5 Push Notification Strategies to Boost Loyalty App Engagement

A great rewards app is just the tip of the iceberg. Success depends on engagement, downloads, and user retention. If you’re struggling to achieve these, it’s time to optimize your key user flows and identify any missing elements that could be hindering user engagement.

The situation can be downright disappointing. After all, you’ve put in your immense hard work to build a user base. But you need to sustain them. How do you do that?

Using push notifications strategically is one of the best ways to remind your users about your loyalty app. But there should be a balance in how you use them. If you overdo it, you’ll most likely annoy them. If you don’t do it enough, you lack engagement. In both cases, you end up losing them in the process.

Push notifications have become an indispensable communication channel across a wide range of industries, from retail and ecommerce to gaming and news. Businesses in all sectors are increasingly relying on this powerful tool to engage customers, drive conversions, increase loyalty, and stay top-of-mind.

This blog post focuses on 5 push notification strategies to not only increase mobile app engagement but also to elevate your customer loyalty program.

What Are Push Notifications?

Push notifications are brief and to-the-point messages that pop up on the user’s device. These messages are commonly used to inform users about updates, new content, or events related to the app. They’re designed to grab user attention and encourage immediate interaction.

Types of Push Notifications:

• • Web Push Notifications: These appear on a user’s desktop browser, even when the browser is closed. They’re typically triggered by website visits and require user permission to receive. For example, a news website might send a web push notification with a breaking news alert.

• Mobile Push Notifications: These appear on the lock screen or notification center of a mobile device. They’re sent from mobile apps and require user opt-in to receive. For example, a social media app might send a push notification when you receive a new message or friend request. This is an effective mobile app push notification strategy.
• In-App Notifications: These appear within a mobile app itself, often as banners or pop-ups. For example, a gaming app might send an in-app notification to inform the user about a new level, a special offer, or a friend’s invitation.

Key Components of a Push Notification:

• • Message: The core text of the notification, conveying the key information or offer. It should be concise and impactful to grab the user’s attention.
  • Title: A brief and attention-grabbing headline that summarizes the message. For example, “Exclusive Offer for You.” or “Sale Ends Today!”

• Icon: The app’s icon or a relevant image that appears alongside the notification, enhancing its visual appeal.
• Call to Action (CTA) Button: Encourages the user to take a specific action, such as “Learn More,” “Open App,” “View Now,” “Shop Now,” or “Claim Offer.”
• Sound/Vibration: Optional features that enhance the notification’s visibility and urgency.

How Push Notifications Work:

1. User Opt-In: Users must explicitly grant permission to receive push notifications from an app or website. This typically involves a clear prompt asking the user if they would like to receive notifications.

2. Message Creation: The sender (app developer or website owner) creates a notification message using the appropriate tools and platforms. They define the message content, target audience, and desired delivery time.

3. Message Delivery: The message is sent from the sender’s server to the user’s device through a notification service provider, such as Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for Android or Apple Push Notification service (APNs) for iOS.

4. User Interaction: The user receives the notification and can choose to interact with it by tapping on it, dismissing it, or taking no action. If the user taps on the notification, they’re typically directed to the app or website associated with the notification.

Why Push Notifications Are Crucial for Businesses

The importance of push notifications goes deeper than some of us would like to admit. Here are some amazing reasons why push notifications are not to be ignored:

• • Boost Customer Engagement & Retention: Push notifications re-engage users, reminding them of your app and offers. This consistent interaction strengthens the customer-brand relationship, fostering loyalty and repeat business.
  • Drive Conversions & Sales: Time-sensitive offers delivered via push notifications can incentivize immediate action, driving user engagement, in-app purchases, and website traffic, ultimately boosting sales and revenue.

• Enhance Brand Awareness: By delivering regular, relevant, and engaging notifications, businesses can stay top-of-mind with their audience. This consistent brand presence strengthens brand recognition and builds a stronger customer-brand relationship.
• Real-Time Communication: Push notifications enable businesses to communicate with customers instantly, providing critical updates, alerts, and customer support in real-time. This level of responsiveness enhances the customer experience and builds trust.
• Behavioral Targeting: By analyzing user behavior and preferences, businesses can deliver highly personalized notifications. This targeted approach increases the relevance of messages, leading to higher engagement rates and improved campaign effectiveness.
• Cost-Effective Marketing: Compared to traditional advertising channels, push notifications offer a highly cost-effective way to reach a large audience. This makes them a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes, enabling them to maximize their marketing ROI.

