Say goodbye to guesswork and hello to data-backed decisions. The dashboard offers comprehensive insights into every stage of your app’s lifecycle, empowering you to make smarter decisions that drive results. With over 49 different reports and the ability to filter by tags, attributes, and device properties, the App Health Dashboard will be your trusted companion and  transform your mobile optimization and marketing strategies. 

Drive More App Downloads
Are you tired of playing the customer acquisition guessing game? Say goodbye to acquisition uncertainties with the App Health Dashboard! Identify and track the strategies driving the most installs and lower your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Cost Per Install (CPI). Dive into data on app installs, uninstalls, and net gain to optimize your acquisition strategy for maximum efficiency.

Deliver Value in The App 
Data-backed insights make it possible to create experiences to onboard customers and capture their preferences successfully. Compare opt-in rates, device types and audiences so you canfine-tune your onboarding experience. Discover where activation rates drop so you can create messaging programs and native no-code app experiences that showcase the actual value of your app and get customers to share their preferences and interests.

Engage Your Customers Effectively
Boosting app engagement has never been more data-driven! Analyze session frequencies, track KPIs and monitor MAUs and DAUs to ensure your app engagement is trending in the right direction. Track session duration, engagement rates and impressions to discover the most opportune times to connect with users on their preferred channels.

Build More Loyal Customers
Loyalty is the golden ticket, and the App Health Dashboard helps you cash in! Create and track custom events, such as purchases, for each loyalty tier. Identify segments that are revenue powerhouses and those needing a little extra love. Compare long-term retention rates across different audiences, ensuring your app becomes a mainstay on users’ devices.

We get it. Data is not just numbers; it’s the key to unlocking unprecedented success and making smarter, faster decisions. With the App Health Dashboard, you’re not just tracking metrics; you’re uncovering insights to help shape the future success of your app and forge lasting connections with your audience.

Ready to revolutionize your mobile marketing strategy? Dive into the future with Airship’s App Health Dashboard and optimize every stage of your app’s lifecycle!

The post A New Tool to Help Marketers Measure and Optimize Mobile App Performance appeared first on Airship.

Airship’s new Mobile App Maturity Assessment evaluates your MAX capability across six key dimensions and ranks each dimension at one of four maturity levels. We also provide an overall maturity score.

Six Key Performance Dimensions 

App Growth 
We assess how you acquire new users to understand how much of a priority the app is to your business, how you’re promoting it and how your team is tracking and measuring growth.

App Experiences
App experiences delivered in the context of the customer’s engagement drive higher conversions, so timing is everything. This section will ask you how you apply mobile app experiences to critical moments and milestones in the customer journey. 

Personalization
App users who receive personalized mobile app experiences are more likely to engage. In fact, according to SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized offers. This section evaluates how you use data to personalize your mobile app experiences. 

Automation
Trigger-based messages are automated responses to behavioral signals. In this section, we evaluate how your brand calibrates message frequency and what processes you have in place to deliver personalized app experiences at scale. 

Experimentation 
Data tells a story, and one of the best ways to get usable data for your strategy is to A/B test each component. This section is about evaluating your current A/B testing process and finding out what elements of each campaign, experience and new feature you’re actually testing. 

Orchestration 
In the final dimension of the assessment we evaluate how all the elements of your strategy work together. This includes seeing to what extent you’ve established cross-channel collaboration, governing processes and a single view of each customer.

Four Levels of Maturity 

Now that we’ve taken a look at the performance dimensions, let’s look at how we rank each dimension. Below are the four levels of maturity. We not only rank the maturity level for each dimension, we also aggregate your dimension rankings to provide an overall ranking. 

Basics 
We all have to start somewhere. Basics means you’re still green in this area of mobile maturity. But that’s why you’re here – to learn more about MAX and get strategic insights on how best to improve. 

Executing 
When you see Executing on your assessment, it means you have a great foundation for MAX, but might need a little help in identifying areas you’ve overlooked in your strategy. 

Accelerating 
If you’ve made it into the Accelerating category, you have definite momentum and are likely seeing strong ROI from your mobile app investments. Imagine what you could do with even more powerful mobile app experiences. 

Leading 
When it comes to building out a mobile app experience strategy, we all strive to be leaders. Brands that find themselves in the Leading category are producing and tracking ROI, retaining customers with key experiences in moments that matter and have made their mutual exchange of value crystal clear. 

