Businesses have radically transformed how they connect with their customers in the age of the internet. Email and push notifications are two of the most widely used channels used by brands to communicate with their customers.
While email has been around for a long time (a really long time), web push notifications offer businesses a much-needed differentiating channel apart from crowded email inboxes.
But which one should you choose?
It’s true that not everyone can make web push notifications work for their business. But it’s still an option worth considering.
In this article, we will discuss the key differences between email and web push notifications, and make a case for why web push notifications trump email as a marketing channel.
Email marketing is a method of promoting products or services through e-mail. By using emails, you can deliver highly targeted content to subscribers and lure them in with irresistible offers.
A business without email communication is hard to imagine. Many e-commerce businesses ask customers for feedback via email. Email is also used by websites to verify account creation, password reset, and more.
However, email marketing is at times, referred to as spam marketing. As the popularity of email marketing has grown, email services have become smarter. The vast majority of these services send marketing emails to designated promotional or shopping tabs, making it difficult to stand out, or attract the attention of the user.
In fact, the number of emails sent each day in 2021 was 319.6 billion. The total number of email users globally is projected to reach 4.6 billion by 2025, up from 4 billion in 2020, a jump of 600,000 users. This means that the potential of email marketing as a differentiating channel is likely to decrease in the coming years.
Email marketing is hence no longer as effective as it once was. However, that's okay with us. Because we now have a more direct and efficient alternative - web push notifications.
Web push notifications are messages sent to a user’s devices from a website through their browser, which is why it’s also known as browser push notifications.
Web push notification allows you to stand out from crowded email inboxes and avoid getting filtered into the spam folder.
Today's world of the internet and smartphones makes push notifications the best advertising strategy, which can be delivered via phones or browsers. As they use targeted information, it results in better communication of the message and higher conversions.
With over 7 times higher click-through rates than email marketing, push notifications are becoming more popular among marketers. It’s also responsible for driving more results, thanks to its improved visibility and simpler opt-in process.
Reading emails takes time and is often tedious. In contrast, web push notifications are small (less than 50 characters) and don't require customers to go through a lot of content.
Using Web Push Notifications, you can deliver precise and relevant messages to your users. Alternatively, emails are long and fill users' inboxes with unnecessary information, which creates inconvenience.
The majority of emails consist of promotion, marketing, or auto-generated content. Since these are easily ignored and never opened, they are automatically categorized as spam by the system.
With emails, you can modify the content as you wish. Along with multiple links and attachments, long descriptions can also be added.
Here are few examples of how emails are typically used:
For web push notifications, the title may differ in length up to 60 characters, the description may be 140 characters long, and the image should be no larger than 2 MB. The sentences are short and direct. Targeted words are used in push notifications for better reach.
Here are few use cases of web push notifications:
Push notification doesn’t require you to open a separate app to read a message. The message is delivered directly to the recipient's device, such as their computer or mobile phone, and is immediately viewed by them.
However, to read an email, a person must check their inbox, navigate to the email and open it. Messages that do not require users to view them immediately are sent through emails.
The purpose of push notifications is to encourage and drive user actions, delivered at the precise moment and place of need. Your users may need to act on some content that you send right away. Consider an out-for-delivery update or a limited-time flash sale announcement as an example.
Push notifications are handy when it comes to creating campaigns. The process is very easy to follow- all you have to do is provide a link, a few sentences, and an image.
Push campaigns are easy to track and evaluate. A number of push notifications services integrate analytics to analyze metrics such as open rate, read time, segmentation, delivery rate, and conversion rate.
In contrast, email requires a number of steps. To begin, you will have to write the body copy for the email, come up with an appropriate subject line, select images, set the layout for the email, and make sure it looks good on all devices, before scheduling the campaign.
Subject lines and delivery times can be customized in emails. But push notifications provide a more individualized experience. Rich media features like large images, carousel, audio, and video can be used in push notifications.
Online retailers can target push notifications by using a wide range of specific parameters. The notifications can be filtered by product preferences, gender, or location.
Your customers will be notified in a personalized way, allowing you to increase the likelihood of them clicking through.
Sending emails directly to someone's inbox was a very personal form of communication at a time when an average person received no more than 10 emails a week. But nowadays, people receive gazillions of promotional emails every day from many companies.
This makes it easy for your emails to be easily ignored unless you include a subject that intrigues your recipients to open them.
Push notifications come to the rescue here. Mobile phones are with consumers round the clock. So a properly designed push message can engage a consumer anywhere, at any time.
The mobile push notification spaces are still much more compact than emails. All smartphone users check their notifications, and you should make use of this fact to generate quality leads.
Well-designed Web push notifications immediately engage website visitors and do not interfere with their activities. These notifications also immediately draw the recipient's attention.
Push notifications are immediately visible on the top of your phone, or computer devices. The user can read the content of the notification without having to open an app or software.
The right kind of push notification can effectively engage website visitors. Messages can be closed at any time by a customer if they are not interested.
Compared to emails, push notifications display information more quickly and do not end up in spam.
In terms of subscriptions, users prefer to receive push notifications over email. Users only have to accept the opt-in prompt and hit allow to give permission. That’s it. They are good to go.
Push notifications work on both desktops and mobile devices and it does not require any personal information. Notifications can be sent on mobile devices without having to make an application.
Web push notifications are distinguished by their greater visibility. There is no need to check an inbox, enter a username or password, or sign in through social media. They can be easily viewed on desktop devices, provide better value to the users.
You are more likely to see push notifications than emails. When you send a push notification, your message stands out and gets in front of your audience. More than half of mobile users enable push notifications, so your message is sure to reach a large audience.
With web push notifications, you can communicate with customers instantly. Using the automated triggers will enable you to reach the right audience with the right offer at the right time, in the right place.
Businesses that implement push notifications in their marketing strategy report higher conversion rates. For instance, sending a push message about a specific sale can link customers directly to your product pages, thus increasing your reach and conversion rate.
As the message is short and clear, the optimization rate for push notifications has been reported to be 12% in many studies. It is easy to read, so it is not easily ignored.
People don't often view marketing emails because they are perceived as spam. This results in a 1.9% optimization rate for emails.
Web push notifications have a far greater impact than emails in a cluttered inbox since they are displayed in real-time and highly visible. When it comes to click-through rate, push notifications are 7 times more profitable than emails.
There is a low bounce rate for push notifications, and people are more likely to click due to the short message.
An astounding number of opt-ins, clicks through, and conversions are possible with push notification. Subscribing and reading the push alert requires minimal effort, and engaging with them takes no longer than a few seconds.
Web push subscriptions cannot be forged like fake email addresses since subscriptions are handled by the browser itself and no contact details are required. The fact that the browser can handle subscriptions for the visitor is a benefit not only to you as a marketer, but also to the consumer.
You also don't have to worry about spam filters. Unlike email, notifications cannot be filtered as spam and you can't get fake subscribers.
Web push notifications can be set to expire after a specific period, after which they will stop being delivered. If the customer is not online within the limited time of the offer going live on your website, no notification will be delivered and the customer will still be pleased.
Web push notifications are becoming increasingly popular among marketers around the world. A robust web push notification strategy is capable of boosting engagement and conversion rates for your website in a short time.
Having the right tool can help you craft web push notifications campaigns that can help you grow your revenue and reach your audience across multiple channels. And that’s exactly why Monsy is the perfect tool for you.
What are you waiting for? Sign up today and harness the power of web push notifications!
