Clearly app developers are treading a fine line when it comes to push notifications, taking advantage of the ability to cut through the noise to communicate directly with audiences, but not at a level that becomes annoying or alienating.
Overall, it seems like app developers are catching on to what their users want. Localytics found that 52% of respondents thought push notifications were better than they were a few years ago, while just 10% said they were worse.
Unsurprisingly, consumers want control over the types of messaging they receive. Nearly half of those polled said they were likely to use an app when it relied on stated preferences to generate content displayed or push messages.
Localytics also suggested that marketers tap into location-based push messaging to provide utility to users at the right time and place.
In a recent piece for Mobile Marketer, Melinda Krueger, associate principal of strategic services at Salesforce, shared some conclusions about push notifications drawn from her observation of retailers' use of them over the recent holiday shopping period.
She noticed that, for the first time, several retailers sent multiple push notifications in one day, but only because users had opted into such communication volumes from the outset.
Kruger also reported that the most successful messages followed the same strategy employed by successful emails. That is, they combined personalization with attributes like exclusivity and urgency.