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Don’t take this personally: if you’re still sending a blanket marketing campaign to everyone on your list, you’ve got some catching up to do.
Customers today want to feel like you’re talking specifically to them. In fact, they demand it - 71% of shoppers expect personalization from brands today and 76% get frustrated when they don’t receive it.
While personalization can take many forms (emails, offers, even handwritten notes), one of the most overlooked—but most powerful—is the humble push notification. Especially when it's delivered at just the right moment.
In this article we’ll explore how and why push notifications convert, the different types of push notifications and strategies for implementing them to start reducing your CAC today.
Personalized push notifications work—they just get a bad rap
We’re all familiar with push notifications. But too many brands use them as generic alerts instead of what they really are: high-intent conversion opportunities.
Push is a type of remarketing tactic where a notification appears as a pop-up message on a user’s mobile home screen, device notification centre, or desktop browser. But Personalized push notifications can act as gentle nudges to complete a purchase, re-engage with a product, or check in on an order.
And they work. In fact, the average user on Reactiv sees a 60% open rate on personalized pushes and a 5-7% conversion rate. Not to mention, they can receive up to 400% more engagement compared to untargeted campaigns.
That’s because push notifications—when timed right and tailored to the customer—do something that email and SMS often don’t: they show up when your shopper is already on their phone, doomscrolling, without needing an opt-in or inbox competition.
The 4 types of push notifications and when to use each
There’s more than one way to personalize. Here are the four most effective types of push notifications and how to use each to your advantage.
1. Promotional pushes that spark urgency
We’ve all seen this one before - one of the most obvious use cases for push notifications is to create hype about upcoming promotions for existing customers. Whether it’s a new product launch or site-wide sale, remarketing can get your audience excited and encourage them to re-visit.
It works because it’s simple. People love deals from brands they’re familiar with. 65% of ecommerce mobile app users said they would open push notifications that offer discounts or deals.
Promotional notifications are a great way to re-energize your audience and make them feel like they’re getting something exclusive.
2. Behavioral nudges that reclaim lost sales
People love digital window shopping. As a result, there’s no ecommerce brand on the planet who isn’t familiar with cart and browse abandoners. It’s on the rise too… Online cart abandonment has skyrocketed to 70.19%.
But that doesn’t mean you should give up on those sales. It’s a huge missed opportunity to just rule them out - they could be this close to finishing that purchase.
We’ve talked about the importance of remarketing and retargeting cart abandoners before. And push notifications are particularly great at bringing these shoppers back: CTRs on push notifications are 37% higher than email for cart abandonment campaigns.
These reminders work best when they reference what the shopper was looking at (a product photo helps) and keep the message light, like “Still thinking it over?” or “Your cart’s still here 👀.”
For a deeper dive on this, check out our blog on retargeting best practices.
3. Transactional updates that build trust
Hot take: you’ll still want to target customers even after they complete their purchase. Why?
Post-purchase push notifications are where operational updates meet customer experience. Order confirmations, shipping progress, delivery ETAs—these all keep the customer looped in and reduce WISMO tickets.
90% of customers want to actively track their packages - they actually prefer to receive constant updates on the progress of their package.
Knowledge is power!
4. Lifecycle messages that build community
You’re likely noticing a trend here, but once a customer has used your app, placed an order, and received it, there’s still opportunity to drive revenue with push notifications.
That’s because the ultimate goal is bringing customers back to your store to make more purchases in the future.
Personalized push notifications aimed at relationship and loyalty building is a powerful way to accomplish this. Depending on your store and customer preferences, this can take a few different forms:
- Loyalty program notifications - use these to remind customers that they have points to redeem for a reward. This is a great way to drive repeat purchases.
- Birthday and milestone notifications - a great tool to let customers know you value their loyalty and make them feel good on their special day.
- Relationship-building messages - these notifications can humanize your brand and build an emotional connection with your customers. Our friends at Top of the Mornin’ use these to build brand loyalty through fun, lighthearted (or light-roasted) messages like “have a great day!”. These help them stay top-of-mind and make their customers associate them with a positive serotonin boost. And maybe a craving for coffee.
Personalized > generic. Every time.
Regardless of which type of push notification you want to test first, you need to make sure they’re personalized.
A random blast of generic messaging is akin to throwing darts with a blindfold on. Personalized push notifications lead to 59% more engagement compared to non-personalized ones, so take that blindfold off and get personal!
The best personalized push notifications are event-triggered nudges. This helps you create a flow to ensure you’re reaching out about the right thing at the right time. For example, if a customer:
- Viewed a product: send a reminder later with the product photo and a “Still thinking it over?” message
- Abandoned at checkout: trigger a follow-up with a soft nudge like “don’t forget what’s in your cart - it’s still waiting for you!”
- Just made a purchase: send their tracking details or suggest downloading your app for timely order updates
- Browsed a category but didn’t buy: recommend bestsellers or trending items in their category of interest
- Engaged mostly at night: Schedule notifications based on their active hours
When is the best time to send push notifications?
When Shakespeare coined the phrase “timing is everything”, you’d swear he was talking about push notification marketing.
Think about it - if you were driving to the office, would you open a push notification reminding you about a jacket you were browsing? Even once you’re (begrudgingly) settled at your desk, you’ve got a million other things on your mind. You can’t be thinking about jackets! Before you know it, you’re deep into your workday and that jacket notification goes unnoticed and unopened until it’s eventually swiped away. Gone too soon, little buddy.
The fact is, most people ignore notifications during the day. But according to data across brands using Reactiv, between 9PM and midnight, when they’re relaxing and aimlessly scrolling? That’s when a nudge to revisit a product or complete a purchase actually works.
During that window, we’re seeing conversion rates hit 6.8% for Reactiv Clips.
While this is a reliable rule of thumb, it may vary based on the behavior of your customers. For instance, if most of your customers visit your site between 7AM and 10AM, you might want to try sending push notifications in that window.
Testing different times or running A/B tests within your customer base is a surefire way to determine the best-converting time frame.
Designing the best push notification flow with Reactiv Clips
With all of this talk about push notifications, you might be thinking that the biggest hurdle of all is getting customers to download your app so you can send them.
Lucky for you, with Reactiv Clips customers don’t even need to download your app or opt-in to receive push notifications.
A Reactiv Clip is a lightweight version of a mobile app that allows users to access a specific part of the app’s functionality without having to download the full app. Once a shoppers engages, you have an 8-hour window to send push notifications without them even having to opt-in to receive them.
Let’s take a look at a customer’s typical journey with Reactiv Clips:
- A customer sees an ad on social media
- They click through to the Reactiv Clip, which launches the product page
- They leave the page
- They’re retargeted with a smart push notification based on the product they viewed
- They click on the notification and are brought back to the app to complete their purchase
- They receive another personalized push notification confirming their order
- This all happens without the shopper having to actually download the full app. One interaction with a Reactiv Clip is enough to unlock the follow-up.
The bar for mobile engagement is a lot lower when you can meet people where they are, and when they’re ready. Reactiv Clips builds these connections to make that happen.