A Better Retargeting Strategy: Best Uses of Different of Push Notifications

The world wants quicker solutions. Considering that 80% of all internet users own smartphones, and many of them grab their device first thing in the morning, it’s easy to see why people have become accustomed to instant gratification.

Just a quick click or press of a button is all that’s needed to get where you want now. This is why push notifications are such a great tool. They’re simple for marketers, and even simpler for e-commerce customers. Yet, they’re so efficient that online fashion retail giant Sateen can multiply its ROI six-fold by push notification campaigns.

Let’s take a closer look at push notifications to see what makes them a good choice for your e-commerce store, from a broad marketing perspective, and when you want to employ some personalisation.

What Exactly are Push Notifications?

To put it simply, a push notification is an SMS-like message that pops up on mobile devices or desktop browsers. Push notifications are brief and smart messages to retarget your customers on multiple channels. After all, obtaining new customers cost 7 times more than acquiring new ones. That’s why smart retargeting campaigns will bring higher returns to your online shop in exchange for less manual work.

It can be sent by app publishers to notify users of breaking news, promote events or products, or elicit an action. Unlike SMS e-commerce customers respond to push notifications quite well. In fact they’re one of the top five marketing channels in 2018.

It’s important to note that push notifications are so much more than an engagement tool. Better put, they’re simple yet efficient retargeting tools that will get your online shop a significant revenue uplift with the right campaign optimization. They will allow you to retain your customers on multiple-platforms and strengthen the brand communication through campaigns like Order Follow-ups or Discount Announcements. Studies indicate the return on desktop push notifications can be quite substantial, generating clickthrough rates as high as 30%.

The key thing to realize is that this relatively new style of marketing allows brands to communicate with people even when they aren’t on your online store or using your app.

There are two types of push notifications:

• Bulk Push Notifications –Also known as segmented push notifications, these are broader marketing blasts that are sent out to larger segments of your audience to inform them about ongoing campaigns or seasonal updates
• Personalised Push Notifications –These notifications take the online behaviors of every single visitor into account, which paves the way for a more tailored experience. With personalised push notifications you get to expand the personalised shopping experience you’ve created for your visitors on your online shop to all channels and build 1:1 customer relations .

The benefits of push-notifications in ecommerce are undeniable. Let’s dive a little deeper.

3 Key Benefits of Bulk / Segmented Push Notifications

You may build a large list of subscribers to your push notifications, which could be in the thousands. Over time, people’s interests change, and so your diverse audience will continue to evolve. With audience segmentation, you can create smaller subsets based on demographic data like age or location, or better yet, group people by similar interests or onsite actions. Bulk push notifications have several key online marketing benefits:

They Perform Efficient, Effective Marketing

You can use automated bulk push notifications to communicate with each group, without the hassle of having to trawl through the entire list manually to figure out how to communicate with each individual subscriber. This saves considerable time on its own. Furthermore, push notifications take less time and effort to create than emails.

Touch Customers at Every Stage

Not all subscribers will be at the same stage of the customer journey. They will be in different locations and have different interests. With bulk push notifications, you can reach people at every stage, without exhausting too much of your resources – it’s as simple as a single click! This allows you to strengthen your bonds with your customers without putting in much effort. You can intrigue your first-time visitors to visit more frequently with Welcome scenarios, or remind your slipping-away customers about everything they’re missing on your store.

Wider Reach for Long-lasting Campaigns

When you’re offering nice discounts on a certain brand or category, you wouldn’t want to leave its results to chance, right? You would want to seize every single sales opportunity by letting everyone that might be interested in that campaign know about the nice deal on your online shop. Well, the fastest way to achieve this kind of reach is through segmented push notifications. An online shopper who’s been frequently visiting the shoes category lately, might just end up finally purchasing one if you just give her a little push. (Excuse the pun.)

Best Uses for Bulk Push Notifications

Usually, bulk push notifications won’t change for different visitors. That being said, there is some versatility from one segment to the next. Some good example uses of segmented type of notifications are:

• New Arrivals –Update users about the new arrivals in their favorite categories or brands.
• Top Seller–Trust in your customers’ taste to bring you more sales. Let everyone know about the top sellers.
• Discount Announcements –Send out coupons or special offers about your visitors’ favorite categories or brands
• App Re-Engagement –Reignite the spark with fading users. Research by Urban Airship found push notifications can boost app retention rates by as much as 1,000%!

Benefits of Personalised Push Notifications

Ecommerce personalisation enhances the online shopping experience so that people feel brands are more attuned to their specific needs and interests. By using personalised push notifications, brands can communicate with app users in ways that are directly related to their use of the app and related channels.

Offer a Tailormade Service

The airline JetBlue uses push notifications to send people pertinent information about their flight booking, from the key detail to updates about delays or seating. Feedback has been great, and while it doesn’t immediately translate to more sales, it instills trust and brand loyalty. People appreciate the extra effort, and it makes for a better brand experience.

Boost Conversion Rates

In online retail, a deeper level of personalisation is more likely to convince people to make a purchase. People prefer brands that offer this experience, and get frustrated by those who do not. Ticketmaster uses geo-targeting and assesses user history to create personalised push notifications that offer tickets and event news to people based on their specific interests. It should come as little surprise to learn this leads to more conversions.

Best Uses for Personalised Push Notifications

As personalised push notifications involve looking into data on a personal level, these messages are best for engaging people after they take certain actions, or to offer personalised product recommendations based on their interests. Some great examples include:

• Abandoned Carts –This is a big issue in ecommerce. La Redoute successfully used personalised push notifications to encourage people to return and complete their purchases. Not all online shopping is impulsive. Sometimes people like to add an item to their cart and decide to sleep over it. Remind them about the items waiting for them with simple push notifications and speed up the decision making process.
• Order Followups – When you say personalisation, we say ‘Complete the Look’. Tell them that those specific shoes will look great with the navy-blue skirt they bought the other day, because honestly, machine-learning is the best stylist of them all.
• Last Visit Reminders –If it’s been a while since they last used the app, you can send them a reminder based on what they were last doing in the app to re-engage them. Amazon uses it, Netflix uses it, why aren’t you using it?

It’s All About Creating a Smart Strategy

Competition in online marketing is always growing, and brands must continue to innovate to build a loyal audience. Whether it’s broader communications with new subscribers, or personalised messages to complete a sale or re-engage old customers, push notifications certainly have a lot of power. If you can wield it in the right way, you can connect with the right people at the right time, making for an unrivaled user experience.

For an efficient retargeting strategy, first of all, you need to decide which scenarios are more suitable for certain cases and will bring you more revenue. Then start by testing different send times and lifetime cycles for different campaigns to find the optimum points for each. And don’t leave it to chance. Keep track of your campaign results, and try to improve the pleasing ones and give up on the miserable ones.
In the end, push notifications as a whole retargeting tool will ultimately prove their worth for your online store.