GUEST COMMENT Are your web push strategies pushing customers away?

It’s a classic ecommerce own goal: retailers and brands attempting to reach out to their customers with web push messaging that is generic and irrelevant. Rather than showing how well they know their prospect, this scattergun approach means the retailer instead reveals their ignorance, clogging up channels of communication and frustrating and alienating the customer in the process.

It’s clear that consumers now have high expectations when it comes to push messaging. A recent survey by BounceX revealed that 37% would be more likely to make a purchase if they received a personalised notification about a product they had already viewed online. The same study revealed that shoppers want to be notified of relevant offers, they want to be remembered and to feel listened to, understood and in control.

When retailers get push notifications right the benefits can be compelling. For instance, the click-through-rates for push can be as high as 40%, which means the probability of the recipient clicking a push message is higher than email.

The key to getting push notifications right is to use real-time behavioural analysis to send personalised and actionable messaging at the right time in the customer’s journey. Real-time behaviour analysis can open a treasure trove of insight. For example, it can reveal:

• Where your shopper comes from. Whether it’s through social media, an ad on a search engine or through organic search
• Whether they view reviews and ratings
• At what point they abandon their basket
• If they successfully complete a purchase, and if they don’t, what they do instead
• Figure out the mix of channels customers use (website, mobile web or mobile app)
• Discover how customers behave differently according to region and demographics.

Armed with this level of granular detail it is possible for retailers to use push notifications with surgical precision to save a sale – for example, offering free shipping or a discount voucher just before a customer usually escapes the sales funnel. 

So what strategies can retailers use to harness real-time behavioural analysis and ensure their push notification strategy is converting customers rather than pushing them away?

Embrace automated ‘drip’ marketing campaigns

Real-time behavioural analysis can supercharge your push notification drip campaigns as they create the context to ensure a high level of personalisation.  For example, a user lands on your website, searches for a specific product and then leaves without buying. 

Once you’re able to identify and capture the individual’s behaviour you can then send them a tailored push notification to remind them of their action and give them another opportunity to complete the purchase.  In this way drip marketing acts as a method of using contextual notifications to nudge and nurture a customer towards a sale. 

If a customer is new to your site you can tailor this approach further, including welcome notifications, offers and incentives that are highly relevant to their actions with the aim of building engagement, customer loyalty and ultimately conversion rates. 

Weaponise abandoned carts

Abandoned carts present an opportunity that’s too good to miss. This low hanging fruit shows high levels of shopper intent and can often be converted by the customer with a single click. 

Sending a personalised push notification containing details such as product name, price, and image following initial cart abandonment can help jog the customer’s memory and provide a second chance to complete the sale.

Focusing on cart abandonment in this way can be a great opportunity when you realise that the average rate of abandonment can be as high as 67% and can be triggered by various factors including price comparison, shipping charges, high price, payment friction. 

Don’t underestimate the power of segmentation

Proper segmentation of push subscribers can double conversion rates. Segmentation can be based on a range of attributes such as region, language, behaviour or device. Retailers can also segment based on the behaviour users exhibit while shopping online, such as items or products purchased, clicked, or time spent on a product or category.

Without segmentation, it’s hard to do any kind of A/B testing. If you want to test the content of your push notification strategy, you need to first send to a small segment and see how the customer reacts to it before sending to the larger segment. 

Before sending a personalised push notification, it is always best to make a custom segmentation based on the user’s activity on the site, and their preferences.  For example, if a user lands on an ecommerce website and browses a particular category of the product, for example shoes, then the retailer should segment the user under that category and send them notifications about related products. 

Conclusion

There’s a fine line between informative and intrusive when it comes to push notifications, but real-time behavioural analysis can tip the balance ensuring that customers value this form of messaging and act upon it rather than turning off a potentially lucrative communication channel.