Why Take the Mobile Maturity Assessment 

Mobile is the digital center of customer experience. Brands that fail to meet customers’ growing expectations on their mobile apps will see declines in revenue and loyalty. Conversely, brands that get it right see 3.5x more revenue from app customers than their other customers. 

Not sure what to do? Find out by taking the free MAX Maturity Assessment.

Go to the Mobile Maturity Assessment

The post Airship Launches a Framework for Assessing and Improving Mobile App Maturity appeared first on Airship.

Read on for three of our top takeaways, and be sure to download the full report—available for a limited time only—here.

Get Obsessed with Your Customers

Sure, many businesses say they’re customer-obsessed, but to truly make the most of marketing technology, you need to understand the full scope of your customer’s interactions with your product at every touchpoint. Being able to trace a customer across channels creates opportunities to engage with them in the moment (more on that later) and gives you a wealth of actionable data upon which to build your martech strategy. This may sound intimidating, but tools like Airship Journeys can make this process easier than you think.

Replace Campaigns with Moment-based Engagement 

If there’s one thing this report makes clear, the successful B2C businesses are reducing their reliance on costly time-bound campaigns and investing instead in data and technology infrastructure—like Airship’s Customer Engagement Platform—that lets them connect with customers wherever they are. Personalized, on-demand interactions are the key to outstanding customer experiences, and those customer experiences are the key to growing your B2C business.

Emphasize Customer Experience and Build Marketing to Match

One of the most common struggles for companies trying to establish their marketing technology is that it may not fit within the existing infrastructure of your company. Per the previous takeaway, many companies are built to run campaigns, and shifting gears to focus on ongoing, moment-to-moment engagement can seem like an impossible task. Making such a dramatic shift in marketing is never easy, but companies who do often start with a dramatic shift in mindset.

Thinking about the customer experience holistically, and building your marketing around how to engage every available opportunity makes investing in martech not just a good idea, it’s a necessity to ensure you’re fulfilling that goal. And with tools at hand like Airship’s Channel Coordination, it’s never been easier to keep an eye on every piece of the puzzle.

Get Your Complimentary Copy of the Report

All of these insights and more are available for a limited time in Forrester’s new report, “Enable Moments-Based Marketing With Enterprise Martech.” Download the full report and get your marketing technology started off on the right foot.

How Is Your Martech Stack Looking?

Make sure you have the right tools and the right marketing strategy

We can help with that

The post Forrester Report: Meaningful Moments Can Drive Massive Growth appeared first on Airship.

Here are some of my favorite highlights from the event.

Airship Journeys Makes the Customer Journey Simple 

Our very own Senior Product Manager Lisa Orr took the stage to explain what Airship Journeys was and how marketers can use it to create powerful and precise cross-channel customer journeys. Most journey builders on the market today are over-engineered, said Orr. That’s why the Airship team – with input from over eighty marketing teams – designed a solution that’s easy to use.

If you weren’t able to attend the event and want to see Airship Journeys in action, contact us and schedule a demo!

JCPenney Creates Tailored Customer Experiences

JCPenney wants to create customer experiences tailored to the way their customers want to shop. In-App Marketing Senior Specialist Meredith Meador explained theri approach to making that happen: engaging with customers (especially loyal customers) early, often and personally. 

Using that strategy and the Airship Journey solution, they were able to send personalized messages that increased engagement and conversion during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This strategy resulted in 12% of all purchases made in their app during those days coming directly from a push notification! 

TGI Fridays Gives Value to Get Value

The digital team at TGI Fridays wants to provide value to customers in the appropriate channel at the appropriate time with personalized messages – and make sure it all adds up to an incredible customer experience. Digital Product Manager Conner Fryoux explained that TGI Fridays was not just in the restaurant business, they’re actually in the experiential business – they just happen to sell really amazing food and drinks. 

TGI Fridays uses a simple strategy to create great customer engagement: give value, ask and retarget. Using Airship Journeys and Gimbal’s localization, TGI Fridays sends interactive and personalized messages to send coupons and incentives to visit the restaurant. They found that their personalized messages have a 40-60% higher conversion rate than generic messages. 

