How to send web push notifications according to 38 experts

Adam Houlahan, Sam Hurley, Erik Qualman, Ritchie Pettauer, Mandy McEwen, Tim Hughes and more - in total 38 Marketing Superstars, share their insights on how to use Browser Web Push Notifications to get the best results.

To see the full article click here -> https://maxtraffic.com/blog/web-push-notification-roundup/

Transcript

2. 38 Experts Share How to Use Web Push Notifications
3. 38 WEB PUSH NOTIFICATION EXPERTS There are very few people in the marketing space who actually know how to use web. push notifications to get the best results. Browser push notifications have been around the block for quite a while but very few of us actually know why they should be used and what purpose they serve. So we asked the top marketing experts, influencers and World Wide Web superstars. We left no stone unturned on the quest to figure out – How to use web push notifications to get the best results? We surveyed 38 experts and combined all the findings in easy to view infographic that you can find at the end of the article. Without further ado, THE EXPERTS:
4. Adam Houlahan Adam Houlahan is a new media specialist, author, mentor, speaker and brand influencer. Expert’s Answer: The goal is for users to look forward to your push messages, the user should have a fresh and entertaining experience with rich media related to the content of the message. Create Urgency Why? Because push notifications require an instant response and creating urgency with your offer will force people to take immediate action. Strong Creatives 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 Personalized notifications lead to higher conversion rates. You can use segmentation to help you achieve better personalization.
5. Expert’s Answer: A great tactic for relevant push notifications is: Personalization. And push notifications should always be as relevant and as personalized as possible. Give your subscribers the chance to customize their frequency of notifications, type of content and amount of material received. Use a sleek interface that provides awesome user experience… Blanket pushes won’t have the desired effect — And you may actually ‘push’ customers away! Subscribers can even be alerted to location-specific offers and even geo-targeted content. Finally: Use emojis to stand out and add the ‘human’ touch to push notifications! Sam Hurley Sam is Founder of the eagerly- anticipated OPTIM-EYEZ. He has been ranked as the world’s top 3 influencers by Webinale, Onalytica, and ScribbleLive.
6. Erik Qualman #1 Bestselling Author of Socialnomics and Motivational Speaker. Qualman was voted the 2nd Most Likeable Author in the World behind Harry Potter’s J.K. Rowling. Expert’s Answer: 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
7. Ritchie Pettauer Ritchie Pettauer is a Digital Media Strategist, Pro-Blogger. Expert’s Answer: I use web push notifications to point readers to my blog whenever I publish a tutorial or a helpful article. Since these notifications are still pretty new, the conversion rate is amazingly high – as long as you don’t overdo it
8. Mandy Mcewen Founder of Mod Girl Marketing, an inbound marketing consultancy. Company partners with forward-thinking companies to increase revenues. Expert’s Answer: 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!
9. Tim Hughes Tim Hughes is ranked Number 1 as the most influential social selling person in the world. He is the co-founder and CEO of Digital Leadership Associates Expert’s Answer : 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).
10. Emily Brown Works at MaxTraffic. Expert’s Answer : 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.
11. DJ Swanepoel CEO & Founder of Aimtell . Expert’s Answer : How to re-engage website visitors with targeted push notifications? To help give you a more concrete takeaway, I’ve broken down several points on how you can achieve all of this using web push notifications. #1 – Segmentation #2 – Timely/Triggered Notifications #3 – Personalization #4 – Strong Creatives #5 – Clear CTA #6 – Remember Browser Differences #7 – Timing
12. Reshu Rathi Content marketer, social media enthusiast, voracious reader & dreamer, but not necessarily in the same order. Inbound marketer, social media enthusiast & writer at Beta out. Expert’s Answer : Make the headline compelling *Tip: Try sprinkling some emojis in your headline and it will escalate your opens and clicks like never before. Use FOMO to create urgency *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 *Tip: Test your assumptions; timing that works well for one segment may not work well for the other segments. Leverage personalization *Tip: Combine location and behavioral messages with username and preferences to make it hyper-personalized. Use an action focused CTA *Tip: A/B test different CTA copy to find the best performer
13. Anand S Founder of Engagespot – a web push notification marketing automation platform for websites. Expert’s Answer : 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. Some ways to make push notifications interesting are: *Trigger based on user’s request. *Trigger based on an action performed by the user. *Find what the user likes and suggest similar things. *Reminder Notifications. *Very important messages
14. Amanda Reid Marketing Director. Expert’s Answer : 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.).
15. Zorays Khalid Zorays.solar, Product Innovation Manager, Big Data & Cohort Analyst, IT Security, Thought Leader, iPray, iThank. Expert’s Answer : 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.
