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5 Tips To Boost Your Subscription Rate Using Web Push Notifications

Customer engagement is one of the keys to the success of any business. If your customers are engaged with your brand or website, the chances of them doing a transaction with your company are high. You may have come across many customer engagement tools for this. One of the effective tools is web push notifications.

By design, the push notifications are delivered directly on the browser and are hard to miss. It allows you to re-engage customers in a targeted and effective way. Adding some weight to the argument, a report says that push notifications have an opening rate of 90%. In fact, 55% to 60% of app users agree to receive push notifications. Isn’t that cool?

Push notification platforms have multiple features to create marketing campaigns depending on your business goal. Campaigns like cart abandonment, cross-selling, sale promotions, and trigger campaigns are a few of the many that are super easy to implement.

However, the success of any marketing campaign depends on a good audience base. The same goes for web push campaigns as well. Without having a sizable subscriber number, the ROI of any tool may drop. This is where web push notification kicks in. They result in an instant increase in the subscription rate of users. “How?” you may ask. Well, good question! Let us answer that for you in detail.

Why Should You Use Web Push Notification?

Looking for a new engagement tool? Look no further. There are a few major reasons why your customers like web push notifications.

  • No need to share any email id: To subscribe to web push notifications, customers do not need to share any personal information.
  • Subscribe with just a click: It’s easy for your customers to subscribe. It just needs a second!
  • Spamming is tough: Web push is based on consent. Unless a customer gives their consent, websites cannot send any web push notification.
  • No one can share the data: Since there is no personal information shared, there is no chance of misuse of your users’ data.

These reasons lead to an instant increase in the subscription rate as compared to other re-engagement tools. Now that we are on the same page, let’s take you through some actionable tips to boost your subscription rate.

5 Actionable Tips To Increase Web Push Notification Subscription Rate

1. Type Of Opt-In

There are two basic types of opt-in.

  • Single-step: Users can subscribe to web push notifications in a single click.
  • Multi-step: Users have to click twice to subscribe to push notifications.

An important difference between the two is that in multi-step, you have the option of choosing from different types of opt-ins. You can even customize the opt-in as per your brand. On the other hand, single-step opt-in is browser defined and cannot be changed.

However, single-step opt-ins result in a higher subscription rate as compared to multi-step opt-ins. Have a look:

5 Tips To Boost Your Subscription Rate Using Web Push Notifications

Takeaway: Use single-step opt-ins to increase your subscription rate.

2. Copy Of Opt-In

We now know that a single-step opt-in is the best when it comes to the subscription rate. But do you know how important is proper messaging for boosting that rate? Though you cannot edit the opt-in copy, you can show your preferred message using the opt-in overlay.

Here is an example of a simple push notification without any overlay:

5 Tips To Boost Your Subscription Rate Using Web Push Notifications

This may not provide enough motivation for the visitors to click on it. Now below is a sample of the opt-in overlay:

5 Tips To Boost Your Subscription Rate Using Web Push Notifications

You can tell that this has a much higher chance of getting a positive response. An attractive opt-in copy will always tell the audience the benefits of subscribing to your web push. Some of the common copy examples are:

  • Subscribe and get an exclusive 20% discount coupon
  • Subscribe to get updates on the latest sale

Takeaway: Use an opt-in overlay to inform the user about the benefits of subscribing to push notifications. You can try out different copies and see what works for you.

3. Timing Of Opt-In

Nobody likes to be bombarded with pop-ups the moment they land on a website. It seems extremely intrusive. Visitors come to your website looking for information. So, give them some time to go through what they actually came looking for. Timed opt-ins are best for this situation.

The timing of showing the opt-in can make or break your subscription opt-in rate. Push notification allows you to delay the opt-in based on:

  • Time spent: Opt-in will appear after the user has spent X amount of time on the website.
  • Page scrolled: Opt-in will appear after the user has scrolled X% of the webpage.

Opt-in delay is one of the easiest tactics to improve the subscription opt-in rate. It is recommended to delay the opt-in by 5 seconds or after 20% of the page is scrolled. Too much delay and the user may leave the site even before the opt-in appears.

Takeaway: Always delay the web push opt-in. However, the timing of the delay is very crucial. Hence, one should check for different delay options to analyze which one fetches the best result.

4. Closed Opt-In

Today, most websites are using web push notification opt-in. Consequently, users often close the opt-in before even looking at the proposition. What then? Did you lose the customer?

Nope. Push notifications allow you to show the opt-in again to the user even if they closed it earlier. In fact, you can decide when you want to show the opt-in again. You can choose to show the opt-in after 1 day, 5 days, or nth day.

Takeaway: Retargeting is good. But, make sure not to appear too aggressive by showing the opt-in again the very next day. The most used timeframe is 7 days or 1 week. At PushEngage, we have seen that push notification after 7 days showed improved results.

5. Blocked Opt-In

Another case of losing a subscription arises when a user clicks on Block or Disallow. In such cases, the opt-in will never appear for the user again.

However, everyone deserves a second chance. Website visitors are potential customers. So, even if the users have blocked the web push, we don’t block them from subscribing to web push notifications.

Consider a situation where the user lands on your website again, and likes the product, but there is no way to subscribe to your website. To make sure that users get an opportunity to subscribe to your web push, you can use the Get Notification widget. This allows the users to receive the opt-ins again. Have a look at the right edge of the website:

5 Tips To Boost Your Subscription Rate Using Web Push Notifications

Takeaway: Make use of the ‘Get Notification’ widget to recover lost subscribers.

Case Studies: Which Companies Have Seen Improved Opt-In Rates?

Vegis

Vegis is an online shop for healthy products. It is a leading online site based out of Romania. The brand was looking for ways to increase its subscription base. Hence, they opted for web push notifications. As a result, it witnessed a 10X subscription as compared to e-mail.

5 Tips To Boost Your Subscription Rate Using Web Push Notifications

Phooto

Phooto is an online website primarily selling personalized gift items. The brand was facing issues with re-engagement and, hence, started using web push notifications. Not only the engagement improved, but they were also getting a 20.66% subscription rate.

5 Tips To Boost Your Subscription Rate Using Web Push Notifications

Conclusion

As per a report, more than 615 million devices use ad blockers. An interesting fact is that neither AdBlock nor other similar tools have any effect on the delivery of web push. This effectively concludes that web push notifications can be a successful channel to reach users and boost your subscription rate.

Opting in yet?

About The Author

Ravi Trivedi is the CEO and founder of PushEngage. He has been a guest speaker on many national and international platforms. He is an alumnus of Duke University and IIM Bangalore. With more than a decade of experience in digital marketing, startups, he founded PushEngage. It is a leading platform for browser push notifications with customers in 150+ countries serving 3 billion monthly notifications. You can reach out to him on Twitter and Facebook.

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