To get a closer look into how TGI Fridays uses Airship, check out their customer story. 

See You in Paris and Amsterdam? 

Atlanta and Dallas may have been our last Customer Engagement Forum events of 2019, but we have two events just around the corner in Europe! We’ll be in Paris on January 14 and Amsterdam on January 16. Check out our Forums page to learn more about these events. 

We Can Help You Navigate the Customer Journey

Let’s Connect

The post JCPenney and TGI Fridays Share How They Use Airship Journeys at Our Customer Engagement Forums appeared first on Airship.

Our webinar, “Customer Journeys in the Mobile Era: Is Your Martech Stack Up to the Task?” offers insights into meeting this evolving challenge. Forrester Principal Analyst Rusty Warner joined me to discuss the changing CX landscape, moments-based marketing, and the martech investments needed to win, serve and retain customers in this new environment.

Check out five key takeaways below and watch the webinar, here.

1) Focus on Designing the Customer Experience 

Digitally savvy customers expect brands to understand them as individuals. Good personalization translates to a great customer experience (CX). And when brands get it right, success follows. In fact, Forrester found that 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. 

2) Avoid Common Personalization Blunders

Many brands struggle to deliver consistent CX across channels. Missteps like irrelevant retargeting messages and superficial personalization can feel out of touch, or even creepy, and lead customers to opt out of your brand channels altogether. The right martech investments will minimize the risk of opt-outs and deliver an experience that’s contextual and personalized.

3) Reimagine Martech Around Customer Moments

Digital and mobile technology have transformed the traditional marketing funnel. Today’s consumer interacts with brands across multiple touchpoints throughout their customer journey. Campaigns remain important. But what’s more important is winning in the moments that matter most to customers. That means identifying and anticipating their needs and delivering customized content at just the right time and place.

4) Understand and Predict Customer Behavior

You can only truly personalize experiences for consumers you recognize and understand.

A moments-based approach requires marketers to think differently about AI-powered orchestration, predictive analytics and identity resolution. The right martech investments help brands align insights and engagements and be more responsive to their customers – in the right place and at the right time. 

5) Build for the Multichannel World

Companies that can’t make the shift to creating mobile-first customer experiences are increasingly at risk. And a recent Airship survey found that many face challenges in managing cross-channel communications. As marketers reimagine their martech around customer journeys, cross-channel integration is essential to delivering value for a brand and its customers.

So, is your martech stack up to the task? Watch the full webinar for more insights on making the right martech investments, a case study and details on Airship Journeys, our groundbreaking customer journey solution.

Airship Journeys

Simplify the way cross-channel customer journeys are created, measured and perfected.

Learn More

The post Can Your Martech Stack Deliver Seamless Customer Journeys in the Mobile Era? appeared first on Airship.

We strongly believe in the opportunities that Mobile Wallet can offer to marketers and so we recently hosted a webinar, “Make Mobile Wallet Your Secret Weapon to Acquire, Retain & Grow Your Customer Base” to show what Mobile Wallet can do (with examples from brands like Alaska Airlines, REI and Cost Plus World Market) and how brands can use it throughout a customer’s engagement lifecycle.

Acquire: Bring Customers into the Digital Experience

Mobile Wallet is an excellent tool to tie together a digital experience with real-world experience.  Having a presence in both, in a seamless and personalized way, can help a brand stay on top of mind of their customers and bring in new users.

A great example of this is Cost Plus World Market and the way they use mobile wallet for their in-store treasure hunt. Cost Plus World Market uses their mobile wallet item to alert and update their customers with clues to locate coupons (last year they were called “Golden Llamas”). Not only is this campaign fun for their customers, but it encourages downloads, purchases and active engagement.  

Retain: Keep Content Fresh and Engaging

So, once you’ve acquired a customer on mobile wallet, what’s next? It’s very important for brands to update their mobile wallet items and keep content fresh, to continue engagement. One of the ways to do so is through loyalty programs. You can deliver loyalty cards to customers on any channel they prefer (through Adaptive Links) and then use the pass to send important notifications, like a loyalty status change. You can also segment customers based on their primary location or indicated interest to deliver notifications or promotions that are super relevant to them.

