As competition heats up across ecommerce sites, brands and retailers remain focused on sustaining customer loyalty and retention while growing their footprints. From increasing brand exposure to reducing cart abandonment, ecommerce advertisers can deploy highly targeted web push notifications to effectively enhance the way they engage target audiences and move customers down the funnel. A powerful strategy for implementing mass personalization at scale, push notifications allow digital advertisers to communicate with target audiences using timely, relevant, personalized messaging.

Brands and retailers can easily integrate push notifications into their digital advertising campaigns to provide additional avenues for engagement and conversion. Here are five impactful ways advertisers can use web push notifications to effectively engage their audiences with relevant messaging that drives website traffic and improves conversion rates. 

1. Push Marketing Helps Brands Reclaim Lost Revenue By Retargeting Abandoned Carts

Abandoned cart campaigns remain a top strategy for digital advertisers looking to increase conversions for ecommerce brands. Abandoned cart email campaigns are effective, but especially for advertisers combatting email deliverability issues, web push notifications provide  added touchpoints that can improve performance.

Web push notifications allow advertisers to retarget any site visitor who has opted in to receive notifications, even if that visitor has not provided any contact information, such as an email address. Triggered push notifications, an element within many custom push notification campaigns, can be sent automatically to any active push notification subscriber who begins the checkout process but leaves before finishing. The push notification is automatically delivered to the subscriber after a predetermined amount of time, driving them back to the website to (hopefully) complete the checkout process.

Without any type of cart abandonment strategy in place, advertisers are leaving money on the table. The average cart abandonment rate globally in 2019 was 77.13%, a number that likely rose in 2020 as digital window shopping became more popular. Advertisers that retarget consumers with abandoned carts through push notifications create valuable opportunities to encourage consumers to complete their purchases.

2. Push Notifications Can Be Leveraged To Build Powerful Referral Or Loyalty Programs

Referral programs represent an excellent opportunity for brands to drive sales and engagement. Studies show that 73% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand if the brand has a solid loyalty program. Advertisers can leverage this positive sentiment surrounding loyalty programs and boost participation in part by engaging active push notification subscribers with messages that remind them to sign up for the loyalty program, make purchases and earn points or refer people.

Referral programs allow brands to acquire new customers through the power of word-of-mouth marketing. These types of referral programs delight consumers by rewarding them for their recommendations and encouraging them to continue to spread the word about the brands they love the most. 

To boost push notification click-through rates (CTRs) for referral campaigns, push notifications should remind subscribers what is to be gained from enrolling in a referral or loyalty program, such as bonus points to use on purchases, free shipping or early access to new products.

3. Push Notifications Can Boost Brand Exposure & Sales

Price remains a driving factor for consumers, especially as they continue to deal with the impacts of COVID-19. The 2020 PwC Global Consumer Insights Survey found that “price and value will become paramount” as consumers make decisions about where to shop. For ecommerce brands hosting sales, web push campaigns can help maximize exposure and inform consumers about price savings they can expect to experience. Ecommerce brands should make sure to add push campaigns into their advertising mix when planning out sales in order to maximize exposure. 

Web push notifications deliver in real time, a feature that is especially important during flash sales where timing is a significant factor. While other channels, such as email, can also deliver in real time, push notifications represent an additional avenue for advertisers looking to connect with consumers quickly. Especially for advertisers experiencing low open rates on email campaigns, web push notification can help increase awareness and traffic during the sale event. 

4. Push Marketing Helps Ecommerce Platforms Personalize At Scale

Personalization at scale is easily achieved with web push notifications, securing better CTRs and conversions. One way ecommerce brands can leverage personalization in their push marketing efforts is through personalized product recommendations. Once a brand or retailer enables web push notifications, something easily achieved by utilizing push notification technology such as Aimtell, the technology begins collecting first-party data about the website visitors. Advertisers can leverage data collected via push marketing technology to create relevant campaigns that align with the needs and interests of target audiences. 

The Mashable example depicted above represents one example of how an advertiser can engage a segment of consumers interested in tech products. By segmenting individuals based on their browsing activity, brands create more powerful, relevant campaigns that have greater impact on consumers. 

5. Push Notifications Help Recapture Lapsed Website Visitors

Visitors who have not recently engaged with a specific ecommerce website are an important segment that are within reach of advertisers and should not be ignored. Leveraging the power of automation, advertisers can schedule weekly push notifications that target users who have not been active in a specified amount of time (for example, ten days). 

Sharing brand-related content, such as new products or limited-time offers, re-engages and entices consumers who have been inactive, ultimately securing additional website traffic. The inclusion of incentives, like free shipping, helps further improve push notification engagement. 

Brands and retailers struggling to convert contacts into customers can easily integrate push notifications into their digital advertising campaigns to provide additional avenues for engagement and paths to conversion. Advertisers have many opportunities to engage consumers with the use of targeted web push notifications, but push notifications perform best when content is personalized and relevant. 

Are You Looking For Innovative Ways To Retarget Your Audience?

Digital Media Solutions^® (DMS) offers a variety of advertising solutions to help brands achieve their marketing objectives. Engage and retarget your audience while building lasting connections with highly targeted push notifications, in-app messages and email enhancements with our self-managed and fully managed push marketing solutions. With optimized messaging campaigns sending to segmented lists of consumers, you can reach the right person at the right time.  

 Click here to request a demo of Aimell, the self-managed, push messaging SaaS technology that helps you re-engage website visitors with highly targeted push notifications.