Top Push Notification Strategies to Increase App Engagement

The following are the best push notification strategies we’ve gathered to surge app engagement:

1. Convince Users to Accept Push Notifications

Users found and downloaded your mobile app within the app stores thanks to your app’s attention-grabbing presentation. The onboarding, sign-up, and account creation processes were intuitive and user-friendly for everyone who installed your mobile app. Congratulations!

Now, it’s time to guide your users through the push notification opt-in process. In other words, it’s time to convince users to accept push notifications so that you will be able to communicate directly with them and increase app engagement in the long run.

“I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.” —Mark Zuckerberg, Co-Founder of Facebook

Without push notification agreement from your app users, you will lose control of user engagement and have virtually no influence on the people who use your mobile app. The best way to get your new mobile app users to accept push notifications is to make sure they understand the value that your push notifications will add to their lives. What is the value of the content you plan to deliver to your customers via the app? Your push notifications opt-in form should make the benefits of signing up loud and clear.

Examples of Push Notification Opt-In Forms for Customer Loyalty Rewards Programs:

• (Brand Name) would like to send you updates about discounts, deals, and freebies designed just for you! Sound good? After tapping “Yes,” a notification prompt will appear to confirm your approval.
• Rewards galore await you! Be the first to know about loyalty deals, discounts, and freebies by opting in to push notifications!
• Hello, new best friend! Opt in to receiving push notifications from us and get ready for a long, beautiful relationship!

2. Send Vanishing Messages & Offers to Users

Once your mobile app users have opted into receiving push notifications from you and have experienced the frequency, quality, and purpose of the push notifications you send, try utilizing vanishing messages and offers. A vanishing message is a time-constrained offer, such as a single-use promotional code, that must be used quickly before the offer expires and the mobile app message “vanishes” forever. Vanishing messages and offers can help train your app users to immediately open push notifications from you in the first place and also to make fast decisions about acting on time-sensitive deals.

“The best feature is less features.” —Kevin Systrom, Co-Founder of Instagram

The advantages of including the vanishing message tactic as part of your push notification strategies is that it will directly impact your engagement, especially your sales. While the actual notification itself will never vanish, the notification messaging should state clearly that it contains a vanishing offer that will expire at such-and-such date and time. Include a photo or image within the vanishing offer and in-app links to direct users to check out the products or services that are associated with the limited-time deal.

Examples of Push Notification Messaging for Vanishing Messages within Your Loyalty App:

• Sale ends today! Last chance to earn 500 points by saving $50 when you purchase these 5 products!
• Wow! You’re not going to believe this sale, exclusive to loyalty members like you! Better act fast; this message will vanish in 24 hours!
• Only two more days to sink your teeth into this incredible (Your Branded Food Product) before this exclusive deal gets eaten up by our loyal customer base! Swipe to learn more!

3. Personal Assistant & Personalized Deals

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times – personalization works. Rather than send out universal messages to your customers, instead contact segmented customer groups with highly personalized messages. Sending personalized messages to customer segments will always result in far more engagement. The same is true when it comes to push-notification content “hooks,” as well as the specific in-app messages those push notifications lead to.

We will examine the difference between push notifications and in-app messages in the next section, but for now all you really need to know is that the more targeted and personalized your push marketing campaigns are, the higher your return on investment, i.e., user engagement.

“Meet customers where they are; question how to make the tools that customers use more valuable.” —Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder of Twitter

Think of the push notification method of communication as a digital AI personal assistant who alerts your customers to the most important information they need to know. What is most important to one customer will always be what is highly personal to them, a concept we’ve repeatedly discussed throughout our blog. Using customer data and insights, you can segment your app users and alert them to only the most relevant messages and promotional deals.