Another great way to use mobile wallet is through delivering boarding passes, tickets, coupons or gift cards with personalized information directly into the mobile wallet, and then let them know of important updates like a gate change or flight delay, or that their coupon is about to expire. Alaska Airlines does a great job of keeping their mobile wallet content relevant and personalized with alerts, tickets, and information that are important to their customer.

Grow: Engage and Upsell at Relevant Moments

Mobile wallets can help you cross and upsell by sending real-time notifications for upgrades and sales. Use tagging and segmentation to send personalized offers, like seat upgrades for boarding and ticketing passes or a timely coupon to invite a purchase. With our External ID feature, you can even keep track of the items when they’re shared between devices and control how many times the item is shared and how long it lasts.

REI does an amazing job of keeping their mobile wallet items updated and convenient to drive more sales. They alert their customers when an offer is set to expire and automatically update their mobile wallets with new coupons when they are available. Try doing that with a paper coupon!

Feel like you missed out on an awesome webinar? No worries, you can watch a recording of the webinar here and check out more of our great resources on Mobile Wallet.

The post How to Acquire, Retain, and Grow Your Customer Base with Mobile Wallet appeared first on Airship.

In our State of Mobile Wallet report, more than 50% surveyed said they wanted to use mobile wallet for boarding passes and event tickets. We also found that 67% of Millenials, 51% of Gen X and 28% of Baby Boomers have already adopted mobile wallet.

So it looks like consumers are already on board with mobile wallet. What about your brand?

Make sure you’re not missing out on all the possibilities and opportunities of mobile wallet in our upcoming webinar, “Make Mobile Wallet Your Secret Weapon to Acquire, Retain & Grow Your Customer Base.” In the webinar we’ll go over:

• How brands like SXSW, Alaska Airlines and REI use mobile wallet to create seamless experiences customers rave about
• The unique capabilities of mobile wallet, and why it’s now a must-have, not a nice to have — especially for retail and travel brands
• Ideas for mobile wallet campaigns you can have up and running in just a few weeks

See for yourself how to make mobile wallet a key part of your brand’s digital transformation — and create simpler, better mobile experiences your customers will love. Register today!

The post Upcoming Webinar: Make Mobile Wallet Your Secret Weapon appeared first on Airship.

So what’s your plan for converting those new users into the loyal customers who will contribute to hitting your app business goals all year long?

Here are three ways to improve app user retention for customers (and potential customers) who downloaded your app during the holidays:

1) Acknowledge That People Who Downloaded Your App During the Holidays are Different 

Building a strategy for retaining holiday app users starts with recognizing that they might have different goals than those who download your app at other times during the year.

One way to test this hypothesis is to track your holiday download cohort and learn from their behavior. Our mobile analytics tool, Insight lets you review user activation and retention data.

Look at the date of install, and date of inactivity, churn or app deletion. Is the duration different than users acquired outside of the holiday period? What offers did they see or redeem? What pages did they visit? Did they make a purchase?

2) Act on Your Hypotheses About Your Holiday Download Cohort

Once you know something about this cohort, act on your hypotheses about who they are and what you might be able to do to engage (or re-engage) them — this year or next.

If I see that most of the users in my holiday cohort become inactive — or delete my app within a certain number of days after download — I have a better idea of the window of time I have to hook users before I lose them.

Looking at the offers they redeemed or purchases they made, I may also have some ideas about the messages that might resonate best.

Automating messages that will be sent based on a custom event trigger make this simple. In this case, a message sent after a customized length of inactivity (whatever is reasonable for your app — a day, a week, two weeks, a month or more) could help you turn a short-term user into a long-term fan.

3) Answer the Burning Question: “Why Should I Hang On to This App?”

I buy from one gourmet food retailer exactly once a year, when I purchase a fruitcake for my father. The company I order from offers a mobile app discount which has kept me coming back year over year. But I typically delete their app after my one purchase.

What could they do to keep me year round?  

Here are ideas for improving app user retention:

Show Them the Value

If holiday users were downloading your app just to get deals, they may have no idea what other features and benefits the app offers. Why not create a series of in-app marketing messages that make the value clear?  

An in-app message series could contain a mini-tour of features and benefits of the app — with an emphasis on reasons to use the app year-round (You can prompt your opt-in audience to look at the series with a push notification that deep links to the series – or retarget them with messages through other marketing channels.)

