Are push notifications the future of effective marketing?

Traditional marketing has usually been about one way communication‚ relying on advertisements in media and channels with broad targeting based on generalisation of consumers.

In the age of Internet‚ smartphones and post-PC devices‚ consumers are constantly interacting with companies at a very deeper level.

Currently‚ e-mail marketing remains the most common method used by companies to reach their customers. However‚ the downside of email marketing is that the company needs to get access to the customers’ email address and then target their marketing campaign towards them. Unfortunately‚ with the volume of e-mails an average person receives in this day‚ it becomes a challenge for a company to make sure that their marketing campaign gets the attention of the customer and is not discarded by the customer as a spam mail. 

Some companies are utilising social features in a very creative way like the Marc Jacobs Concept Store‚ which utilises the ability of the customers to share information as a currency for purchasing the company’s products. Social networks allow customers to directly interact with the company‚ but with the number of possible companies that are “Liked” on Facebook and “Followed” on Twitter by users‚ it becomes difficult for a company to grab the attention of a customer. Facebook walls and twitter feeds get filled up pretty quickly with noise and it’s difficult for customers to keep track of what is being said.

The latest trend in marketing strategies adopted by companies is the development of custom mobile apps. Many companies have started looking at deployment of mobile apps to disperse information to customers and interact with customers. According to an infogr aphic by Responsys‚ most consumers with smartphones download the application of a brand with which they have an association or liking towards.

This is where companies can make sure that highly targeted marketing information that they want to share with the customer can be pushed to their smartphones via the mobile app with the help of push notifications. 

Push notifications allow the customer to instantly interact with the information at hand and marketers have found that the open rates on push notifications is 50% more higher than the open rates of emails sent to customers.

We believe it’s time brands started integrating advanced mobile analytics and targeted push notifications into their marketing strategy and giving it the same attention & budgets as e-mail marketing. Whilst the management & delivery of push campaigns is largely a marketing activity‚ it is important that your app developers have a strategic understanding of how push can be used in the context of your app to engage & communicate with users. 

We will be following up this post with an assessment of various marketing platforms that can help you in delivering effective push campaigns so keep an eye out on our blog.

Are you using push notifications as a key marketing strategy? Do you have innovative examples of how you have used push to engage users? Let us know by sharing your comments.