Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing with you some app basics, best practises and trends relevant to the mobile ecosystem. Our team at Yodel Mobile possess extensive knowledge of the mobile marketing fundamentals needed to ensure that your apps can be as successful as they can be. We will be sharing insights on topics such as app discoverability, searchability and conversion optimisation.
This week, Jakub Vachal, our Project Manager here at Yodel Mobile, explains the importance of getting users to accept push notifications as part of your re-engagement strategy. You need to do all you can to increase opt-ins. Permission priming, onboarding screens and in-app activity are all elements you need to consider to ensure users say yes!
Transcript:
Welcome to the Mastering Mobile Marketing video series with Yodel Mobile. My name is Jakub and today I’ll be taking you through how to get users to opt-in for your push notifications.
Push notifications are a great way of re-engaging with your users when they are outside of the app. When speaking about getting users to agree, we’re focusing our efforts solely on iOS users, as the Android ones are opted in by default.
With iOS, not only can it be difficult to get the users to opt-in, but if you blow your one shot with them, you can never ask them again. There is a solution to this, which an increasing number of apps are adopting, something we call…
Permission priming
Asking a user through a custom message, you can gage their interest first, before invoking the system iOS message. And as we mentioned, you need to be sure that they will say yes before you do that. Depending on the apps functionality, you might need to onboard the users and teach about the features that your app has. Some apps do this by showing a few screens that show the UI of the app, others walk you through the features itself.
The onboarding and benefit overlays are becoming very common in the market and because they showcase the benefits and the features of the app, by the end of it, you can ask users to opt in for push notifications. If they say yes, that’s great. If they say no, you still got some work to do, and you need to convince them of the benefits of your app before trying to ask them again.
That brings us to the other strategy…
In-app activity
You are much more likely to be successful if you trigger the prompt based on the users’ latest activity within the app. The exact situation when you want to trigger the prompt, depends on the nature of your app.
If you’re a news app, you might want to ask after the user has read a few articles, if you have a shopping app, you might want to ask them after they’ve ordered something. What you’re actually aiming to do is balance two things: how many users will actually see the prompt and what the conversion rate to users opting in will be. Make sure enough users will see your permission prime but optimise your conversion rate by only asking those who are more engaged.
We’ve talked about when to ask. Now…
How to ask
The placement of the message is best tied in with the user’s in-app activity and the same applies to the actual content of the prompt. You need to make sure that the users will understands the benefits of opting in and how it will enhance the overall experience with the app. And as with everything you do, the work never is over, you want to optimise and test to improve your conversion rates and increase the volume of users who have opted in for your push notifications. You want to A/B test your messages and visuals to ensure that the benefits are conveyed in a clear and enticing way.
Make sure to check out our other episodes from the Yodel Mobile Mastering Mobile Marketing video series:
Episode 2: Why you need an mCRM strategy
Want to find out more about optimising your app and keeping up with the latest OS capabilities? Make sure to subscribe to our Mastering Mobile Marketing video series. You can also get in touch by visiting the Contact Us page. Follow us on LinkedIn, chat with us on Twitter @yodelmobile, and join our #mobilemarketingUK LinkedIn group.