For example, my gourmet food app could show me how incredibly easy they make it for me to give gifts — at any time of the year — by offering to send me personalized reminders for occasions I don’t want to forget (co-workers’ birthdays, anniversaries, etc.)

Or, the message series could share some fun statistics about what gourmet food gifts are most popular for gift-giving occasions throughout the year, showcasing gift ideas I wouldn’t have otherwise considered.  

Make Them a (Personalized) Offer They Can’t Refuse

Combining a value message with a deal or offer for the next natural gift-giving occasion —  a discount on Valentine’s Day gifts for example — and there’s a good chance you’ll have your users thinking about reasons to come back.   

For example, the gourmet food app could send me an offer for a discount on Valentine’s Day gift baskets. The message could even be personalized to show only those baskets that are in the same price range as the gift I already purchased.

Mobile Marketing Opportunities Should Never Be One And Done

Mobile marketing is relationship marketing. Long-term customer engagement on mobile means understanding your users and creating ongoing value. The result is a win-win where your users are delighted, while you continue to boost your mobile app retention rates — and grow your app.

Need some inspiration? We’ve got useful mobile tips and marketing tricks all year long! Subscribe to our blog and never miss a post.

The post 3 Ideas for Improving App User Retention from Holiday Downloads appeared first on Airship.

To jumpstart your brainstorming, here are three ways brands can use in-app automation — each with triggers to consider and best practices — you can create with our solution.

For even more examples and in-app automation information, check out our new In-App Automation Playbook and watch to our recent webinar for a walkthrough on sending a triggered in-app automation yourself.

Use In-App Messages to Learn About Your Users

A banner style in-app message with interactive buttons — these can be customized without needing an app update. Buttons can also be linked to content inside or outside the app.

Try triggering an automated in-app message as a way to gather helpful information about your app users, such as topics they are interested in, favorite music, most-shopped clothing brands and more.

With this information, you can set tags and deliver more relevant messaging across your other channels, including push notifications, in-app notifications, message center content, emails and more. And the data shows more relevant messaging reduces app churn and encourages app stickiness.

This type of triggered message can also be part of a broader onboarding campaign (similar to a drip campaign you might do via email) to get to know your users and get them up to speed with your app.

Triggers to Consider:

• App open based: First open, second open, etc., trigger ongoing, automated onboarding series to give users a tour of your app and get them up to speed.

• Preference based: viewed particular content a specified number of times (ex: after they’ve read four articles on one topic)

Best Practices:

• Consider using a banner-style template for this type of messaging — banners go away automatically after 15 seconds, so this is a less intrusive choice if you want to re-trigger this message again at a later time.

• Ensure precision: Our workflow allows you to pause, edit or restart your automated program so you can have control over your program.

Trigger A “Soft Ask” Message to Familiarize Users With the Value of Opting In

Example of a triggered modal style in-app message. Unlike the full screen style in-app message, you can see the screen a user was on when the message triggered.

Let’s be real: you wouldn’t sign up for something without knowing what you’re getting into (or what’s needed from you), so you shouldn’t expect users to opt in to push notifications without knowing the value they can expect.

Rather than presenting the standard OS opt-in prompt when a user opens the app for the first time — and has little context about your app — trigger a “soft ask” highlighting the value of opting in once a user is more familiar with your app.

If a user says “Yes,” the standard OS prompt will be shown, while “Remind Me Later” will prevent the OS prompt from being presented and can set a re-trigger for a later time. Use this same approach for prompting location opt-in.  

Triggers to Consider:

• Custom events, such as viewed an article/item/product

• If a user is opted in to location services, but not to push notifications

• Viewed a screen that indicates they would benefit from push notifications (ex: preference center, deals, etc.)

Best Practices:

• Have a plan: present the ask in context, using actions like screen views or custom event triggers. (Ex: trigger an opt in to push notification on a user’s second visit to your app, and trigger a location opt in request on their third visit.)

• Set a limit: if a user dismisses your opt-in request a set number of times (ex: 3 or 4 times), do not show the user that message again.

• Consider trying a similar approach for requesting a user to turn on location services.

Connect Users Across Multiple Channels by Encouraging User Registrations

Example of a full screen in-app message. These give your brand the most real estate and support up to 5 buttons and link to content in an optional footer.

