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Push Notifications Mistakes for Mobile Marketing

October 9, 2013

You know those pop ups that take over your phone screen? Those are push notifications and anyone with a smartphone knows what those are. Though they are a great marketing tool for business, you have to be careful about what you send through push notifications. These pop ups are just like those you find on your computer when you are happily browsing the web and sometimes, they can get really annoying. Here are some mobile mistakes to avoid when it comes to push notifications:

1. Not asking for the user’s preference is a big problem. Some people like hearing everything there is about an app while others like to only hear the ones that are geared towards them. With apps like ESPN Scorecenter and Yahoo! Fantasy, people really only care about their own teams and players along with those they are versing. Therefore, you need a preferences section for your app so that they only get notified of the things they are interested in and not bothered by the rest. It’s important to see the behavior of your customer so that they stick with your app and product. If you annoy them too much, they will delete the app and you are left with one less customer. By giving the people what they want from your app, you will make happy customers that can in turn tell advertise to others about your wonderful app capabilities.

2. Do not spam your users! People have their smartphones on them wherever they go and they don’t want you to continuously advertise to them all day long. Give them only the important news. By giving them constant updates throughout the entire day, you will annoy your customer and they will most likely turn off the push notifications for your app or just end up deleting the entire app as a whole. Push notifications is a privilege and should not be overused.

3. Timing can make you or break you. If there is some emergency, you can send a push notification in the dead of night. Other than that, wait for an appropriate time to deliver your message. How would you feel if someone sent you a promotional notification at 4am, when you have to wake up at 6am to get ready for work the next day? If you would be pissed, your customer would be too. Make sure you understand the impact timing has on your customer or they will no longer be your customer. Another aspect of timing is that if it is important news, it should be timely. Don’t send a push notification about something that happened earlier that day. I’m sure they have read about it already somewhere else.

4. Only appropriate messages please! This is basic marketing but some businesses still don’t get it. You need to understand the demographic of your audience. If you don’t, then you will send the wrong messages. Research and understanding is very important when marketing to people. You don’t want to piss off your audience like the My Pet app did when they practically cyber bullied a child with their notifications.

Push notifications are a great way to get the attention of those who already opted into your services. You understand that these customers already are interested in what you have to offer. Now all you have to do is keep them happy so they remain your loyal customers. However, it’s understandable that when you have too much of a good thing it can get overwhelming. These are some common mistakes businesses have made in the past and I hope that you do enough research to prevent any of these big mistakes from happening to you.