The average customer spends only about 11.1 seconds reading an email. This means that unless your promotional messages are short and crisp, your marketing has little impact on driving more sales. To maximize their marketing, eCommerce stores have catered to changing consumer behaviors and adopted newer Shopify marketing strategies like web push notifications that complement short attention spans.
Web push notifications are direct. Your push campaigns don’t need a third-party app like emails. They are delivered straight to the subscriber’s screen, making it highly visible. What’s more, web push notifications create an opportunity for you to target your visitors and eventually convert them into customers. Stores like Headphone Zone have made have generated 126x ROI from PushOwl within 7 months of using this marketing tool. What’s more, because it’s mobile-friendly, web push notifications have brought this Shopify Plus store 3 times the click rate as email.
If you’re now considering adopting this Shopify marketing strategy, we’ll make it easier for you to start getting more subscribers, clicks, and revenue from web push notifications.
6 Best Practices for Your Web Push Notifications
1. Set up an enticing opt-in
Before you start sending web push notification campaigns, you need to build a subscriber list. If you already have a push notification app, by default, the browser prompt will be set up on your online store to capture your visitors and convert them into subscribers. To ensure that you are maximizing your chances of converting these visitors, you can set up a catchy overlay that tells your potential subscribers about what they can expect from your notifications or entices them with a discount for subscribing.
Read more about web push notification opt-ins.
2. Optimize hero images
A good hero image can boost your push notification’s click rate. According to one email marketing analysis, campaigns with images had a 42% higher click-through rate than campaigns without images. By adding a product image or an enticing poster about the sale you’re running, you increase your chances of getting more clicks from your subscribers.
Ensure that your hero image is optimized by following the guidelines to using images in web push notifications. Size the notification correctly and if you’re using product images, ensure that it is not pixelated.
3. Smart delivery
As an online store, your customers are most likely located across the globe. So, when you send out a web push notification, you don’t want subscribers on the other side of the globe receiving the notification at 4am in their time zone. That’s sure to decrease your campaign’s click-through rates and possibly, make them unsubscribe to your notifications. Smart Delivery ensures you never have to worry about timing your campaigns.
Smart Delivery delivers the web push notification to your subscriber during their active hours. This maximises the engagement and conversions that your conversion gets.
4. Ensure your message doesn’t get cut off
The appearance of your notifications depends on the device and browser that your subscriber is on. This is why it’s crucial to send a push campaign that has been optimized to ensure that it fits the notification and doesn’t get cut off. Mac devices have the shortest push notification length— 21 characters. This means that unless you are segmenting your subscriber list by device type, you need to keep your copy short enough so that even your Mac subscribers receive a well-crafted notification.
Read our guide to Notification Character Lengths to ensure you are optimizing your copy length.
5. Find the frequency of web push campaigns that brings you the most results
Is there such a thing that too many? In marketing, yes. Sending too many or too few push campaigns to your subscribers can impact your engagement, clicks, and conversions, making your push marketing strategy unsuccessful. Too many push campaigns can also increase unsubscribe rate.
So, how can you find the optimal frequency for your push marketing strategy? Here are a few pointers to help you narrow down your frequency:
- What is the average frequency of notifications sent per week? For instance, fashion stores send an average of 2 to 5 notifications while furniture stores send around 1 notification per week.
- Do your products require a repeat purchase like vape liquid or fitness powders? Increase your frequency.
- Products with a short shelf life need to be sold immediately. This means your notification frequency must increase.
- On the other hand, if your inventory consists of high-ticket products, fewer notifications is better.
- How do your campaigns perform? If they have lower click-through rate or if you see a decline in clicks for your latest campaigns, decrease your frequency and focus on the quality of your messaging.
Want to nail your push notification frequency? This infographic on push notification frequency will give you more guidance.
6. Make the most of your buttons
Call-to-actions have proven to make a marked difference in the clicks and revenue that your promotions bring. According to Wordstream, emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%. It’s simple— the right CTA gets your subscriber to act on the compelling message that you delivered. If you’re telling them about a sale on your store, the call-to-action is what will make your subscribers move towards your online store.
Here’s how Mavi Jeans uses its buttons. You’ll notice that they provide their subscribers with highly relevant buttons based on their gender so they can be taken to the collections that match their requirements instead of leading them to the store front and making them search for their collections.
This guide to crafting the perfect web push notification is all you need to ensure that your push campaigns get higher clicks.
5 Push Web Notification Campaign Ideas
Once you’ve optimized how you receive your subscribers and understood how to craft web push notifications that reap the best results, it’s important to run promotions that are relevant to your store and the products you have. There are a few of the web push campaigns that top Shopify stores love to send:
1. Run a flash sale
Time-sensitive sales are one of the most popular push campaigns sent by top Shopify stores and the impact has been proven. Flash sales generate a 35% lift in transaction rates, according to Social Marketing Fella. By setting up a short sale on your store, you can drive more visitors and conversions by creating an ‘urgency’ to shop from you.
To maximise your flash sale campaign, keep your copy short and to the point. Highlight the most important aspects of the sale within your web push notification. Stores usually focus on the discount amount and the time frame of the sale to leverage the urgency and grab subscriber attention quickly. Use the ‘Run a Flash Sale’ feature to set an expiry date on your campaign. This way, your push campaign only runs as long as the sale lasts and your web push notifications aren’t delivered to subscribers after the sale is over.
2. Engage non-purchasers by targeting your anonymous subscribers
As with every subscriber list, not all your push notification subscribers are likely to be existing customers. Most subscribers are usually visitors who have browsed through your store but haven’t yet gotten to checkout. You can use web push notifications to gradually convert these subscribers into customers.