Actionable data has become a key component for brands when it comes to orchestrating their marketing messaging across other channels like push notifications, email, SMS and more.

In-app messaging is a smart way to ask users to register with your app, which in turn gives you data to help identify a user across their different channels — Registered users are key to gathering actionable data you can use across other channels.

Ask users to register or login at opportune times to increase your addressable user base as well as better personalize users’ experiences in your app. Additionally, should an authenticated user churn from the app, you still have valuable information you can use to reach them on other channels.

Triggers to Consider:

• Opened the app but has not yet logged in/registered

• Custom events you’ve set: for example, made a purchase, saved a favorite item or story, created a wishlist

• Completed a specified action in the app a certain number of times

Best Practices:

• Share the value upfront: Let users know what they’re gaining by registering, rather than blindly asking them to register.

• Money talks: Incentivize users to register or login by sweetening the deal with a perk, such as 5% off their first order, 30 days free of limited time free shipping.

Try In-App Automation Yourself

Want to increase app engagement, reduce churn, drive feature adoption, and increase app revenue? Our new in-app automation engine allows marketers and product owners (read: no developer required) to drive value starting on day one with with the product. Give it a try yourself — get in touch with us, or request a personalized demo to learn more.

The post Three Ways In-App Automation Can Drive Value for Your Brand appeared first on Airship.

When someone opts in to receive mobile push notifications they’re essentially saying, “I’m trusting you to send me good/useful/helpful stuff. If you screw it up, I’m out.”

As a brand, you’ve got to take this unwritten contract seriously. But our latest data shows that most brands are playing it too safe. As of today, you’re probably not sending enough push notifications to really engage your users and impact app retention rates.

In fact, some brands aren’t sending any push notifications at all — even after their app users gave them permission by opting in.

Think about that: an app user you want to connect with has essentially opened the door for you to come in — and you’re hanging back. How rude!  

After opting in, not only do your customers expect to get push notifications from you, they may feel dissed if they don’t. In fact, 95% of new, opt-in app users churn within the first 90 days if they don’t receive any push notifications.

More (High Value) Push Notifications = Better App Retention Rates

Our data study also revealed that apps that send one mobile push notification a day have 90-day app retention rates that are 3X higher on iOS and 10X higher on Android than apps that send none.

You can dig into all the details about optimal push notification send levels and app retention rate impact in our blog post recapping our mobile app retention rates data study — or you can download the full data study, How Push Notifications Impact Mobile App Retention Rates anytime.

But the bottom line is this: if you’re not sending regular push notifications, you’re leaving a lot of your user acquisition investment on the table.

Don’t worry though, we’re here to help.

More than 50 Push Notification Examples and Ideas To Increase Customer Engagement & Boost App Retention Rates

As you think about scaling up your push notifications, carefully consider what kinds of push notifications make the most sense for your customers and your brand. And keep push notification best practices in mind — see our top recommendations in the post 5 Things the Best Mobile Notifications Have in Common.

As you peruse this list, grab our handy push notification planning spreadsheet — an editorial calendar that will help you get a big-picture view of the push notifications you’re sending, and stay on track to send them regularly throughout the year.

(Oh, and big bonus: most of these ideas would work equally well for app push notifications and browser push notifications — or both together.)

Last thing: keep in mind that many of the notifications we’ve suggested here can and should be automated — based on in-app activities, location, or other user-level actions. Without automation, scaling up is more time consuming and difficult than it should be. We can help; learn about our automation solutions.

Without further ado, here are a whole lot of push notification examples and ideas for high value push notifications that can help deepen your connection with your app users.

Want all of these ideas and examples – plus a bonus section with even more ideas! – in one handy PDF? Download our eBook 14 Types of Push Notifications You Should Almost Certainly Be Sending. 

GET YOUR COPY >>

Customer Lifecycle Push Notifications

From onboarding to setting preferences to ongoing retention, create a plan for push notifications that will get your users up and running — and coming back.

• Welcome new opted-in users; underscore the value prop of having opted in

• Accelerate completion of targeted onboarding steps with notifications prompting users to: Add preferences, complete their profile, and use all of the features of the app: Did you know you can: [feature that will improve their experience]

• Re-engage inactive or lapsed users with interest-based notifications triggered by inactivity duration: We think you’d love…[this deal, this product, this artist, etc.]  

