A huge advantage in mobile advertising or marketing is Timing. Mobile makes it possible to deliver messages and push notifications at the exact time when there is a higher chance of inspiring your audience to take action. However, that “best time” often varies to a large extent among apps. The factors responsible are audience, content, and desired action.

For instance, sending a push notification about a sale as early as 7 a.m. might be considered disturbing. However, sending a fashion brand notification which is geared towards mothers having young children can be beneficial. This may be the best time for the mother to shop uninterrupted.  Research should be done to understand your audience, and the best time and day to reach them.

Furthermore, click rates are often higher during the week, especially from Tuesday to Friday vs. other days of the week. Also, the highest click rates, during the day, usually occur between 12 pm and 5 pm. After that, highest action with notifications usually occurs in the morning.

For anyone looking to influence the power of push notification, let’s take a look at some other best practices for sending push notifications:

Make It Short and Precise

Try as much as possible to keep your messages or notifications clear, brief, and compact. Your goal should be to quickly make the reason for the push message clear and precise, getting the attention of the user, customer, or prospect. With only a couple of seconds to catch the attention of the user, your message must identify the value, objective or reward behind the notification to even make the user consider opening it. Shorter push notifications are usually more effective. They produce the most engagement.

Know Your Audience

Always treat your users like unique individuals. This will assist you in targeting your mobile marketing endeavors. Create positive experiences by sending relevant, context-appropriate messages. This will guarantee continued engagement with the app of your brand. Also, not only should you know your audience, try as much as possible to connect on their preferences.  The Mixed Media Ventures mobile app platform allow you to create categories your customers, prospects, and users can subscribe to such as “weather events,” or other programs you have for your business that will allow you to hyper target your messages.

Make a Statement Rather than Asking Questions

Statements are actually more effective when compared to questions. What this means is that your push notifications should only offer clear, concrete value which argues in favor of a click through, rather than trying to irritate the curiosity of the user.

Entice Your Users by Using “Deal Related Keywords”

An appropriate push notification ought to contain deal-related words instead of contest-related words. Words such as “super,” “offer,” “ends” and “deal” have been discovered to surprisingly have a higher click rate as compared to game-specific language like “Win” and “today,”

Don’t Overdo It

Try as much as possible not to get your customers annoyed by repeating the same message or notification over and over. Even if you have to repeat the same message, do it sparingly. Be cautious of sending the same message repeatedly.

A Push Notification Log

If you can do it, integrate a push notification log page into your app.  Meaning, if a customer, user, or prospect turns off their push notifications for your app on their phone, they still have a way of seeing the offers, notifications, and other information you are putting in front of them when they log into your app, and tap on that area.  One of our clients’ analytics shows that next to the company class schedule, the notification log area is the second most used feature in the app.

Send by Time Zone

Lastly, if you are a national business sending push notifications to your users, think in terms of time zone.  You may need to segment your users by time zone.  If you’re marketing team is on the east coast, and you’re sending an app at 9:00 a.m. ET on Sunday morning, your west coast customers may not appreciate the 6:00 a.m. wake up call.  Think before you send, and localize the offer, even if it means making the effort to segment your users by time zone, and sending the same offer at four different times of day to accommodate your user base.

In conclusion, you can make a huge difference to the success of your app as well as the user experience by sending a well-timed push.

A rush hour commute home ‘Happy Hour’ bonus will definitely out-perform an 8 am Sunday morning ‘Happy Hour’ bonus push by a long shot. Looking for the most suitable time for sending a push message may look like an afterthought, however, it is usually the difference between a spam and a welcome message.