Examples of Personalized Push Notifications for Customer Loyalty Rewards Programs:

• Loving your new (Specific Garment The Customer Recently Purchased)? How would you like to earn 200 points for purchasing one of these matching accessories to complete your fashionable ensemble?
• New workout for you! Hey (First Name), it’s time for your midweek workout! Log in to get pumped and record your cardio!
• Yoo-hoo, (First Name)? You left our Swag Shop before redeeming your rewards tokens for the (Specific Item) you were browsing! Come back before this exclusive item is gone!

4. Alert Users to In-App Messages

There is a difference between push notifications and in-app messages.

Push notifications are messages that the user sees without opening the app. Typically, when a push notification comes into a smartphone, a pop-up box will appear momentarily on the phone’s screen. Within the pop-up box will be a very short message containing a “hook” that intrigues the user to tap the push notification, which will open the app to reveal the full in-app message. In a sense, all push notifications alert users to in-app messages, but precisely how a push notification alerts the user will be the focus of this push notification strategy.

“All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA, and creation is the essence of entrepreneurship.” —Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn

The actual text space that a push notification provides for you to compose a short message is extremely small. Depending on the operating system platform, whether iOS or Android, you will only have 65 characters for your push notification title and 240 characters for the full description contained within the push notification. That’s not much, so you really need to make it count. The trick is to use “hooks” instead of attempting to convey every shred of information.

Examples of Push Notification “Hooks” to Attract Users to Your Loyalty App:

• Get ready for the Greatest Rewards Weekend EVER! We’re unlocking our vault of all-time best deals, available exclusively until Sunday at 9 pm!
• Be one of the first 15 members to correctly answer this question and earn 5,000 bonus points!
• “[Name], you’re just [Number] points away from a free [Reward]! Check your progress in the app.”

5. Bring Back the Inactive Users

No matter how popular a company’s mobile app is, there will always be a percentage of users who have become completely inactive. Even Facebook users, from time to time, totally drop off from using the Facebook mobile app. But that doesn’t mean that you, as a retailer and business owner, should let those inactive users fall to the digital wayside. Instead, we recommend that you automate a “we miss you” push notification campaign that will deploy once a user hasn’t logged into the app for a set period of time.

“There’s a waterfall of content that you’re missing out on.” —Steve Chen, Co-Founder of YouTube

The formal term for a “we miss you” message is called a re-engagement campaign, and we’re mentioning it here as our last push notification marketing strategy because it works.

If you want to improve mobile app engagement, then you have to re-engage your inactive users, period. The actual messaging of your automated re-engagement push notification campaign must include a CTA, or promotional offer, that is worth the user’s while. In other words, make sure the content of your push notification is valuable and rewarding and causes the user to swipe into the app to take advantage of the deal you’re offering.

Examples of Re-Engagement Notifications for Customer Loyalty Rewards Programs:

• Hey (First Name)! We created a special surprise just for you! Swipe now to discover what we have in store for you! We promise it’ll be worth your while!
• Welcome back, [First Name]! We’ve got a special treat for you: 50% off some items we think you’ll love.”
• Please come back! Swipe to claim 1,000 bonus points! We miss you!

Push Notifications Best Practices

Push notifications go beyond informative updates. If used strategically, they can drive your business further.

Here are some push notification practices to keep in mind:

• • Timeliness: Deliver notifications at optimal times to maximize engagement. Consider factors like user time zones, daily routines, and peak activity periods. For example, time-sensitive offers might perform better during morning commutes, while reminders for abandoned carts could be effective in the evening.
  • Segmenting Your Audience: Divide your user base into smaller, more targeted segments based on demographics, behavior, app usage, and in-app purchases. This allows you to deliver highly relevant and personalized messages that resonate with each segment. For example, send notifications about new sports gear to users who frequently purchase athletic apparel.

