We help publishers around the world send billions of push notifications every month. With this gold mine of push notification data, we set out to identify which kind of web push notifications worked better, and why? After evaluating over 40K push notifications we started to notice a pattern that was common among news and media publishers in India. So before you send the next push notification consider some of our observations to boost – your push notification campaigns.
Segmentation is a Clear Winner
A common pattern that we notice across multiple news and media publishers of different sizes and covering different niches, was that segmentation worked better. Push notifications sent to a segmented audience received better attention and resulted in 2X higher CTR.
For news publishers that offer hyperlocal regional reporting, a good practice is to segment the audience based on their location (such as state or region). We see higher CTRs when these segmented audiences receive a push notification about an event in their region/ location.
Publishers that can segment their audiences based on regional languages can gain a massive bump in CTRs. The segmented audience when targeted with notifications in regional languages are more likely to interact with the notification and click through to the article.
For example, we suggest a publisher from South India should segment audiences based on their preferred language such as Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and so on. When sending a notification to the audience segmented for Kannada, in the regional language, the publisher stands to gain higher clicks than an unsegmented approach.
Headlines Make or Break Your Push Notifications
Push notifications are the fastest channel to grab audience attention. However, a poorly framed push notification will fail to gather a response from the receiver. Our observation was that catchy headlines that pique curiosity drive more clicks. Simply adding the same headline as the article would not be a great idea. Spend some time to understand what the article is about and why the audience would care about it.
Interestingly, catchy headlines work best for most kinds of topics and content formats. You can further improve the click-through rates of push notifications by segmenting it to the right audience.
Creating Habits With Notifications
Publishers who create a fixed notification schedule sending the same kind of notification everyday get consistent clicks. For example, a news recap of the day sent everyday at 7PM is sure to get consistent clicks. There is little to no difference with the headline and image used for the notification. This forms a habit for subscribers and is unlikely to change quickly.
The best example we noticed was for astrology as a topic. Daily horoscopes sent to subscribers at 7AM consistently got the same type of click each day. Publishers should consider creating a notification schedule that can be delivered to their subscribers at a fixed time.
Tip: We would suggest a morning notification with news updates from last night or updates expected in the day. In the evening a recap of the news of the day can be a great way to build this habit.
Publishers can also align these notifications with the events in their niches. For example, a sports publisher can send push notifications before the start of the weekend for upcoming sports events. A recap notification can be sent at the end of the weekend. Multiple notifications can be sent throughout the day relevant to the niche.
Nothing Beats Breaking News Notifications
Push notifications with breaking news are unbeatable. These notifications got the highest CTRs given the nature of the notification. Breaking news push notifications got the same CTRs irrespective of segmentation or timing of the day. However, alerts on breaking news should be pushed out as early as possible. Sending these notifications late results in a dip in clicks.
Publishers in a Niche Experience Better CTRs
Publishers completely focussed on one niche enjoy more clicks on their notifications compared to other publishers that cover multiple niches. This stood true irrespective of the niche. Since niche publishers build authority in their niche, their subscribers are more likely to open their push notifications and interact with them.
Publishers in multiple niches can take advantage of segmentation and split their subscribers into a segment for every niche. This way they can target updates from a particular niche only to the relevant audience. By using this approach publishers can increase their CTRs and reduce clutter for other subscribers who aren’t interested in the niche.
More Push Notifications Can Be a Double-Edged Sword
Pushing more notifications can be a double-edged sword. We noticed that sending more notifications in a day resulted in more clicks, however over doing it resulted in a surge in unsubscribes. Publishers can send notifications for breaking news and other important updates since it has higher CTR. However sending more notifications of other updates without proper segmentation can result in poor response and ultimately cause unsubscriptions.
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