16. Nathan Resnick Serial entrepreneur who currently serves as CEO of Sourcify, a platform that makes manufacturing easy. He has also brought dozens of products to life over the course of his career. Expert’s Answer : Push notifications online are an essential tool to utilize to get even more engagement. When you post something new, your visitors can be in the know. This is an essential step in retaining people and ensuring they see an active site.
17. Mark Rushworth Manchester & Leeds based SEO Maverick. Expert’s Answer : Use sparingly for things that count like new products and sales. Personalise the message if possible and tie into personalized content on site.
18. Jordan Kasteler SEO Director of Hennessey Consulting. Work experience ranges from co-founding BlueGlass Interactive, in-house SEO at Overstock, marketing strategy at PETA, and agency- level SEO & marketing. Expert’s Answer : 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.
19. Kulwant Nagi Blogger, world traveler, speaker, and an affiliate marketer. Founder of AffloSpark Pvt. Ltd.. Expert’s Answer : 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.
20. Neil Sheth Founder of Only Way Online, a London based digital marketing agency specializing in building content driven traffic campaigns. Expert’s Answer : A good way of using web notifications is by notifying your audience of your lead magnet to encourage visitors to turn into email subscribers. Everyone likes a good freebie and web notifications are a great way to help drive your email list. But be sure to make it valuable to their experience and relevant as there’s nothing more annoying that having content that just doesn’t resonate thrown at you.
21. Tom Gorski CEO at SaaS Genius – Successful entrepreneur, SaaS Growth Expert, and Inbound Marketing Consultant. Named one of top growth hackers by Medium. Expert’s Answer : 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.
22. Siddharth Gupt Co-founder at NotifyVisitors. Expert’s Answer : 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: *Creating customer segments and sending only relevant push notifications to each segment *Sending rich push notifications. They are more visible and hence more impactful *Use of emoji’s in the web push heading *Doing A/B testing on push notification to identify better performing communication Keeping track of active subscribers gives more transparent ROI understanding.
23. Marcus Miller SEO and digital marketing strategist at the UK digital marketing agency Bowler Hat. Expert’s Answer : 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. What really matters here though is what are you pushing to these people? The best and most successful marketing messages are those which the customer is delighted to receive. The messages that help the customer achieve their goals. All too often digital marketers focus on the latest shiny tactic like push notifications but tactics are nothing without strategy. Ensure you have marketing content and messages that make your prospects life easier and then you will truly unlock the power of web push notifications.
24. Mohd Umair Entrepreneur, Gamer, Tech Crusader. Expert’s Answer : It’s important to note Browser Push is relatively new. So although it starts generating results from the word off, it still needs a lot of Fine tuning. What I have analyzed: 1) User Triggered Notifications – Using triggered based automated campaign, is the most efficient way to make the most out of your Push. 2) Use Personalization – I have seen 27-30% CTR on campaigns that are personalized to each user, based on their browsing behavior. 3) Don’t Abuse – Having Push ID doesn’t mean you start doing 2-3 Push every day. You will have an insanely high Churn rate. 4) Tell people why they should optin – Give a clear value proposition of why they should optin. These are some of the basic ways to make the best out of your Push Strategy.
25. Arturs Krauze CEO at Magebit. At Magebit we are providing services to clients all over the world — from the USA to Australia, China and back to Europe. Expert’s Answer : Push notifications get more powerful every day. At Magebit, we have implemented push notifications for different websites all over the world as people start to understand that they work way better than emails.If you want to launch a flash sale campaign for a couple of hours, emails are not as good as push notifications. You can have the push notifications go to your customer’s phones or as a popup in their browser so they see your important message very fast. In most cases even faster than a text message. That leads to quick actions and you can take this as an advantage to get fast sales. To get the best results using push results you need to understand your audience and the expected behavior after seeing your push notification.
26. Lindsay Kavanagh Account Manager, SEO Specialist in Ottawa, Digital Marketer. SEOplus+ Expert’s Answer : Push notifications can be used for various purposes, like re-engaging users, sending out reminders, displaying deals, etc. To optimize your push notifications to get the best results, segmenting your users and delivering personalized messaging to them will ensure the best results. It’s important to optimize you push notifications to send them at appropriate times to not overwhelm users. Push notifications are very much a high- engagement touch point with consumers, so it’s important that they don’t come often enough to bother customers. When sending a push notification to different segments, always ensure your message is clear and concise. You can add urgency to your messaging by adding limited time as well.
