The goal is for users to look forward to your push messages. Upon opening a message, the user should have a fresh and entertaining experience with rich media such as videos, surveys, and pictures related to the content of the message. They should feel motivated and exciting to take action and engage with your offering.

Create Urgency

Urgency matters a lot when it comes to the web push notifications, Why? Because push notifications require an instant response and creating urgency with your offer will force people to take immediate action.

 Example: “It’s Now or Never! This is your one time offer to claim 50% discount on all shoes”

 Strong Creatives

 Whenever possible add custom icons or large images to your push notifications. Large images are a fantastic way to make your push notification stand out from all the others. Get creative with your designs, humans are visual creatures. Also, consider the clever use of emoji. Nothing as boring as stock icons and images.

Personalization

 Personalization works. When people receive a personalized message, they feel that it’s created just for them. Personalized notifications lead to higher conversion rates. You can use segmentation to help you achieve better personalization.

 Example: Putting subscribers into different segments based on their on-page activities like the type of pages viewed, categories, genres, device type, location and number of views of a particular page.

We have found, with our Fortune 1000 to small business clients, a common thread when it comes to best results via push notifications. We call it removing the push.

Nobody likes a pushy salesperson in real life and the same holds true online. What we do like is something that provides value.

So, whenever you are to push out something to your prospects, or fans, always ask: “If were them what would I like to receive?

Is what we are about to send them valuable? If it takes more than three seconds to answer this question don’t send it, it’s not valuable.

We call this the three-second rule.

Push notifications are a great way to reach your audience quickly in a way they can’t ignore. Email gets buried all too often, and social media only reaches a small percentage of your followers. If you want to engage your most devoted users and readers, push notifications allow you to break through the noise and let them know that you’ve just shared something new – and if you’re creating content optimized for them, they’ll be happy to find out right away!

At Digital Leadership Associates (DLA) we don’t use web push notifications.  We don’t need to. Our prospects and customers don’t want interruptions and so we don’t add to the noise and clutter they get already. DLA is a social only company (the only one in the world we understand) and we engage, provide insights and have conversations with customers on social. This provides us with the inbound and referrals (leads, meetings, and revenue). 

Personalized messages give marketers a better chance to create a close connection with a customer which is especially important for customer experience with a brand. Also, delivering highly personalized messages help to cut through the information overload. And that means you have a better chance to increase your sales almost instantly.

Let’s say one of the services you offer is insurance. It is likely your customer has purchased a car insurance which is about to expire. Show that you care about him and his safety.

Or let’s assume, you have a hotel somewhere in the French Alps that also has different skiing and snowboarding gear for rent. Suggest your guests place gear reservations before their arrival.

More examples of personalized push messages can be found here.

And if you’re interested in trying out web push notifications yourself, request personalized demo and get a free trial at MaxTraffic.

Hope it helps!

How to re-engage website visitors with targeted push notifications?
To help give you a more concrete takeaway, I’ve broken down several examples on how you can achieve all of this using web push notifications.

#1 – Segmentation

One of the best ways to ensure your notifications will be seen, as relevant, is to create and utilize various segments.

Segments are simply groups of people that you can send notifications to. You group these people together based on something they have in common- this might be their geographic location, a certain product they have viewed, blog posts they have read or their device type.

For instance, if you target anyone who has viewed the “/blue-backpacks” page on your site and then proceed to send them a message about a new blue backpack – you can safely assume vastly superior click throughs.

#2 – Timely/Triggered Notifications

Triggered notifications are the perfect tool for sending very well timed personal push notifications. These notifications are automatically sent, to an individual, based on their specific actions at your website.

This might be to alert them that an item they purchased has shipped from your store or that they have abandoned their shopping cart (just to name a few examples).

Abandoned cart messages have long been a successful marketing strategy for e-commerce brands.

#3 – Personalization

Personalization is key to the success of your push notifications. Instead of sending a blanket push notification telling someone to come back to their website, try incorporating custom variables into your pushes. This allows you do to things like pass “First Names” or “Usernames” into the push.

Saying “Hey Jack, Blue Backpacks are 20% off today! Click to learn more” will be much more effecting than just saying “20% off sale today! Click to learn more.”

#4 – Strong Creatives

Whenever possible add custom icons or large images to your push notifications. Large images, in particular, are a great way to make your push notification stand out from all the others.

#5 – Clear CTA

Compelling copy and enticing call-to-actions will further boost the success of your web push messages. You don’t have a lot of space for these messages, therefore it is crucial to be concise. Alert users of the value of your message in-conjunction with a solid reason why they should tap the notification to learn more! Put your CTA towards the beginning of the message to ensure users see it immediately.

#6 – Remember Browser Differences

Not all browsers handle push notifications the same manner or style. In some cases, your text in your notification will get cut off after 10 words, others maybe 20.

#7 – Timing

Finally, timing is everything. A poorly timed message may upset your users or have weak results. Try not to send messages early in the morning or late at night.

Consider segmenting your users by Timezone/Country/State/Region in order to ensure your message will always deliver when you want it to. This is especially important if you have subscribers from all over the world.

Make the headline compelling

When crafting web push messages, marketers only focus on the offer, but they don’t pay any attention to the headline. If you’re doing this, you need to change this approach. Keep in mind that push notifications work in real-time – so the headline of your notification should be engaging and gripping to encourage an immediate response.

Tip: Try sprinkling some emojis in your headline and it will escalate your opens and clicks like never before.

Use FOMO to create urgency

Urgency matters a lot when it comes to the web push notifications, Why? Because push notifications require an instant response and creating urgency with your offer will force people to take immediate action.

