Learn about APP message push in ten minutes

Many friends have asked me how I write articles. In fact, it is very simple: the logic of my writing is not very clear, nor does it conform to the so-called pyramid principle (in fact, articles written using McKinsey's method are really rigorous, but I am just very casual). I will list the core framework of the article before writing, and then fill in the content under the framework . Today I will share the framework of this article with you.

1. Definition of APP message push (Push)

Push refers to the proactive message push by operators to users' mobile devices through their own products or third-party tools . Users can see push message notifications on the lock screen and notification bar of their mobile devices. Clicking the notification bar can wake up the APP and go to the corresponding page. The WeChat messages we usually see on the lock screen are all APP message push messages.

Message push can be developed by yourself, but obviously the cost of such research and development is relatively high. Most startups and companies transforming from the Internet use third-party tools. The more common ones in China are: Tencent Xinge, Baidu Cloud Push, Getui, Jiguang Push, and Huawei Cloud Push. When choosing third-party tools, different companies have different considerations, including cost awareness, which is not something I, as a product manager , am particularly familiar with. I will not make a comparison here, and industry insiders are welcome to add to it.

2. Advantages and disadvantages of APP message push in APP operation

I. Advantages

① Improve activity and user stickiness. APP message push is very different from WeChat push and short message push. APP message push can directly wake up the APP, so APP message is an excellent way to get users' special attention and open the APP to activate and use it. Operations personnel are responsible for daily and monthly active users’ KPIs, and APP message push is one of the ways for most operations personnel to achieve their KPIs.

② Improve user retention rate . The current competition in APP operations is to grab users' attention time , so most tool products that do not have high-frequency characteristics are used by users and then forgotten, and are often left there and ignored. Therefore, in order to awaken dormant users and retain lost users, APP message push also plays a certain role.

The data below is eMarketer's APP retention rate statistics from February to May 2015. The red part is the retention rate of APP users who receive message push notifications, and the black part is the retention rate of APP users who do not receive message push notifications. With the push of APP messages, the retention rate in the first month was 61%, which is 2.17 times that without APP push; the retention rate in the second month was 50%, which is 2.63 times that without APP push; and the retention rate in the third month was 46%, which is 3.54 times that without push.

③ Improve user engagement with product features and marketing activities. When there are new marketing activities or new functions on the APP, users may not be aware of them. Nowadays, APP functions are becoming more and more complicated. In order to achieve KPI, there are more and more marketing activities. In fact, users’ desire to actively discover them is very low. Good wine needs to be hidden in a remote alley. For example, if your financial management app has a cool function that only takes 3 seconds to use a bank card, you must find a way to let users know about it. This is a very good way to improve user experience. The basis for banners and pop-ups on the homepage to attract users' attention is that users actively open the app. Sometimes when users are too lazy to open the app, no matter how cool your function is, it will be wasted.

II. Disadvantages

① It will cause harassment and the uninstall rate will increase. You send harassing messages to users every day, just like some APP financial management platforms in my phone, which push 3 identical messages to you at the same time, one in the morning, one at noon, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening, just like a loser trying to flirt with a goddess, saying goodnight after eating and not going to bed yet. If I hadn't studied competing apps, I would have blacklisted you long ago.

② Trust is reduced. Most users don’t want to see the APP push messages they see, and they are not IM messages (such as WeChat messages). If you harass them continuously for a long time, users’ favorability towards the brand will decrease, and the worst result is that they will uninstall the APP.

3. APP message push classification

It is mainly divided into IM (instant messaging, such as WeChat messages, DingTalk, QQ, 263, etc.) and non-IM, that is, the various APP push information that you usually see.

I. For IM apps, APP message push is not only a method and means of operation, but also a necessary condition for realizing communication functions.

The unread message push function of IM APP can notify users when they leave the APP interface and there are new conversation messages, and users can decide whether to view them. Imagine that if you leave the APP interface and the APP does not have a message push function, the timeliness of message delivery cannot be guaranteed and the communication efficiency will be greatly reduced.

II. Non-IM message push is mainly divided into four categories: news information, activity push, product recommendation, and system function.

① News and information: including news clients, various information apps, including apps with content functions, which guide users to open the app by pushing hot spots and content that interests them. For example, the box office information push of Maoyan Movie in the picture below.

②Activity push: In order to increase the participation in marketing activities, many APPs take the push of activity messages as the mainstream of APP push, and they would like to push messages 24 hours a day. The following is the marketing push for Yidao’s recharge cashback activity.

