Introduction

Did you know that more than 306 billion emails are being received and sent daily? 

Emails seem to have stood the test of time, as people continue to receive and send emails to this day. From business matters to communicating with customers, emails will still be a need that entities, including companies, can’t live without.

But nowadays, with advanced technologies (and more to come), it’s now more important than ever to keep your email subscribers happy and to bring in more customers with email. However, these days, emails are being subject to scenarios that have them being ignored, thrown away, or blocked. 

So, what is a viable solution for email marketing? Push notifications! 

This essential guide aims to explore the importance of email + push notifications, and how marketers can implement them today.

The Problem?

First and foremost, emails are one of the major parts of a person’s digital usage. In fact, for most employees, on average, 28% of work time is spent on emails. While that goes to show that people still use email, today’s digital landscape can be a bit cutthroat, especially for email marketing.

In other words, these days, emails can be subject to the following fates: 

  • Emails are being buried among other emails. When a person’s inbox is full, it’s out of a marketer’s control to ensure that an email gets there.
  • Sometimes, emails are subject to bouncing. In other words, emails can get undelivered. There are two different forms of bouncing:
    • A soft bounce is a result of any of the following:
      • A recipient’s inbox is full
      • The message is too large
      • The server is overwhelmed with messages, OR
      • The server is down
  • A hard bounce implies that an email is undeliverable, due to an invalid address. Either:
    • The domain name doesn’t exist
    • You had a typo in the address, OR
    • The email recipient has changed their email address
  • The biggest concern? Emails can be marked as spam. Believe it or not, about 80 to 90% of emails will be sent to the Spam folder in a user’s inbox. As a result, the suspected emails are less likely to be seen by users, because very few people check the Spam folder unless it’s to empty it out. That means that these emails won’t get many open rates, clicks, or conversions. 

Now, these scenarios can become bigger issues, if you have a time-sensitive message. If your time-sensitive message is buried, bounced, or marked as spam, then your email marketing strategy isn’t working. 

But with email + push notifications, your time-sensitive messages will have a better chance of being seen and opened by recipients. And best of all, these notifications can appear on not just a user’s desktop, but also on mobile devices.

What Are Push Notifications?

​Push notifications have been around for a good while. With that said, push notifications marketing consists of a set of strategies that help marketers reach website or app users with brief pop-up messages. A lot of these messages are used for promoting products in a timely manner. 

How do they work? Typically, push notifications are displayed on a user’s or subscriber’s device – whether it’s on their smartphones, tablets, etc. When the message pops up, users are encouraged to return to a website or app. If the user taps on the notification, then it succeeds in engaging with him/her/them. This can work when you take the following into consideration:

  • User Engagement
  • Relationships with repeat visitors
  • Audience segmentation
  • Personalization, etc.

Email + Push Notifications

So, what happens when emails are involved? How will push notifications to be effective for emails?

“Emails and push notifications are a common combination for users who want to follow and get notified on their favourite brand, app, and so on,” says Charles Poe, a marketing writer at Boom Essays. “With push notifications in conjunction with emails, users will no longer miss a lot of messages that they might have missed without the reminder. The best part is that these notifications can be automated and personalized, based on the user’s needs.”

However, will email + push notifications really make a difference to your current email marketing strategy? Well, that depends on various factors.

To better understand this, we would need to separate both emails and push for a moment. Let’s dive into both on an individual basis: 

Using Push Notifications

First, let’s take a look at what push notifications are. Push notifications are quick messages that pop up when a subscriber sets them up that way. Therefore, they’re not marked as spam, since the user has the ability to turn them on and off. When notifications are turned on, they briefly draw the viewer’s attention when they turn to their screen.

Here are some of the reasons why push notifications are popular:

  • Push notifications allow you to distribute content to subscribers and users.
  • They help to promote new products and services.
  • They help to increase website traffic.
  • They help build and maintain your regular customer base.
  • They update your subscribers on the latest company-related news. AND,
  • They let people know about time-sensitive events.