Tip: Create urgency by unleashing the power of your copywriting skills and avoid overused words like “Hurry,” Limited Time Only” to come across as genuine.

Time them well

One critical thing to consider when sending web push notifications is timing. If you want your push notifications to drive results, you’ve to send them at the right time. A well-crafted copy and an amazing offer won’t warrant a conversion if your timing isn’t right. Research says user engagement, with optimally timed notifications, can be totally off the charts – as high as 80%.

Tip: Test your assumptions; timing that works well for one segment may not work well for the other segments.

Leverage personalization

Personalization works. And we all know that. When people receive a personalized message, they feel that it’s created just for them. Personalized notifications lead to higher conversion.

Tip: Combine location and behavioral messages with username and preferences to make it hyper-personalized.

Use an action focused CTA

Every marketing campaign has a goal. And a call to action is the most important step to achieving your goal. A slight change in the language, size, and placement can make a huge difference in click-through. Your CTA copy should not only be clear, specific, and benefit-oriented but it should also evoke a sense of urgency to drive instant action. Because if your CTA can’t push them to take action right away, then it defeats the whole purpose.

Tip: A/B test different CTA copy to find the best performer.

Relevancy and Timing are the key factors of effective web push marketing. One could never be successful in executing a web push notification marketing strategy simply because he/she is an email marketing expert. Both are different channels and needs different strategies to make them effective.Web push notifications are disruptive. It diverts your customer’s attention from whatever they are doing. When a notification is received, they should either ignore, dismiss or click it. Either way, they will notice it, at-least for a moment. In my opinion, no other channels are as effective as push notifications when it comes to capturing one’s attention.

So, the notification MUST be relevant to the user. It must be personalized for the user. Broadcast notifications could be annoying and have a detrimental effect.

Some ways to make push notifications interesting are:

• Trigger based on user’s request. For example – You could send a notification If the user has opted in for a price drop or back in stock alert.
• Trigger based on an action performed by the user. For example – If the user has searched for product XYZ, he might be interested in an alert related to that product.
• Find what the user likes and suggest similar things. For example, if your user has purchased or looked at a product XYZ, he might be interested in a complementary product ABC. So you can inform the user about product ABC through push notifications.
• Reminder Notifications. For example, if your user has added some products to their cart, but didn’t check out, you could send a reminder notification.
• Very important messages. For example, it could be an amazing deal or a flash sale. In such cases, you can send broadcast push notifications, depending on the type of your business. But limit it to 1 or 2 times a week.

The best way to improve the results of web push notifications is by personalizing push notifications. My experience shows that this can be done by adding personal information to your communications. Such as customer’s name, the name of a product, the date of purchase, the tracking number for the ordered product, etc.When someone subscribes and visits your site, the system can extract the person’s contact information (name, e-mail address, etc.).

I have created a strategy where different browsing platforms are integrated with automatic push notifications for my publications. It helps my readers’ get heads up of what is fresh and relevant! 

I limit my fortnightly newsletter subscription requests very safely to ensure my casual readers do not receive redundant subscription prompts. Therefore, It is advisable to adhere to good SEO friendly article images. It helps people get ready, as I do not include article title and this curiosity enables them to click on this image and this acts as a click bait. 

I tend to personalize depending on the browser people use.

With browser notifications, I make sure to set the notifications not to close with time, but with interaction. If someone opens their tab and leaves, a default 20 second open time isn’t going to be there when they get back. Therefore it’s best to make sure they scroll down near the bottom of the page first before closing.Once somebody “allows” a notification you want to make sure not to send notifications too frequently. Some people make the mistake of notifying every new blog post, but don’t do that. Make sure it’s something GREAT that your users will appreciate.

I started using push notification on my blog around 3-4 months back. At first, I was hesitant to use it,  but once I started using it, the results were miraculous. 
Here is the psychology why they work like a charm.When there is a push notification on any blog, it’s up to the reader whether they want to opt for it or not. Once they decide to get the notification, you win half of the game to win their trust. They trust your brand, they trust your authenticity, that’s why they are opting for the push notifications.Right now, I have more than 2000 subscribers in my push notification service.It’s much better version than sending an email. In email, the user needs to login in to their account and find you in their inbox. In many of the cases, it could be buried under many emails in his/her inbox. But comparatively, when you send a push notification, it’s instant. Doesn’t matter what your reader is doing, he/she sees an instant pop-up in his/her desktop/laptop.This increases the CTR and ultimately you see more sales.I use push notifications only when there is some good offer in the market. By doing this I hook them for the offer and ultimately bring some extra money in my pocket.

The obvious answer is that to achieve the best results with your web push notifications, your notifications should be relevant, personalized, and sent during appropriate times.
Web push notifications are disruptive. It diverts your customer’s attention from whatever they are doing. When a notification is received, they should either ignore, dismiss or click it. Either way, they will notice it, at-least for a moment. In my opinion, no other channels are as effective as push notifications when it comes to capturing one’s attention.So, the notification MUST be relevant to the user. It must be personalized for the user. Broadcast notifications could be annoying and have a detrimental effect.

A web push notification strategy is a very effective communication medium driving 15-25% increase in click through rates for our customers.
Some practices that can drive higher engagement:

1. Creating customer segments and sending only relevant push notifications to each segment
2. Sending rich push notifications. They are more visible and hence more impactful
3. Use of emoji’s in the web push heading
4. Doing A/B testing on push notification to identify better performing communication

Keeping track of active subscribers gives more transparent ROI understanding.

In many ways, this is the wrong question. Tactics like web push notifications, email, SMS, social can all be a powerful way to get in front of prospective customers.