We’re an app agency that loves push notifications and we build the tech into most of our projects. Push notifications have become so ubiquitous that we don’t really notice them anymore. However, unlike the way we can filter out web ads or ignore emails, we haven’t stopped engaging with push notifications… we just don’t realise that we are interacting with them. Push notifications are one of the most powerful tools in the armoury of a mobile app. In fact, it is such a vital tool that we’ve spent countless hours working on and refining the push notification technology that we build into our apps. We specialise in mobile app push notifications. We love them. But beware. Just getting an app agency to develop push notifications for you won’t solve all your challenges. You need to use push wisely.
Here is why we love push – and why you should love push notifications too.
Push notifications rock!
Push notifications are a phenomenal piece of technology. And more than that, they are a messaging platform that really, really works. Recent research into push notifications shows that 95% of opted-in users who don’t receive a notification within the first 90 days will ‘churn’ – essentially you’ll lose them as a customer. 95%!! Imagine losing virtually all your customers every single quarter.
Using data from 63 million users Airship found that daily push notifications improved user retention by as much as 800% when compared to non-push receiving users. Weekly nudges generated 440% user retention and one-off notifications were 120% higher.
Those sort of numbers speak for themselves. If you have an app. And you have customers. You need to be using push notifications to communicate with them.
Push Notification Opt-ins continue to outperfom other platforms
The opt-in rates for push notifications across mobile apps are impressive too. A whopping 91% on Android and 43% on iOS. Considering the recent changes to iOS – where customers now need to actively opt-in rather than opt-out of push notification that’s still a staggering number. Let’s be honest, you won’t get nearly half of your customers opting into receiving your email newsletter… or SMS.
Push is cheap
One of the key drivers behind the growth of push notifications within the mobile app ecosystem is that it is cheap, as well as effective. Now… before you get too excited we do need to highlight that to do push well and at scale is not without some cost. Similarly building push into your app will cost a fair whack. However, with the effectiveness of push, combined with the increasing cost of acquiring new app customers it’s a marketing tool that proves ROI over and over again.
If you’re looking to replace the vast proportion of your customer base on a quarterly basis because they’ve churned or their loyalty has swayed and they’ve signed up with a rival, you’re going to need a huge digital marketing budget to drive sign-ups. It’s a helluva lot cheaper to keep the bulk of that audience by supplying them with regular push notifications rather than building a new audience over and over and over again.
But… Push is dangerous…
As a mobile app developer we keep an eye on trends within the app development community. One of those trends is the inexorable increase in the deployment of push notification technology, as well as the frequency with which it is used. The push notification is now 12 years old and the tricky teenage years are just around the corner. Now you can get breaking news alerts, offers from retailers, the latest sport score and endless pings from your social network(s) of choice.
Hundreds of billions of notifications are sent to mobile app users. In the US the average smartphone receives 47 push notifications every day. That’s upwards of 20,000 notifications in a year. That’s getting up towards the email traffic a usual business user receives every year. Push is poised on a knife-edge. Opting out is getting easier. The junk pings are getting more frequent.
Push notifications are great – don’t ruin them! And if you’re looking for a developer that can build an app with push notifications, get in touch!
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