Use Segmentation to send highly-targeted web push campaigns to your ‘Anonymous Subscriber’ segment. You can use this promotion to provide a first purchase discount or spread the word about your Bestseller collection, directing them to products that are loved by your existing customers.
3. Launch a new product
The last step, but the most important step of any new product launch is how you market it. Top eCommerce stores have gotten their product launch emails and social media campaigns down to a winning formula. Tactics used in your traditional Shopify marketing strategies can easily be repurposed into a web push campaign.
Set up a sequence of push notifications about your newest product. You can tease the product in the first two notification campaigns and lead your subscribers to a sign up page so they can receive an email or an alert when the product drops. In your third notification, you can announce the new product. This way, you can make the most of your product launch and reap higher revenue.
4. Boost repeat purchases
Your existing customer base is a goldmine. Invesp CRO found that your existing customers are likely to spend 31% more on your online store as compared to new prospects. This means that you need to send promotions created just for this segment of your audience.
Send web push notifications about special discounts and new collections to the audience segment that has purchased from you at least once. With PushOwl, this segment is called ‘Identified Customers’. Read more about Segmentation.
5. Turn holidays and events into content for your promotions
Come Christmas time and you’re sure to see store revenue skyrocketing. From gifting close family to getting the perfect outfit for themselves, holidays and events give shoppers a stronger reason to shop. This is why it’s crucial to roll up your sleeves and take full advantage of holiday seasons.
Set up collections that feature products that are relevant to the holiday that you are promoting. Send push campaigns linking to this collection. You can even sweeten the deal with a discount code or free shipping.
Read more about the different campaigns that you can send with web push notifications.
Automate Your Push Marketing
Automation tools have revolutionized the scope of marketing your online store. According to Invesp CRO, marketing automation has increased sales revenue by 47%. By automating your promotions, you can send highly targeted and personalized promotions to your audience that caters to their very specific needs. This, in turn, increases your engagement rates and increases the revenue that your marketing efforts generate.
Set up automations within your push notification strategy to maximize the impact of this marketing channel. You can start with these five popular automations:
1. Abandoned Cart Reminders
Cart abandonment is every merchant’s biggest nightmare. For every $1000 of sales, you are losing out on $2300 in abandoned carts. By setting up automated cart recovery, you can easily recapture this segment of shoppers and convert them into purchases.
Set up a sequence of 3 abandoned cart reminders with PushOwl to remind and bring back your cart abandoners. Some Shopify stores provide a discount on their third reminder to entice the shopper to complete checkout while other stores experiment with the copy to persuade the shopper. Read about these tactics to improve your cart recovery rate.
2. Shopify Flow
Want to send transactional push notifications or automate your promotions about new product launches on your Shopify store? Shopify Flow has web push workflows that allow you to set up specific workflows that run when the customer triggers different activities. You can either build your own workflow based on your conditions or pick from pre-existing workflows. The templatized workflows for web push notifications include sending messages to your customer about their order status, incentivizing repeat customers and even promoting your latest product.
Learn how you can use Shopify Flow with PushOwl to automate how you communicate with your shoppers.
3. Back in Stock Alert
Products going out of stock is unavoidable. What you can avoid is losing a customer because of this unavailability. Instead of a shopper landing on a product they are eager to buy and leaving your store because it’s out of stock, you can give them the option to subscribe to be alerted when the product is back in stock. This way, when the product is back in stock, your interested shopper(s) receive a push notification and allow you to convert that interest into a purchase.
Enable Back-in-Stock Alerts on your PushOwl dashboard. You can either set up a flyout widget through PushOwl or power this automation by integrating with the ‘Now Back in Stock’ app. With this integration, you can give your shoppers the option to opt in with their preferred communication method— email, push notification or SMS.
4. Price Drop Alert
Have you ever gone to a store looking for a particular product only to find that it’s too expensive for your budget? It’s not just you— your shopper is likely to have these moments too. It’s important that you don’t lose out on this potential customer because their expectations don’t match your price tag. But, how can you keep them from leaving? It’s a highly common Shopify marketing strategy— Price Drop Alerts.
When you set up Price Drop Alerts, you allow a subscriber to opt in to be alerted about the price drop of a product that they intend to purchase. This lets you understand what your shoppers are expecting from you. When the price is reduced, your subscriber receives an automated push notification, allowing them to purchase the product they were keen on and successfully converting the interest into a purchase.
You can set up a flyout widget to allow shoppers to subscribe and even customize the notification’s copy to suit your brand tone. Read more about this automation on our helpdesk.
5. On-site behaviour based push notifications
Relevant, trigger-based promotions see a higher impact on your conversions over generalised promotions. Your subscribers will respond more positively to your notification about their browsing history rather than with a promotion about a new collection. This is why behaviour based push notifications are a conversion machine.
PushOwl integrates with Fera.ai to allow you to send highly personalized messages while your visitor is browsing your store. These relevant promotions can either be a discount after having purchased from you a few times or a reminder that your store has more products similar to what the shopper previously browsed.
For instance, here’s an on-site push notification sent to a shopper who was looking for white T-shirts:
Web push notifications are slowly becoming one of the most high ROI Shopify marketing strategies in the book and if done right, can ensure lower abandoned cart rates and massive revenue! We hope this guide has equipped you to run stellar push campaigns and grow your customer base effortlessly.
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Asiya Nayeem is a content marketer at PushOwl. She’s usually busy worrying about cart abandonment or juggling fictional ideas in her head.
