airship, they detail that consumers who opted-in to push notifications on retail oriented mobile apps generated 40 percent more monthly app opens. The average increase in engagement across a spectrum of industries including media, retail, entertainment,  games and sports was 26 percent.

Looking at data gathered by Localytics, they found that users who enable push notifications have a 3X higher retention rate compared to users who disable them.

How do you make your push notifications more productive?

“It’s important to ask users for their preferences when you use push notifications,” states Kimber Johnson, Managing Director, Vanity Point. “This allows you to personalize delivery. Additionally, we encourage our client’s to use push notifications for useful information and not just advertisements. Useful information will create a click but spamming users with ads or frivolous information will just have them deleting your application or opting out of your push notification program.”