• Clear and Concise Messaging: Craft compelling and concise messages that are easy to read and understand at a glance. Use clear and concise language, avoid jargon, and focus on the key benefit or offer. Include a strong call to action (e.g., “Shop Now,” “Claim Offer,” “Learn More”) to encourage immediate interaction.
• Frequency and Timing: Avoid bombarding users with excessive notifications, which can lead to irritation and app uninstalls. Determine an optimal notification frequency based on user engagement and preferences.
• Respect User Preferences: Allow users to control the types of notifications they receive and adjust their notification settings. Provide clear options for users to customize their preferences, such as muting notifications during specific times or opting out of certain types of messages.
• Test and Analyze: Continuously A/B test different message variations, delivery times, and segmentation strategies to identify what resonates best with your audience. Track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and user engagement to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
• Provide Value: Ensure that every notification offers real value to the user. Whether it’s a time-sensitive offer, a personalized recommendation, or an important update, each notification should provide a compelling reason for the user to engage.
• Avoid Over-Sending: Overwhelming users with frequent and irrelevant notifications can quickly lead to notification fatigue and ultimately, user churn. Find a balance between staying top-of-mind and respecting user preferences.

Advanced Push Notification Strategies

We’ve already covered the top push notification strategies. However, there are other advanced push notification strategies that businesses must incorporate to fully grasp the benefits.

1. Behavioral Triggers

By sending notifications based on specific user actions, such as abandoned carts or product browsing history, you can deliver highly relevant and personalized messages. For example, a coffee shop loyalty program could send a push notification to customers who have added items to their online order but failed to complete the purchase. The notification could include a reminder of the items in their cart, a special discount code to encourage them to complete the purchase, and a link to return to their cart.

2. A/B Testing

A/B testing is imperative for optimizing push notification campaigns. Experiment with different message variations, such as headlines, CTAs, and delivery times, to determine what resonates best with your audience. Analyze the results of these tests to identify the most effective messaging strategies and continuously refine your campaigns.

3. Geo-Targeting and Geo-Fencing

They both leverage location data to deliver highly targeted notifications. For example, a retail app could send notifications to customers when they’re near a physical store, offering exclusive in-store deals or reminders about nearby events. This can significantly increase foot traffic and drive in-store sales.

4. Rich Media Push Notifications

Go beyond simple text messages by incorporating images, videos, and GIFs. These visually appealing notifications are more likely to capture user attention and encourage interaction.

Common Pitfalls and Mistakes to Avoid

When it comes to push notifications and how to strategize, the following are some of the mistakes to steer clear of:

• Notification Fatigue: Bombarding users with excessive notifications can quickly lead to irritation and prompt them to disable notifications entirely, diminishing their effectiveness and potentially harming your brand image.
• Ignoring User Preferences: Failing to respect user preferences for notification frequency and type can lead to a negative user experience. Users should have control over the types of notifications they receive and their frequency to avoid feeling overwhelmed or annoyed.
• Lack of Personalization and Relevance: Personalizing messages based on individual user behavior, preferences, and in-app activity significantly improves engagement and ensures that notifications are truly valuable to the recipient.
• Neglecting A/B Testing: Failing to experiment with different message variations, delivery times, and targeting options can prevent you from optimizing your campaigns for maximum impact. A/B testing allows you to identify the most effective strategies and continuously refine your approach.
• Failure to Track and Measure Success: Not tracking key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and user engagement prevents you from understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns. Analyzing these metrics is crucial for identifying areas for improvement and optimizing your push notification strategy.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Communicating directly with your customers in real-time via mobile app push notifications strengthens customer relationships and builds customer loyalty. Push notifications have the power to increase in-app engagement in general, but when it comes to apps built specifically for customer loyalty rewards programs, in-app engagement can quickly lead to earning and burning rewards points.

With loyalty apps, retailers can now configure their targeted promotions to automatically deploy directly to their customers’ smartphones. Customers will receive a push notification for each promotion you schedule, and app engagement will naturally follow, ultimately leading to increased sales at your business.

“This is the biggest strategic mistake we’ve ever made.” —Mark Zuckerberg reflecting on Facebook’s first mobile app that was built with web-based HTML5 software.

Loyal-n-Save, a premium customer loyalty rewards program, comes with a customizable loyalty app designed to increase customer engagement, retention, and sales. Unlike the first mobile app that Facebook developed using HTML5, our loyalty application has been thoroughly tested and finely tuned with user experience in mind. Easy to download, our mobile app offers ample marketing opportunities for your business.