Push notifications aren’t new to the VoIP industry. They are one of the most important features for ensuring that a VoIP app can provide notifications for incoming calls, messages, and alerts using things like Apple’s CallKit and Android’s ConnectionService.
These two essential functions keep your VoIP apps running in the background in a low power state, allowing you to receive notifications without the need for a constant connection that would otherwise drain your battery. In many ways, push notifications are one of the most useful features for reducing battery drain and maximizing connectivity to a service.
Acrobits has always proven itself to be at the forefront of the communications industry. We work hard to make Cloud Softphone the premier white-label softphone platform that it is.
Back when push notifications were new, we were pioneers in adopting them because we saw the potential that they had. We knew push notifications could function as more than just a useful tool for reminders.
And to no one’s surprise—we are just as dedicated today to creating value-added services that our customers can use to increase their revenues and the efficiency of their marketing strategies.
What Can Businesses Do With Push Notifications?
You’re likely familiar with push notifications. They’re the little notices you get on your smartphone from the various apps you use. New text messages, alarms, and alerts show up on your lock screen, conveniently giving you a heads-up when something’s happened.
In terms of marketing, businesses often use push notifications for advertising to consumers and advising clients on important notices. Many companies use push notifications to send offers, updates, and more.
But how valuable are they as a marketing tool, and are the numbers really that good? Push notifications have much higher “read” and click-through rates (CTR) than email marketing. In some cases, they offer 50% higher open rates and up to 700% CTRs.
So, why aren’t more businesses taking advantage of this cheap marketing tool?
Why You Need to Monetize Your Push Notifications
Push notifications provide your company with a reliable way to market to your customers. There are two ways you can leverage the power of this useful tool:
B2C communication. This mostly consists of advertisements, promotions, discounts, and other customer-facing material.
B2B communication. This includes updates, technical support information, new feature releases, and changes to service.
Mobile apps always use short blurbs of text for their notifications, with the most effective ones using less than ten words.
Part of the reason why push notifications are so successful is that they are direct. They don’t require a user to read an entire blog post, watch a video, or commit more than a few seconds reading the notification.
This on-demand model makes them incredibly popular and accessible to your users, and it’s a great way to get your marketing message in front of their eyes.
Everyone Uses Smartphones Today
Everyone has a smartphone today. Your customers are using their smartphones to access information about your company, their favorite apps, and more.
While most people prefer to read emails on a laptop, push notifications are available anywhere at any time. And since push notifications come with vibration alerts and an auditory ping, users will naturally check their phone and read the message.
This makes push notifications incredibly visible and increases the likelihood that a user will see them. Unless a user manually blocks alerts from your app, your push notifications will appear in their smartphone’s alerts.
Direct and Concise Marketing
Anyone working in business can tell you how many junk emails they ignore every day. Emails often go unnoticed because of how advanced filters are today.
The average email in a Gmail inbox is filtered into social, promotional, and update categories. Those three categories are barely visible to users. Getting your email into someone’s primary inbox is challenging.
Push notifications don’t suffer from this problem. If they are active, they will appear in the same space that other notifications appear in. That means you’re promotions and discounts are appearing beside their text messages, WhatsApp chat, and other essential phone notifications.
Create a Highly-Personalized Experience
31% of users want a personalized experience, while only 21% of them are happy with the current level of personalization that they receive. This verifies what many marketing experts agree on: that personalized marketing is a powerful form of marketing. Companies often have access to each client’s profile data and usage history and can tailor their notifications accordingly.
For instance, if a customer seems interested in a specific category of product, they will be more likely to respond to a notification about a sale in that field. Many web services can show you what type and how many notifications to send. Because users can mute certain notifications, you don’t want to be intrusive.
Adopting a personalization strategy can improve your marketing accuracy and efficiency, and decrease the likelihood of your notifications getting muted.
Deliver Essential Information Right Away
Push notifications are one of the fastest methods for giving customers vital information. Have a mandatory security update? Get everyone on the same version as quickly as possible.
They are also useful for reporting accidents and service interruptions. If your network goes down as a result of a server failure, send out a notification describing what the issue is, what steps you’re taking to solve the problem, and at what time the service could continue. Giving your clients the right information can mitigate frustration and improve the user experience.
Build Customer Loyalty Using Promotions
Active and engaged customers are more loyal customers. Push notifications keep your customers updated with everything that’s going on with your company.
You can use them to send promotions and discounts, advertise any new features you add to your product or service, and much more. Doing so allows you to build brand loyalty, especially if your customers end up loving features that they wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
Interested in Push Notifications? Cloud Softphone Can Help
Push notifications are an incredibly effective marketing tool that few sales teams take full advantage of. They shouldn’t be an afterthought in your marketing strategies. If you have a large user base, they are a proven method for building brand loyalty, increasing revenues, and implementing a personalization strategy.
You can gain traction quickly with this method since almost every customer has a smartphone on hand, and reading a quick notice is much more convenient than scrolling through individual emails or long landing pages.
Notifications are also cheap to implement and easy to personalize for each specific client, making the content more relevant raises the message’s impact and CTR.
Do you want to leverage the marketing potential of push notifications? Cloud Softphone can help. Cloud Softphone is a feature-rich and customizable real-time communications platform that allows companies to build white label VoIP softphone applications with push notifications enabled. Since today’s users are increasingly mobile, you can’t afford not to push for push notifications.
Rafael Torreblanca is the co-founder of Acrobits and has served as the Managing Director since the acquisition by SINCH. With over 25 years of experience in the telecoms and VoIP industries, Rafael is a pioneer in the global adoption of Mobile VoIP. With his leadership, Acrobits has continued to thrive and innovate, maintaining its position as a leader in the telecommunications sector.