27. Tamas Torok Tamas Torok is a self- taught online marketer working with startups and tech companies to build and improve their online marketing. He also wrote an actionable book on content marketing. Expert’s Answer : Browser push notifications let visitors subscribe to your blog without typing any characters. It literally takes just two clicks to subscribe. Newsletters and push notifications both play different roles in the visitor’s journey with the same intention to keep readers coming back. I look at push notifications as additions to, rather than competition for email newsletters. Since it’s so easy to allow push notifications (just a few clicks) without providing any personal data or email address, I like to use them as a first step to keep those visitors coming back who aren’t ready to become leads (provide email address). But still, they will get notified about the new blog posts and have a chance to convert later.
28. Dave Schneider Co-founder of Ninja Outreach, an all-in- one Influencer prospecting, outreach, and CRM software for marketers. Expert’s Answer : We get really high click through rates from our push notifications, so we use it to get more eyes to our blog posts every time we publish. We also use it to get a spike back to our older articles. To date, push notifications are among our top 4 mediums for getting traffic.
29. Brandon Hopkins Brandon Hopkins founded and manages a reputation management firm in 2007 that continues today. Expert’s Answer : I have used push notifications off & on and found that in some industries where they are heavily used, readers become annoyed. I actually ran a test that tried to test sentiment towards a page with and without push notifications. I measured the total response rate (email signup or contact form submission) to see if we had more or fewer contacts and in a saturated industry (marketing/SEO) the responses were a few percentage points less than when we didn’t use push notifications. The testing methodology wasn’t perfect, but it did cause me to remove the push notification from that site!
30. Lisa Sicard Lisa is a Social Media and Content Marketing Specialist. Lisa loves helping others to thrive online at Inspire to Thrive. Expert’s Answer : I recently read that push notification are better than email because they are instant. If an email is opened and read it takes generally 6.5 hours before it is read. Generation y and x rarely use email, they believe it is passed today. I also did a poll on Twitter and noticed 13% of the people that took the poll did not know what they are. Imagine? So I believe it’s an untapped source. I started them today on Inspire to Thrive and I can’t wait to see how it goes with this new push notifications.
31. Saad Asad Saad Asad is a content marketer and an SEO specialist at Single Grain. Expert’s Answer : Push notifications have seen a rapid adoption in the past year but not everyone has been able to get the engagement from them they were expecting. I think the two key elements essential to make push notifications work are timing and relevance. It is important to collect data on your audience and see at what times they are engaging most with your content and then send out a notification to your 10x content in those hours. Use scarcity to increase your click through rate. No one would click on a notification to read an article that they simply do not feel the urgency for. If you make sure your notifications and timely and relevant the subscriptions from push notifications could increase email opt ins and other more demanding investments from your readers.
32. Aaron Agius Co-Founder and Managing Director of Louder. Expert’s Answer : Just because you have permission to message subscribers in real-time doesn’t mean you should.The best performing campaigns I’ve seen are ones that get two things right: timing/frequency and copy. Campaigns that have a scarcity element – eg, an e-commerce coupon code that expires in a few hours – do well, as long as the copy clearly conveys what subscribers have to do and why they should do it quickly. Social proof can be useful as well at motivating subscribers to take action or risk being left out. The timing aspect is tricky since every industry and audience has a different threshold for what’s too frequent. Since it’s so easy to opt out of push notifications, you can’t afford to frustrate subscribers too long. Watching the performance of every notification you send is critical – especially at the start.
33. Ashok Sharma Writer, professional blogger, Digital marketer and social media enthusiast. Digital Marketing Manager at GrayCell Technologies Expert’s Answer : I personally hate them because they are really annoying. But the fact is they really work well and we need to use these push notifications to inform and engage the customer base. To get the best results from web push notifications I normally use the followings tricks. *Personalization; *Strong Creatives; *Timing; *Focus on Quality and Limit the Frequency; *Use action focused Creatives That engage your Audience.
34. Sharon Conwell Freelance Writer. Expert’s Answer : To many online users, a push notification is nothing more than an annoying little box that pops up on the screen when they’re trying to read their article or watching a funny video. In many cases, it normally results in clicking the ‘No, Not for Me’ button and that’s the end of that. For those that do accept them on their favorite dedicated websites, it does get much better. Typically, they are rewarded with boring upload notifications on content they don’t really care about. When it comes to Push Notifications and to make effective use of them for your business, it’s all about thinking outside the push- notification box… …so to speak.
