APP message push is a double-edged sword, 6 key factors of APP Push!

Push notifications are one of the most important ways to maintain APP retention rates, but most APP developers do not realize the significance of push notifications, nor have they established a method to evaluate the quality of push notifications. Push notifications are a typical double-edged sword. If used well, they can help you improve your retention rate. However, if used improperly or even abused, they will become a nightmare for your app. But unfortunately, most of what I see is improper use of push.

1. Give users a reason to allow push notifications

I read an article before that explained it very well. The general idea was that when you want anything, please give a reason. As APP developers, we all know that users rarely regret the settings they have made in the past. Let me give you a simple example. If the user initially prohibits you from accessing his address book, you may never have the opportunity to access his address book again. Similarly, if the user initially disables your push notifications, you may never have the opportunity to send push notifications to the user again.

Therefore, when you want users to grant push permissions, you must give them a clear reason. Taking Didi Taxi as an example, if a user opens Didi Taxi for the first time, a window will pop up asking whether you allow the APP to push messages to you. Perhaps the approval rate at this time is only about 30%-50%. But let’s imagine a scenario where, when a user takes a taxi for the first time, the APP prompts that allowing pop-up windows will allow you to still receive the driver’s order information after exiting the APP. Then the probability of being allowed by the user is greatly increased.

2. Ignore Push settings

Let’s trace back to the origin of Push and how we did similar things in the PC Web era. We often created a website and then used email to notify users of various notifications. Take Douban as an example: we can set up email notifications through the Web under what circumstances, such as being followed, receiving Douban Mail, having a diary commented on, etc. But unfortunately, we found that most apps do not make such a detailed distinction between push notifications.

Please realize that Push settings are actually much more important than Email settings, because when you send inappropriate emails to "disturb" users, users will at most ignore the email or treat it as spam. But when you disturb users with inappropriate push notifications, it is much easier for users to delete the app than to turn off push notifications in the phone’s settings!

So please set your push more carefully. Under what circumstances do you need to push? When is push allowed? Do you need to accept update notifications, etc.

3. Misjudgment of Push Effect

When we communicate with some customers, the issues that each customer cares about are generally as follows:

A. What is your reach rate? — This is the indicator that customers use to evaluate the quality of our push notifications

B. What is the click-through rate of most apps? — This is the indicator by which customers evaluate the quality of their own push

In fact, this is the most typical indicator of mis-evaluating Push. Let’s go through it step by step:

A. What is reach? In fact, there is no official definition of reach rate in the industry. The fundamental reason is that you cannot define what reach is? Are all online users delivered? What about offline users? How long does it take for an offline user to be considered delivered? When customers ask questions like this, I am often reluctant to use official wording to throw out a nice number. Instead, I would rather correct the customer's cognitive errors.

B. As for the second question, it is a mistake that almost every customer makes. Is the higher the user click-through rate, the better? The answer is no. As I said before, push is a double-edged sword. If used well, it improves the retention rate of the APP, that is, it increases the number of APP openings through push. But if used poorly, as mentioned before, users will turn off push or even uninstall the APP. Therefore, simply looking at the number of clicks while ignoring the negative impact is a very wrong evaluation indicator. In addition to click-through rate, we also need to pay attention to how many of the push targets this time will no longer be able to be pushed next time. For example, this time we pushed to users with user numbers 1-100, but one day later, only 1-10 of 1-100 are reachable. We say that the next-day retention rate of this push is only 10%. In this way, even if the open rate is 90%, it may be a bad push.

4. Set a reasonable push time

There is no need to explain this point. Most APPs know that we need to set up reasonable push notifications. For example, sending push notifications at around 12 noon or 6 pm can gain higher attention and open rates. However, one thing that all APPs have not paid attention to is whether all users should receive push notifications during this time period. In fact, we have not paid attention to the personalization of push time, and the relationship between the push message itself and the push time.

5. Set the push sound appropriately

Push sounds, like push itself, are a double-edged sword. In the previous article, we know that improper push notifications can cause users to turn off system push notifications or even uninstall the app. In the previous paragraph, we also know that pushing messages at unreasonable times will disturb users. So what exactly is causing the disruption to users? In fact, it is the push sound itself. So the rational use of push sound is actually a very important part of rational push, and it can also create many different uses. For example, we can set silent mode for push notifications at night; for example, we can set silent mode for "uncertain push notifications" (that is, new users), and so on.

6. Perform AB testing and grayscale launch as for Push

People who do application development must be familiar with these two concepts, AB testing and grayscale launch. In the push field, this is still important. When we send a broadcast message, we are not sure whether the quality of this message is good or bad, and what the opening rate is. So we might as well push it to a small number of users first, look at the opening rate and retention rate, and then make further pushes.

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