• Periodically request information updates to make sure you’ve got accurate data: Update your…[password, credit card, profile info]

• Say thank you (and provide another offer): Thank you for…[purchasing, sharing, rating] — here’s…[20% off your next order, a coupon, etc.]

Rating, Survey or Referral Request Push Notifications

Ratings provide critical feedback loops you can use to improve your customer experience, while referral requests help you grow your user base. Push notifications are a fantastic way to help enable both. Referrals and ratings are a great way to leverage interactive buttons (available out of the box with Urban Airship – no development required).

• Ask for a rating or a survey completion related to an activity or purchase your app enabled: How was…[your experience, the product, the show, etc.]

• Ask for a rating for your app (we recommend a “soft ask” first — learn more best practices for getting the opt-in here)

• For those who provide a positive rating, send a notification asking them to refer your app to a friend

• For any ratings or referral requests, consider using interactive buttons: Want to [rate the app, share with a friend] now? [Yes/Maybe Later]

Loyalty & Rewards Push Notifications

Loyalty or rewards programs notifications can be automated and sent via API, drawing on user-level CRM data. Loyalty program-related push notifications can also be sent through mobile wallet loyalty card passes.

• Welcome new loyalty program members

• Loyalty program lifecycle messaging like:

  – Close to meeting new loyalty status
  – New loyalty status achieved
  – Loyalty points earned
  – Loyalty points used
  – Points or rewards nearing expiration

Purchase & Product Push Notifications

Like loyalty messaging, transactional messages are often sent via API and draw on user behavior, triggered automation, and CRM data.While these examples are probably familiar to retail and ecom brands, consider how you could adapt the concept for your app.

• Order confirmation & tracking information

• Order status updates: Your order is…[confirmed/ready/shipped]

• Providing a digital receipt

• Re-order reminders for subscription-based products or purchases

• Abandoned cart / incomplete action or transaction (see a how-to on preventing shopping cart abandonment here)

• Incomplete pre-purchase registration

• Apologies: We’re sorry [we ran out of product, your flight was delayed, the app crashed, etc.] Here’s a [offer, discount, etc.]

• Another chance to purchase an item: A favorite or starred…[item is on sale, back in stock, etc.]

• Flag potential security issues: Was this you? [Irregular activity, login from different computer]

Contests & Giveaways

Contests and giveaways offer a great way to engage (or re-engage) your mobile app users — and send push notifications they’ll value.

• Kickoff notification: Enter to win!— our giveaway starts today.

• Entry confirmation: Thanks for entering – good luck!

• Share contest with a friend: Want to tell a friend?

• Entry reminders: Have you entered yet? Only [2 weeks, 1 week, 1 day] left!

• Winner announcement: Who won our contest? Find out…

• Follow up offer for contest entrants – Everyone’s a winner – here’s a [offer] on us. Thanks again for playing!

Live Events or Webinars

With in-the-moment messaging, you can drive your audience to in-the-moment events like live Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat feeds.

• Getting ready to go live: We’ll be going live in [XX] minutes – join us!

• Going live: We’re going live right now: Tune in!

• Thanks for joining the live event; provide date & registration link for the next one

• Ratings request for an event or webinar: Did you get what you wanted from our webinar? Let us know! 

• Survey request: What would you like to see at our next event? Let us know!

Social Media Activity

Staying connected with friends — and knowing what’s happening on social media networks,  can be a great prompt for engagement.

• You’ve been mentioned: Your contact [XX] mentioned you in a…[photo, comment, etc.]

• Contact activities: Your contact just [updated their profile, posted for the first time in a while, favorited something, made a recommendation, created an event, etc.]

Once a Day/Week/Month Push Notifications

Having a regular, high-value touchpoint is a great way to increase push notification frequency without overdoing it. It’s also a great way to get more mileage and leverage from other marketing activities.

• Weekly or Monthly “Pick” — highlight a product or service on a certain day of the week or the month. (For more personalization, set up tagging and send deals based on user preferences)

• Newsletter — send a notification to look for a regular newsletter coming to their email or in-app message center (or both).

• Pro Tips / How To Series — encourage deeper app use with a tutorial on using different parts your app or your product/service.

