How To Use Push Notifications and Emails To Retain & Engage Your Valuable Customers

While promoting a business through digital channels, several methods can help you out. Any marketing activity is designed to help you reach your users with relevant communication to convince them to convert. Still, choosing the right channel, and ideating the right content could become a tough job. Besides, the number of multiple touchpoints over several marketing channels makes the issue more complicated. 

The impact of non-engaging communication is huge. Marketers had an estimate that 1.92 billion global buyers will be on digital last year. Yet, the average conversion rate in ecommerce stands at 2.86%. Hence, the marketers lose out on a huge revenue stream, which could have helped them to improve their brand value and marketing ROI.

Now let’s say that you have somehow plugged the leak and were able to boost your conversion rates to 5%. Even such a difference is enough to almost double your revenue. Yet, to make this a possibility, you need to optimize your marketing channels to perform better.

 

The right marketing channel

Selecting the right marketing channel is a dilemma for marketers. However, before finalizing a channel, you must know the reason for choosing it.

The determination of the right marketing channel was primarily based on the ability to engage users. Also, designing a clear and concise message with an accurate product description, image, and CTAs is a necessity here. Finally, the communication must not be spammy or violate user privacy and nudge them towards the bottom of the marketing funnel by helping users on their buying journey.

Almost all the channels satisfy these criteria but vary due to the success rate of each. Still, two channels  -  Push notifications and emails, fare better if you consider the reach, urgency, ease of operation, and the investment. Ever since the use of smartphones has increased, communicating with users has become much easier as they can access both push notifications (web, app, and in-app) as well as email on these devices.

If you are looking to use push and email as your preferred marketing channel, you should know the pros and cons of each. Unless you do this, your marketing communication and ROI won’t be much optimized.

 

Push vs email: The differences

Although highly engaging, push and email have some stark differences between them. These are: 

1) Message length :

Push messages have a relatively shorter length than email messages. Emails can be designed depending on the information you are looking to share with your users. Hence, you can club multiple offers, several content types, and even send attachments to your users, making it a versatile choice compared to push notifications.

 

2)  Visibility and accessibility :

When users receive a push notification, it usually pops up on the device screen. Thus, your messages are displayed immediately as you send them and don’t depend on the usage of any app or website. Accessing emails, on the other hand, needs the users to log in to their accounts, subsequently needing more time and permission to be read. If you are looking for instant visibility, you must rely more on push notifications.

 

3)  Content types :

Emails are more versatile when it comes to content types. You can send your marketing content in almost every format, including attachments files. Push notifications are somewhat limited in this scope, and can only include rich media, high-quality graphics, texts, and CTAs. 

Despite the differences in push and email, they are alike in some aspects. Take a look at what are those:

 

How alike are push and email marketing?

 

The following are the similarities between email and push notifications: 

 

1) Segmentation 

Both the channels use segmentation to allow you to carry out user segmentation and communicate with them using hyper-personalized messages. You can segment your users based on multiple parameters and each of them receives targeted messages specific to the group, making them relevant. This technique helps you engage your users better and increase conversions.

 

2) Inclusion of targeted CTAs

You can include highly customized and engaging CTAs in both email and push notifications. Also, you can add links to them and redirect your users to the intended pages to take appropriate actions.

 

3)  Wider acceptance :

You can send push or email to the users only if they have consented to receive them. It signifies their willingness to get messages or buy products from you. Your marketing messages act as an incentive to convert, and the chances of ignoring these reduce.

As you can see, both channels have some shortcomings if you are using them individually. However, if you select these to work together, it can turn out to be immensely beneficial for you.

 

The right balance: Push Notifications & Email Channel In Sync

Push notifications and emails are used to increase user engagement and interaction with your brand. However, being two different channels, designing and presenting the marketing content differs. So, if you use them as components of an omnichannel marketing platform, you can leverage the benefits, but overlap each other’s shortcomings and make your communication better.

So, what type of campaigns can you run by using both push and email? Read on to find out in the next section.

 

1)  Increase engagements

You can send simultaneous push notifications with emails to improve user engagement. Push messages invoke urgency and increase awareness about your promotion, while an email includes the details of it, or make it more insightful. Since both messages are relevant, the chances of user interaction with either channel increases.

 

 2)  Improve retention rate :

Since push and email increase user engagement, you can retain your users better too. Let’s assume that your users receive a notification about a promotion from you. Now if the users interact with the message, or directly buys a product, you can send another message over either or both the channels to thank them. 

This is particularly helpful in situations where you look to cross-sell or up-sell other products. A message over one channel and another subsequent communication over another one would help you to smoothen your marketing funnel and convert more users.

 

3)  Reduce churn-rate

Push notifications and emails can also reduce your churn rate when used together. Since you have two interactive channels, your communication becomes more engaging and interactive. Also, the frequency of delivering messages becomes better, resulting in better user experience.

 

Verdict

In spite of the technical and UI difference between push notifications and emails, using them together can create a smoother marketing funnel. Moreover, using an omnichannel marketing platform, which allows you to leverage both these, can help you to boost your engagement and retention, as well as your marketing ROI.