③ Product recommendation category: This is very common in e-commerce and financial apps. Many e-commerce apps have made personalized product recommendations based on big data, while currently there are fewer financial apps that make personalized recommendations. However, for some popular products sold in installments, it has played a certain role in reminding users.

④ System function category: This basically provides personalized information, including e-commerce delivery arrival notifications, Weibo follow-up information, etc. This type of personalized information has a strong correlation with the user himself, and the user has the lowest aversion to it. To a certain extent, it replaces the costly SMS push information.

4. A brief discussion on IM APP message push

The value of IM lies in the fact that users receive messages in a timely manner and generate interactive behaviors. For example, if your girlfriend sends you a WeChat message, if you turn off the message push and don’t have time to reply within 5 minutes, you will end up kneeling on the washboard when you get home.

IM push notifications are the most popular, so there is no need to elaborate on them. Today we will discuss three issues:

①Whether the lock screen message content is hidden

Considering user privacy issues, some users care more about having their messages displayed on the lock screen, while some users like to see the full message on the lock screen. It would be best if they could restore the message on the lock screen to save the trouble of opening the APP. It is true that laziness is the primary productivity.

As shown in the picture below, this is a common WeChat message prompt, and you can directly see the message content.

Of course, some users do not want others to see their privacy. For example, they do not want their wives to misunderstand their affairs with female colleagues, or they do not want some little secrets between friends to be exposed. They even have to guard against some colleagues who have a voyeuristic desire. Therefore, on the relevant settings page of IM, you can set the corresponding content hiding function, as shown in the WeChat lock screen display below.

②How to design logic when PC and APP are online at the same time

This is relatively common, for example, we have WeChat online on PC, QQ PC login, corporate communications such as 263, corporate QQ and so on.

When the PC and the app are online at the same time, the user may have already checked the message on the PC. At this time, the unread message push may be an unnecessary disturbance to the user. If you have read the message on the APP, there will be no message reminder on the PC. Of course, you can remind users to turn off APP message push when they log in to the PC. This approach of giving the initiative to users is worth a try, but most users are lazy. If you turn off the permission for message push, the phone will not receive any notifications when you take your phone to the toilet. If you turn on the notifications, users can receive messages on the computer, but the APP message push notifications will be delivered to them one after another, causing great interference to users.

At this point, I suggest adopting an intelligent push mode. Obviously, WeChat has done a relatively good job in this regard. The flow chart is shown in the figure below. The key lies in whether the offline state of the PC can be defined. For example, there is no communication on the keyboard interface within 10 minutes, or the PC has entered the lock screen mode, etc. If the PC is determined to be in the away state, the APP message push must be complete. If the PC is in the active state, the message content in the APP lock screen can flash for 1-2 seconds and then disappear and be withdrawn. Of course, you don't have to judge the PC's leaving status. It's nothing more than the difference between 80 points and 90 points in user experience. You can also decide how rough or detailed the APP is based on the stage the company is in.

③Whether multiple types of IM messages are personalized

Different messages in IM have different importance. Generally speaking, communication messages and strong reminder messages have a higher priority than so-called news push. For example, we often see an unread message in WeChat or QQ, which turns out to be Tencent News or a message from a service account. In fact, this can reduce the degree of harassment from messages to users based on user settings. Mainstream domestic IM tools such as WeChat and QQ have not done this well. In this regard, we can learn from the foreign enterprise communication Slack, which supports users to set priority for messages . These are actually based on the different product design principles of each company and different commercial monetization purposes.

5. Discussion on the life cycle of non-IM message push

The strong correlation between non-IM message push and users is much weaker than that of IM message push. In fact, from the perspective of the entire message push chain logic, from the perspective of reach, open, conversion, uninstall and loss throughout the entire life cycle, in fact, from a data perspective, the importance of open rate is self-evident. So today we will talk in detail about the open rate, and briefly describe the other aspects.

I. Open rate

The open rate depends on two things: content and timing of opening.

①Content

In terms of content, in fact, for most APP push notifications, or to be more precise, copywriting , I would recommend a marketing theory from the past, the AIDMA model. Although it is a theory from the last century, the usage scenarios are relatively similar.

The AIDMA marketing rule was proposed by American advertising expert E.S. Lewis in 1898. This law points out that consumers go through five psychological stages from the time they are exposed to marketing information to the time they make a purchase: attracting attention (Attention), generating interest (Interest), cultivating desire (Desire), forming memory (Memory), and taking purchase action (Action).