Target App Users Likely to Churn

If your users haven’t engaged with your app for a while they may be getting ready to leave for good. Push notifications are one tool to help re-engage them. With our Predictive Churn solution, you can see which users are at risk for churn, then send push notifications to groups at different risk levels with targeted messages. For example:

• Low churn risk: We’ve missed you! Check out our latest [feature, product, offer, etc.]

• Medium churn risk: We’ve missed you! Here’s…[an incentive for coming back — 10% off coupon or similar]

• High churn risk: We’ve missed you! Here’s…[a strong incentive for coming back — free one on us or similar]

Location-Based Notifications

For some brands, location-based push notifications can work wonders.  Consider these ideas:

• When a customer is within a certain distance of your physical location, send a notification: While you’re nearby, don’t forget your…[coupon, unused loyalty points, etc.]

• If you have last-minute deals or tickets, alert app users who are close enough to take action

• If a customer is coming in to pick up an item in your store, send a push: Here to pick up your [name of item]? Head straight to the [location]; we’re ready to help!

• When a customer is in a certain place within your location, send context-specific notifications to educate, entertain or drive sales: Checking out [shoes, kids clothes, suitcases]? Here’s our latest coupon for that! or Flash sale on concert merchandise for everyone in [section A, aisle 15, etc.] go check it out!

• A service or product you ordered has arrived — or is close to arriving: Your [driver, repair technician, lunch] is just [distance or time] away!

• Provide wayfinding at a venue: The quickest exit after the concert is through Door B.

Reminders & Status Updates

Keep your users up to date on the status of things they care about: 

• Reminders: Don’t forget: This Friday is the last day to register for [classes, webinar, training, etc.] 
• Support Ticket, Maintenance Request or Help Desk Status/Progress: Your ticket has been created; we’ll be in touch soon!
• Action required or requested: From turn-based game notifications: It’s your move! to conversation replies: Your contact is waiting to hear back from you push notifications are fantastic for nudging users to take in-the-moment action.

Coupons, Discounts, Promotions & Offers

Get creative (and personalized) with the kinds of promotional push notifications you send. Use the data you’ve got, current events or other current events to keep it contextual.  

Opportunistic

• Seasonal/weather/calendar-driven offers: Spring is set to spring: do you have what you need to [stay dry, plant your garden, get out of town for Spring Break, etc.]

• Social/opportunistic: anything that ties message to the real world: We’re so into the [World Series/hottest tv show/trending hashtag/etc.] we’re celebrating with a special offer for you.

Data in Your CRM

• Birthday, anniversary, or other milestone offer

• Channel specific offer (mobile only, buy online, pickup in store)

• Curated recommendations based on user preferences

Time Bound/Seasonal

• End of a season or end of a sale: Last chance! End-of-winter deals are yours until midnight.

• Rare, or limited edition items/experiences are available again: [Pumpkin spice lattes are back!]

• Seasonal reminders that make sense based on your app’s value proposition. Could include:

  • Daylight Savings time

  • Tax season: Have you filed? or You’ve got your refund, we’ve got deals.

  • Holidays — from “little” ones like National Donut Day to “big ones” like Thanksgiving

Adding Push Notifications as a Channel to Marketing Campaigns

Don’t forget push notifications as a channel when you’re putting together broader marketing campaigns. When eHarmony added push notifications to their marketing mix for a Valentine’s Day campaign, they saw a massive uptick in engagement and membership activations from the notifications. Take advantage of the fact that push notifications are generally going to be seen by your most loyal customers; if there’s a perk you can offer them, in exchange for taking action, that’s a great group to incentivize.

• Exclusive sneak preview: Let app users get a first look at a new marketing campaign, product launch, etc.

• Combine push notifications with in-app messages, email, videos and more. (You can send a video clip directly through push with a rich notification.)

• Announce a new product launch, update or feature via email; follow up with push notifications to the segment of your mobile users who are the best audience for it.

• Combine web push notifications and app push notifications whenever it makes sense to do so to get in front web visitors, many of whom probably don’t have your app

We hope that some of these ideas will help you scale up your push notification frequency with notifications that are authentic to your brand, valuable to your users — and help you drive up your app retention rates and your app’s growth and revenue!

What have we missed? Leave a comment here with the push notifications that perform best for you!

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The post 50+ Push Notification Ideas You Can Start Using Today appeared first on Airship.