Web Push Notifications: What are they, How to Use them, and why you need them?

It’s time we admit that web push notifications are the new cool in the digital marketing arena. They have been stealing the limelight in almost every industry these days.

How am I so confident about that?

Well, the traditional marketing channels we have been using for so long have gone saturated after an extended period of control. Take email for example. People these days not only ignore marketing emails but also have found innovative ways to filter marketing emails even before making it to their inboxes. As a result, a typical email marketing campaign in 2019 receives an average email click-through of 3-4%.

On the other side, the same data for push notifications is way higher than what email marketing has ever offered to marketers.

Even with 100k+ subscribers, you can expect your push notification campaigns to secure a CTR of not less than 4.25%. In fact, a beginner with less than 5000 subscribers can acquire a whopping 10.85% CTR, which is huge.

Why push notifications show higher CTR than email?

There are two main reasons for push notifications receiving higher CTR than emails:

• Consent: You cannot send a push notification to anyone without their consent. You must first ask the users to subscribe to your push notifications through an opt-in box. Whereas an email marketer need not ask any permission. You can add any email address to your marketing list, which makes emails come as surprise.

• Absence of open rate: Emails have to go through two more stages before they can get a CTR: Email Delivery, Email Open, and then Email Click-through. Whereas notifications are delivered directly, and there is no open activity. It directly receives a CTR or Dismiss.

It turns out in comparison to the emails, people haven’t so far gotten exhausted of the push notifications. In fact, unlike email, there are no spam filters for push notifications. Even though many people turn-off push notifications or just opt-out, there is still a large proportion, which finds push notifications useful.

What are web push notifications?

It’s known to many that push notifications are clickable messages that a user clicks-on to open a certain page on a mobile app. However, what many do not know that push notification are not limited to mobile apps alone. They come in varied shapes and sizes. One of their kinds is web push notifications, which is triggered by a web server.

Do I need a mobile app to leverage web push alerts for my business?

You can, of course, send web push to your mobile app users. However, you don’t necessarily need a mobile app to leverage the power of web pushing. You can send them directly from a web server and link any URL from your website.

Awesome! Right? Hold your breath, because there is a lot more about web push notification features and things you can do with them:

• You can send web push notifications on mobile, tablet, and even desktop devices.

• You can add CTA buttons, CTA text, Icons, and Banner Images to web push copies.

• A subscriber receives web push alert even when not on your site or browser is closed.

Who can use Web push notifications?

There is no limit to the extent of using web push alerts. Anyone running any kind of website or mobile app can use web push notifications to get the following benefits:

• Higher app/website engagement with utility notifications
• Real-time message delivery with a higher click-through rate
• Micro-personalized marketing campaigns with segmentation
• Location-based push notifications to deliver promotions
• Scheduled alerts as per the best time to send push notifications.

It doesn’t matter, which industry you belong to. If you seek a good marketing channel with above-mentioned benefits, push messages and alerts are for you.

• SEO Agencies – can use them to inform their clients about new Google updates or change in SEO tactics.
• Lead Generation Agencies – can use them to follow up on their prospects.
• E-Commerce stores– can send sales alerts, new offers, shipping updates, abandoned cart messages, Stock alerts, and price drop alerts, etc.
• Software vendors– can notify their users of new software updates, end of FREE trials, or target trial users to upgrade to the premium plans.
• Bloggers – can send alerts about their newest articles, or new updates in old articles.
• Advertisement agencies – can build a huge subscribers list and use it to deliver Ads from different companies.
• Travel companies– can send offers, drop in the flight fare, new destinations, upcoming events, travel blogs notifications, and much more.

How to send push notifications from the website?

Well, there are plenty of ways to incorporate web push notifications in your website. Some of them are way trickier for non-technical website owners. However, I can suggest two of the easiest ways to send push notifications from your website. You can implement them without much of the efforts:

• Use a hosted SaaS push notification tool, Or
• Create your self-hosted push notification server

SaaS Push Notifications

Of course, when you want to use a ready-made SaaS-based push notification tool, you need to pay the vendors. Most of such tools are available to the website owners on a rental basis. You just have to find the one that fits your needs, and then subscribe to one of their plans. You can choose from various plans depending on your requirements and number of subscribers you are targeting to acquire.

Once subscribed, you have to do some initial settings to coordinate the tool with your website and you are ready to acquire your push subscribers and send web push notifications to them. There are several SaaS software in the market that you can choose from, such as PushEngage, Pushcrew, WebEngage, etc.

Note: Most of the SaaS tools offer trial and free plans. These plans allow you to get some limited features and permissions to send a limited number of notifications for free. However, if you acquire too many subscribers (like 1000+), you would need to subscribe to their premium plans.

Self-hosted push notifications

However, if you wish to go a little beyond and avoid monthly subscription plans, you can create your own push notification server using a self-hosted push notification tool. Such type of tool does not come as hosted. You have to host the tool on your own web server or sub-domain.

The initial setup is a little complicated than ready-made SaaS tools, but vendors usually do them for you. The major benefit of having a self-hosted tool is you don’t need to pay any recurring fee to the vendor. With just a one-time payment, you can own the tool for good, and you send unlimited web push alerts to any number of subscribers.

If you run a big website or run multiple numbers of websites, it’s better to get a self-hosted push notification server, rather than subscribing to multiple SaaS plans for all your websites. There are not many self-hosted tools in the market. You can checkout PushMaze self-hosted push notifications servers quite easily.

Your turn

It’s not tough or costly to get started with web push notifications. As I said, there are variously free or affordable starter plans available in the market. Utilize them and test if push notifications can make a difference in your business or website. If things go right, you may consider investing in the premium options. It’s pretty simple and win-win. However, do consider utilizing the push notification best practices to get favorable results.