In this article, you'll learn:
- How to create an effective push notification.
- How to view push notification performance via your push log.
- How to segement the recipients of your push notifications.
- How to recapture shoppers who disabled push notifications.
About Push Notifications
A push notification is a message from a retailer's mobile app that pops up on a shopper's mobile device. You can send push notifications at any time, and shoppers don't have to be in the app or even using their mobile devices to receive the notification.
Push notifications are widely popular for announcing live sales, new product posts, and more but did you know:
- 60% of users opt out of app notifications
- 71% of users uninstall an app due to excessive notifications
That's why it's more important than ever that you get strategic about the type of push notifications they send, how often they send them, and what time of day they send them.
We've gathered some best practices below that can help you use push notifications in a way that maximizes their effectiveness.
How Strategic Push Notifications Benefit Your Business
- Notify shoppers of your biggest promotions and product drops.
- Incentivize shoppers with curated discounts.
- Enable timely and relevant push notifications that target shoppers who perform a specific action (e.g., add a product to their cart, register with your mobile app, etc.).
Examine Your Push Notification Logs
CommentSold logs the activity in your push log whenever you send a push notification. This log shows you the overall performance of your push notifications, such as the number of subscribed shoppers and the overall tap-through rate.
You can also view individual push notification data such as the shopper segment it was sent to, the percentage of shoppers who tapped on the notification, and the percentage of shoppers who opted out of push notifications. You can learn more about your push log here.
When examining your push notification logs, ask yourself:
- How often are we sending notifications to shoppers? If you send more than five a day, you increase the likelihood that shoppers will opt out of notifications.
- Are we sending notifications to all our shoppers? Not every push notification is for everyone. If shoppers repeatedly receive push notifications they don't think are relevant to them, they are more likely to opt-out.
Knowing your current push notification behavior helps you understand where you can be more strategic. We dig into that next, but first, here's how to get to your push logs:
- Select Mobile App in the side menu of your CommentSold dashboard.
- Select Notifications from the options listed at the top of the page.
- Scroll and locate the Push Logs section at the bottom of the page.
Craft a 3-Part Push Notification
Effective push notifications should do three (3) things:
- Be timely. A shopper's behavior, location, or action should trigger or prompt the notification.
- Be personal. The content of the notification should appeal to the shopper as an individual.
- Be actionable. The notification should make it clear what the shopper should do next.
CommentSold offers several push notification templates that you can enable. When you do, you can customize the push notification text to provide the action.
Check out the examples on the tabs below and how they incorporate the three parts mentioned above.
Below is a push notification template for Add to Cart. When enabled, you can customize the title and subtitle to match your brand's personality.
- Is it timely? Yup! The shopper just added the product to their cart. This notification tells them the add was successful and how long they have to check out!
- Is it relevant? Absolutely. Using the tag {productTitle} ensures the notification will populate with the name and image of the product the shopper added to their cart, while {expiryTime} provides their personalized countdown reminder.
- Is it actionable? 100%. This message encourages the shopper to complete their checkout and instills a sense of urgency with that expiry reminder. Tapping the notification will take the shopper to their checkout flow.
Below is a push notification template for Winback Inactive Customers. When enabled, you can customize the title and subtitle to match your brand's personality.
- Is it timely? Yup! You can configure this push notification to send to a customer who hasn't purchased with your shop in X amount of days. It's essentially an invitation to come back and check out your business.
- Is it relevant? Absolutely. You can shout out how much you miss the customer and offer them a special-to-them discount that incentivizes them to come in, check out your products, and make a purchase.
- Is it actionable? 100%. This message tells the customer to browse the new inventory and redeem their discount. Tapping the notification will launch the app so the customer can start browsing.
Segment Your Push Notification Audience
Segmentation allows you to send push notifications to a specific audience. With CommentSold, you can send a customized notification to those shoppers with active shopping carts and your VIP customers.
How might this look?
- For shoppers with active carts, send a push notification that includes a free shipping promo code or a surprise discount! This encourages purchases and can increase conversion. Perfect for when you see a large number of active carts.
- For VIP customers, send a push notification full of love and appreciation. You can stick to just text or include a special incentive/promotion to reward their continued support. Since you know they love your products and your business, you will likely see a high tap-through and conversion rate here.
- Select Mobile App in the side menu of your CommentSold dashboard.
- Select Notifications from the options listed at the top of the page.
- Choose your shopper segment from the Send To list.
- Don't see a VIP option? Ensure you've configured your Highlight VIP setting on the Shop tab of your Setup page.
- Enter a Notification Title. Aim for something short and attention-grabbing as it'll be the emphasized text in the notification copy.
- Enter the Notification Body. Here you can give a little more information such as elaborating on items or collections included in a sale, new markdowns in your shop, and more.
- In the Schedule Timing section, choose when you wish to send the push notification.
- Send Immediately. Sends the push notification to shoppers with push notifications enabled right away.
- Schedule Later. Allows you to schedule the push notification to send at a future date and time. Time of day is based on the time zone you set for your shop on the Shop tab of your Settings page.
- Select Send Notification or Schedule Notification depending on the option you selected.
Target All Shoppers During High Revenue Promotions
You should definitely be strategic when it comes to sending push notifications to all shoppers with push notifications enabled.
We recommend you save shopper-wide notifications for products, promotions, and live sales that have the potential for high revenue gains.
For example:
- Exclusive product drops or long-awaited restocks.
- Live sales featuring promotions, giveaways, or a fun interactive.
- Shop The Look posts that have high potential revenue.
- Coupons, promotions, sales, and/or loyalty offers.
Recapture Shoppers Who Disabled Notifications
- Let shoppers know what they're missing! Create a coupon with a specific usage figure and send it out with the message, "The next 10 customers to purchase through our app will get $X off by using this coupon!" Later, during a live sale and/or on your Facebook page, thank those shoppers who took advantage of the coupon and remind those watching/reading to enable their notifications so they won't miss out next time.
- Ask a question and reward correct answers during a live. This can be a trivia question or just a fun question (e.g., What holiday song do we have on repeat in the shop right now? or What Halloween candy have I been eating all month?). Send it in a push notification during the day, then during a live sale, have shoppers chime in with answers. It might look something like, "Y'all remember our trivia question for the day? Now's the time to chime in. First five correct answers get free shipping!" You can then let everyone else know that you sent out the question via a push notification and that they can enable theirs to join in on the fun next time!
Learn More
- Send Mobile App Push Notifications. Learn how to send manual push notifications and enable notification templates that will automatically send when a shopper performs a specific action.
- View Push Notifications Log. Learn how to view performance data for your last 30 push notifications.
- Create Your Mobile App with CommentSold. Learn how to create a branded mobile app where shoppers can view products, watch live sales, make purchases, and more.