To make the most of push notifications, you need to move beyond an ad-hoc approach. If you rely on notifications when you feel like it you will miss opportunities to connect with users at critical moments.
Instead, implementing an automated push notification strategy allows marketers to deliver timely and relevant messages at scale, ensuring users are reached at optimal times without requiring constant manual effort.
Specifically automation helps apps create habitual engagement while keeping users informed about news, updates, or relevant offers. Done well automated push notifications can significantly increase user activation and retention rates, ensuring users stay engaged with your app over the long term. They can also resurrect dormant users, which is far more cost-effective than acquiring new ones to download the app in the first place.
The first step in automating your push notifications is identifying the key triggers for your campaigns. These triggers should be tied to the core actions within your app—the behaviors that indicate a user is engaging with the product meaningfully. For instance, in an e-commerce app, key actions might include adding items to the cart or making a purchase. For a fitness app, they might involve completing the first 5 workouts or achieving a milestone.
To identify these triggers, you need to analyze your product data. This involves understanding how users typically interact with your app, which features they engage with most, and where they tend to drop off. Once you have this data, you can set up automated campaigns that send notifications based on specific user actions, ensuring that your messages are highly relevant and timely.
When crafting automated push notifications, it’s crucial to focus on key touchpoints in the user journey. These touchpoints represent moments when a user is likely to need encouragement or reinforcement, such as onboarding, completing a specific task, or hitting a milestone. By sending targeted messages at these moments, you can keep users engaged and guide them toward long-term retention.
It's essential to create a few core "journeys" based on these touchpoints. For example, you might create a journey for new users that includes a welcome message, followed by reminders to complete onboarding steps, and later, tips on how to get the most from your app. These journeys should be personalized, but also mindful of user preferences—sending too many messages can lead users to opt-out of notifications altogether.
Always ensure your notifications are timed appropriately. Messages should be sent in the user’s local time zone or, if possible, while they are actively using your app. Additionally, when users don’t respond to push notifications, consider fallback marketing channels like email to ensure you stay connected with them.
Many companies start with Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for push notifications, but as businesses grow, they often outgrow the capabilities of FCM.
Eventually, you’ll need a more advanced tool with a couple of core capabilities. You should consider looking for
Automating push notifications is one of the most effective ways to streamline user engagement and boost retention. It also enables marketers to continually measure and refine their campaigns. By analyzing the performance of each automated journey—tracking metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions—you can adjust your messaging to better resonate with your audience. Ultimately, marketing automation saves time and resources, while providing the personalized experiences that modern users expect.