35. Hamish Fitzhenry Head of Search at Grizzly Expert’s Answer : I think the most critical factor of push notifications is the actual copy. Typical character limits for push notifications are 40-120 characters, which means the copywriting has to be very powerful in order to be effective in such a small package. It’s important to differentiate yourself from competitors through creating messages that persuade the web visitor to take action by providing them with a clear benefit and value. Try to identify what the visitor will be interested in and create the copy based on that insight. Web push notifications can be a powerful tool if used correctly, make sure your copy is on point and add value for your web visitors.
36. Robert Morris Marketing manager from New York and a writer at the top writing services. Expert’s Answer : The Four Keys To Successfully Push Notification Planning – Understanding, Interval, Timing And Content If you are smart, then you are going to learn how to use web push notifications to get the best results with trial and error testing: trying something, checking the results, keeping what works and scrapping what doesn’t. You need to perpetually learn from your social media experiences in the same way you are supposed to perceptually learn from your push notification experiences. Creating social media posts and push notifications are less like a job and are more like a large unending research experiment that gradually generates better and better results over time. Here is a better explanation of the four keys to successful push notification planning.
37. Aljaž Fajmut CEO at Nightwatch. Expert’s Answer : In general, we would send 2 different kinds of push notifications to our users: first are app updates, news and blog posts and second are updates or major changes on sites that our users are tracking. We use a different kind of strategies for each of those categories – with first, we will limit them to 1 or 2 notifications per 2 weeks, while on second we might push multiple notifications on a weekly basis. The segmentation is done based on the engagement indicators – mostly user’s login counts to our SaaS app. If he hasn’t engaged well enough, we will limit the notifications to the topics to his current engagement/funnel stage. We also use a special in-house script that would allow us to use user time zone and send notifications to them based on their timezone
38. Dennis Seymour Full Stack SEO and SaaS Entrepreneur. Expert’s Answer : I’ve been using web push notifications for a while now. I use it mainly as a complimentary thing to blogs I run, especially for niches that are harder to get subscribers for – like for my healthcare niche. For me, it’s harder to get opt-ins, rather it’s easier to optimize for broadcasts. It can get fun in niches like travel or bring sales if you have an e-commerce store. – Optimize the image to catch attention. Much like blog post cover images, you can treat push notifications the same way – The text can include emojis. Make use of it with good enough copy. These 2 additions will bring in more customers than just normal default notifications because everybody’s doing it nowadays. Now go and try it.
39. Sai Sarkar Working At Push Engage. Expert’s Answer : There are 3 top factors you should keep in mind to get better results: #Nurture: Always keep your customers engaged. Keep them updated about any new product / feature / article. You can create a series of Drip Push Notifications for your customers. This way you will never miss the opportunity to be in touch with your customers. #Segment: Always segment your users. It is one of the most important steps you should never miss. Segmentation can be based on: Gender, Product, Category, Geo Now next important thing to get higher success rate is – Cross Segment with Timing. Timing is one of the important factors to get higher CTR. #Personalize: Personalized notifications makes your customer more connected. Personalization has gone beyond “Hi X”. You need to capture customer actions and behaviors and then create your notifications.
40. Radhika Mohan Singh Roy Raconteur, Digital Marketer, Growth Hacker, Proletarian. Expert’s Answer : Push notifications are a powerful marketing and customer engagement tool but is also a highly misunderstood one. The key to successful push notifications is relevancy. Many companies integrate push notifications into their marketing strategy based simply on the premise that some others have seen real and positive results by using them. However, what the former fail to realize is the fact that the latter are doing it right, they are personalizing the notifications intelligently. Without personalization, these notifications are nothing but random messages of little or no interest to their recipients.
41. Helvis Smoteks Helvis Smoteks is an SEO-mastering, content-smithing marketer who owns inbound marketing agency Market Me Good. Expert’s Answer : There is no other application in marketing that’s alike. You are WRONG or miss-using web push notifications – if you think they are useless. Only text message blasts or ads in Messenger can reach similar effect to the one of web-push. And we all know how costly and hard to set-up are the ones above. First, How to use Browser Push Notifications Web push notifications serve a crucial part in business’s marketing funnel – they attract immediate attention Second, how to get the best results with Web Push Notifications There are 3 “ingredients” in these notifications that must be TESTED to get them right – Time, Copy (emojis, text, and CTA) and Customer’s funnel journey (aka segmentation).
42. Read More How to Use Web Push Notifactions