Push notifications are a digital advertising tool that allows personalized messages to be sent directly to users’ devices, even when they are not actively browsing a website. This format stands out for its high efficiency in performance strategies, offering great versatility and enabling direct, immediate, and segmented communication with the audience.
Within a media strategy, push notifications can serve multiple purposes: from acquiring new users — through attractive messages that invite them to discover a product or service — to retaining existing customers by sending promotions, discounts, updates, or personalized reminders. Their ability to reach users in real time makes them an excellent tool to increase conversion rates and improve user engagement.
What’s happening with push in the market?
In 2023, there was a notable increase in the effectiveness of push campaigns, especially on Android devices, where conversion rates outperformed those on iOS in several sectors. Personalized notifications — based on user behavior or their journey within the funnel — showed the best performance.
In industries like retail or entertainment, well-segmented campaigns reached conversion rates that doubled or even tripled the average of other traditional formats. This shows that when the message is relevant and the timing is well chosen, push can be a high-impact tool.
However, not all sectors achieve the same results. Categories such as tourism or financial services showed lower interaction, suggesting that the success of push largely depends on a strategy well-aligned with the type of audience and the campaign’s objective.
Push notifications as part of the media mix
Some of the benefits of including push notifications in a media strategy are:
- Immediate reach: delivers directly to the user, no need for them to be browsing.
- Highly customizable: allows tailoring the message based on behaviors, locations, or specific moments.
- Performance efficiency: excellent alternative for time-sensitive promotions or concrete calls to action.
- Real-time measurement: each send-out can be evaluated in terms of delivery, opens, clicks, and conversions.
- Ideal complement in a multichannel strategy: easily integrates with other channels like programmatic, social media, or email marketing.
Some challenges:
- Excessive or irrelevant push notifications can lead to user fatigue.
- Performance and reach vary between Android and iOS, and in many cases depend on the user granting the appropriate permissions.
- There are some segmentation limitations compared to other formats, such as geolocation.
Push is an evolving format, and its increasing personalization capabilities make it more and more relevant. Brands that manage to strategically leverage its potential — understanding audience behavior and using data as a foundation — will find in push a direct, efficient communication channel with real impact on business results.