When used here, we can change it as follows: attract attention (Attention), generate interest (Interest), cultivate desire (Desire), form memory (Memory), click to open (Action).

First, attract attention and make users interested.

The first thing to consider when pushing a message is how to attract the user’s attention at a glance. Attract the user's attention, and then they will want to open the APP. There are the following ways to attract users' attention and arouse their interest:

Strong marketing: Directly display the marketing strength and marketing model in a hawking manner, aiming to arouse users' desire for bargains and curiosity through preferential treatment and timeliness, as shown below:

Strong correlation: In the era of information explosion, the brain will automatically filter out valuable information and worthless information. If there are words like @you or you in a message, the brain will automatically recognize it. The skill of using direct correlation lies in using words related to "you".

Strong hot spots: It is self-evident how hot spots attract attention, but when it comes to chasing hot spots, news and information have a natural advantage in hot topics due to their own attributes, while other types of apps are somewhat unsatisfactory in their interpretation and tracking of hot spots, especially in copywriting. If you don’t have the ability of Durex , don’t force it on users, as it will be counterproductive and make you appear to be of low level.

Strong topicality: There is a saying in the marketing industry that you cannot create communication without a sense of dissonance, and you cannot create topics without being outstanding . Therefore, copywriting with strong topicality has its own communication attributes and generally hits a certain feeling in the user's heart, such as cynicism towards society, rebellious psychology towards high housing prices, literary and artistic spirit towards travel, etc.

Users' interest and desire are basically generated in the same second. Of course, when modifying the copy, you can add some things related to the user himself, such as praising the user, so that the user himself has a strong correlation with the information and reduces rejection.

At this point, the chain is actually quite complete. As for the formation of memory, it must first be related to its own brand characteristics . For example, your financial management APP should not push some knowledge about gender, etc. In the form of push notifications, try to keep the number of words in the title and content similar each time , so that users can tell at a glance that it is you. Another trick is to create something with the push sound . For example, the push message sound of Yidao Car is not the system default Ding Dong, and the push message of Jucaimao Finance is a "meow", so when I hear the push message sound, I can tell which APP it is.

Finally, here is a little trick. You can add call-to-action text and symbols such as "Click me to reveal", "→", and ">>" at the end of the push to call on users to click and increase the conversion rate of the Action.

② Timing

There is a lot to say in the copywriting, so let’s talk about the timing of push. Different apps have different user groups, so the timing of push will also be different, but in general, the time of push should be when people are relatively free, that is, it coincides with the time when people use their phones most frequently. The best times to send push notifications are on the way to work and breakfast time (9-10 am), lunch break (12-2 pm), on the way home from work (6-7 am), and before going to bed (21-22 pm).

However, when doing product and operation, I often say one thing: brain is a good thing, I hope you have it too . You can’t just stick to the rules; you need to push messages to users based on their usage scenarios.

For example, if a financial management app launches a new product tomorrow, should I wait until the new product is launched before sending a message notification? Of course not. I will definitely push the message to users one day in advance, allowing them to go to the product preview landing page to view the details and prepare the money in advance, in order to avoid having insufficient money in the bank card or encountering bank card purchase limit issues when they want to buy it the next day. For example, in news clients, news about current affairs will appear from time to time, and of course the news will be pushed based on timeliness. For an app like Moji Weather, it would be best to push today’s temperature, wind speed, whether it’s sunny or rainy, etc. to the user before he or she goes out in the morning.

③ Push message testing

How to carry out refined operations to maximize the effectiveness of push messages, especially marketing push messages. Because it is a full push, the effects of push messages with different copywriting in different time periods will of course be different.

If you have 1 million DAU, it is already a very large user base, and you need to maximize and refine the operation. For example, take out 50,000 users for testing and divide them into 5 different copywritings. Each copywriting is conveyed to 10,000 users and the opening rate within 30 minutes is observed. After such measurement, you will know which copywriting to use for all users. Here, you have to consider the selection of 50,000 test users, such as similar geographical age attributes and push message blocking rate. Of course, the test of time is similar. After a few times of such refined operations, you will grasp some patterns. It will be very cumbersome in the early stage, but when you summarize the patterns, you will find that you can do it easily and achieve twice the result with half the effort.