Using Emails

Now, email marketing has been around for a good while. In fact, 35% of marketers would send their customers three to five emails per week. Here are the main reasons why marketers still take advantage of email marketing:

  • Build a communicative and personalized relationship with subscribers
  • Keep in touch with existing customers
  • Educate new subscribers about a product or service, AND
  • Generate and nurture leads with appropriate content

Unfortunately, emails have always been subject to being labelled as spam. In addition, 2021 has seen the following emailing statistics across all industries:

  • The average email open rate was 19.8%
  • The click-through rate was 11.3%, AND
  • The bounce rate is 9.4%

The 9.4% is a little concerning, because, what if the email recipient doesn’t open the email at all?

Best Practices For Using Both

So, now that you know about both push notifications and email marketing, how can you use both to better improve your strategy?

Here are some of the best practices for improving email marketing with push notifications: 

The double opt-in

This is so that the company makes 100% sure that the user wants to push notifications for emails. In turn, this prevents prompts from being blocked by browsers, if the user wants notifications.

To implement the double opt-in strategy, you set up a customized permission prompt, which prevents it from being blocking by, say, the Chrome browser. This also allows you to choose the most relevant pages and locations to show the prompt. And, it helps you create eye-catching text to sweeten the benefits of receiving your email + push notifications.

Automation

Marketers can automate their email marketing: from sending emails to researching data on what email campaigns are successful. Ideally, you’ll need to automate up to 95% of your campaigns, so that your email marketing stays consistent. You can automate things like:

  • Welcome messages
  • Drip campaigns
  • Breaking news
  • Top alerts
  • Digests, etc.

Segmentation

Marketers can create as many subscriber segments as necessary. This ensures that you create the right content for the right people. How do you do it? By using attributes in your customer relationship management (CRM).

Keep in mind: The return on investment (ROI) from your emailing campaign will depend on how well the segments fit your goals.

You can even schedule campaigns that target certain subscriber segments. This leads to the next practice…

Campaign scheduling

Marketers can schedule their emailing campaigns at the right times so that notifications can be sent at those times.

One of the best ways to schedule your campaigns is to send trigger notifications. With trigger notifications, users are sent messages whenever they complete an action on your website. For example, what if someone was going to buy something, but then they change their mind and leave? Seeing an abandoned cart on the website, an email + push notification can be sent to the user, asking nicely if they wanted to continue shopping or not. It’s a form of courtesy for the user, in case they want to go back and buy the product or service on the website. 

Buyer personas

Buyer personas are essential to have in any email marketing campaign. It implies that you know who your target audience is. Depending on your company, your industry, and so on, your target audience will be very important, when it comes to creating your email + push notifications.

Therefore, it’s important to create content that speaks to your target audience. Suppose that your company sells car tires. Think about the following scenarios: 

  • What if someone’s car gets a flat tire?
  • What if someone needs to get new tires?
  • What if someone needs a tire pressure check?

These would be your buyer personas for your tire shop, right? And, when you make content to solve problems like these, you’re thinking about how to better address your buyer personas with email + push notifications.

Do NOT use purchased contact lists buy contacts

Instead, you’ll need to ensure that you’re getting your subscribers in an organic way. That means that you need your own list of subscribers that had opted for email + push notifications. To do this, you ask users to subscribe to your emailing list. One way to get the ball rolling is to create a subscription form that offers perks, discounts, etc. – anything that can be enticing to new website visitors. This helps you increase your opt-in rates and conversions.

Personalization

Personalization helps marketers speak directly to their users. You can personalize emails by using data that subscribers provide when they decide to opt-in for email + push notifications. When there are opt-ins, you can analyze user behaviors. 

For example, you can name the email subject line based on a customer’s purchase history, along with their name. Therefore, the subject line might look something like this: “Love that dress you bought, Rachel?” or “How’s that new laptop, David?”

With personalization, the possibilities are endless in email + push notifications.

Conclusion

As you can see, when email marketing is improved with push notifications, you can ensure that your subscribers will know about your messages. However, when both are incorporated correctly in a great strategy, you’ll be able to boost your revenue, while saving money on marketing endeavors. 

So, to build effective communications with your subscribers and user, you’ll have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your current communication channels. Then, as you implement email + push notifications into your marketing strategy, you’ll not only amplify its strengths but also make its weaknesses fall away. Ultimately, email + push notifications are the key to great email marketing.

Best of luck to all email marketers!

Author Bio:

Sara Sparrow is a writer and editor at Essay help service. As a content writer, she writes articles about marketing trends, business trends, coding, and SEO practices.