④Personalized settings

In fact, personalized settings are quite important. E-commerce and some financial management platforms do a good job. For example, e-commerce will remind you of the arrival of your shipment, financial management platforms will inform you of successful product purchases, product expiration reminders, and so on.

Especially in marketing, different marketing communications can be carried out to users based on their different attributes. This is a model of price discrimination in economics. For example, if I organize an activity that only targets users in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and you push users to Chengdu, the users in Chengdu will call you a idiot. For example, if you analyze the user conversion rate of your financial platform and perform big data analysis on different regions, ages, genders, and even zodiac signs, and find that the conversion rate of a certain group is particularly high, then you can try to make special pushes for activities for such group.

In user life cycle management, you can also push different messages according to different stages of the user. Take our Internet finance platform as an example. If there is no action within 48 hours after registration, you can push a message to him first. For those who have registered but have not bound their card with their real name, you can push reminders separately. For those who have not logged into the APP within a week, have not reinvested within a month, and have lost users, etc., different automated or semi-automated message pushes can be implemented for user groups with different attributes.

Therefore, message push is one of the tools for refined operations. The key lies in whether you have such a refined operation mindset.

⑤Priority setting for multiple push messages

If all marketing messages, functional messages, personalized messages, etc. are sent, users will receive messages that may cause them to curse. In the case of such push messages, the priority of push messages can be arranged to reduce interference to users.

The frequency of actively publishing push messages is about 3 times a week, which reduces user harassment on push, maintains a good user experience, and reduces the APP uninstall rate.

II. Reach rate

Arrival rate = number of arrivals/number of sends. There are two main reasons for the low arrival rate. One is the technical channel , which leads to a low arrival rate. In fact, this data mainly tests the technical level, because signal loss occurs in the channel.

The second is that the user actively turns off the message push . On the one hand, in terms of marketing, you need to examine whether you have too many behaviors that harass the user end. On the other hand, you can achieve this through some product techniques. For example, after the APP is upgraded, a pop-up window will pop up when the user opens the app to remind the user to turn on the message reminder. For example, when the user's investment is completed, the user is reminded to turn on the message reminder. This way, you can track the income of your product at any time. The following is an example. After subscribing to a user on Jianshu, a prompt will appear to turn on push messages.

III. Conversion Rate

Push messages must link to relevant pages, rather than simply directing users to the homepage. After all, users come here because they are interested in the content you push, but what they see is irrelevant to the content of the message. You can imagine how disappointed users will be. Uninstall the software as soon as you disagree with it. You can’t afford to mess with such arrogant users.

By attracting users through push messages, the user opening rate is increased. The user conversion rate should be monitored at any time. For example, after a marketing activity push, the user comes in, and the user either exits the APP directly or stays on the marketing page and then converts to purchasing behavior, etc. The data of the entire chain should be monitored to see which link has the highest churn rate and adopt certain product strategies and operation strategies.

IV. Uninstall rate

Each push should have a corresponding uninstall rate. The uninstall rate of a push = the number of people who uninstalled 1 hour after the push / the number of people who reached the push. The disadvantage of push is that don’t be naive to think that sending push will increase daily active users while also increasing uninstalls! From the monitoring data, you can find that after the marketing content is released, the number of uninstalls immediately rises to a peak.

So, to reduce the uninstall rate, first of all, please push messages based on user scenarios, study the copywriting, and don't send push messages in the middle of the night. Second, control the frequency. If you send four or five messages a day, it would be strange if users don't uninstall the app. Don't allow the following bug to occur: sending three identical messages at the same time will make your product manager want to chop them up with a knife every minute.

6. Push, SMS, and WeChat push combined synergy to improve efficiency

There are currently three main forms of push: push, SMS, and WeChat service account push. Therefore, it is best for products and operations to work together during design to maximize the efficiency of the tool. If you use third-party tools, in terms of cost, SMS has the highest cost, followed by push. WeChat service accounts are free. Let's take Internet finance as an example. When it comes to user funds entering and leaving bank cards, it is best to use SMS because it has the highest reach rate. For successful user real-name verification, successful card binding, coupon expiration, etc., you can try push and service account push. For activities, you can just use push. So use your brains to sort out the scenarios that these three types of push information are suitable for, and combine them synergistically to improve efficiency.

I have been typing for 4 hours. That’s all I want to talk to you about APP message push today. I hope you can point out any shortcomings. Finally, when it comes to product development and operations, the most important thing is this: a brain is a good thing, and I hope you can have it.