20+ Push Notification Strategies for Customer Retention

Push notifications are essential if you’re looking to retain customers for your brand. They’re a great way to keep customers engaged, and when executed properly, a good push notification strategy will keep your customers sticking around time and time again.

But first things first: If you’re sending notifications at all, you’re already ahead of the brands that aren’t. App users who receive one or more push notifications in their first 90 days have ⅓ higher retention rates than those who don’t.

Let’s explore some of the most effective strategies for retention.

Why Are Push Notifications So Effective for Retention?

Well-timed, relevant push notifications should be part of your strategy for retaining customers. The engagement rate for these push notifications is high because of their ability to offer value to users right when they need it most through timely, contextual messages. Whether giving them a heads-up about a deal before it expires, updates on things they’re interested in, or just a friendly nudge to open your app again, push notifications are great at prompting people to take action. When done right, push notifications strengthen customer relationships by providing a seamless experience that shows you understand their needs and preferences.

Here are some effective push notification strategies to consider to improve customer retention.

Give Your Customers a Warm Welcome

Retention starts from the very moment you acquire a customer. As soon as a user has opted in on your app, make sure to give them a warm welcome. You can do this by:

• Welcoming new opt-in customers and loyalty program members
• Encouraging the user to complete their profile with additional information on their notification preferences
• Highlight the benefits of  account verification, ensuring they complete the sign up or log in process

These steps will help keep customers interested, set them up for easy future app use and give them a vested interest in your brand from the moment you connect with them.

Provide a Reason to Keep Coming Back

Incentives are a powerful way to add value if you’re looking to retain customers – one of the best ways to provide incentives is through a loyalty program. A successful implementation of push notifications in a loyalty program could look like this:

• Notifying members when they’re close to meeting a new loyalty status
• Letting members know when they’ve achieved a new loyalty status
• Keeping customers updated on loyalty points earned
• Warning customers when points or rewards are nearing expiration — this can re-engage some customers who may be at risk of churning

If you can provide your customers with an incentive to keep engaging with your brand, even if it’s just occasionally until you really hit a growth phase, it can be a lifesaver for your retention rates.

Capitalize on Order-Related Topics 

Many businesses make the mistake of assuming push notifications are only useful leading up to a purchase, not after one’s been made. That’s not always true. Here are a few transactional push notifications to keep your brand top of mind:

• Remind your customers to re-order subscription-based products and purchases if their subscription is ending soon
• Notify your customers about abandoned carts or incomplete transactions
• Offer ‘Back in stock’ push notifications for users who missed out an on a product they wanted
• Send apologies for running out of products, delays in service, or malfunctions — with or without an offer
• Retarget customers of freshly in-stock items
• Send out post-purchase surveys to gather valuable feedback on the customer experience

Giving your customers extra information about their orders establishes trust, but it’s also a great way to retain customers down the road.

Establish a Safety Net 

Customer churn is an unfortunate fact of business — it’s unavoidable. However, you can significantly reduce your churn by establishing a safety net of notifications to re-engage customers when they’re falling out of touch with your brand. Here are a few examples using Airship’s predictive churn solution:

• Low churn risk: In case you missed it… Check out our latest [feature, product, offer, etc.]
• Medium churn risk: This is worth another look!! Here’s…[an incentive for coming back — 10% off coupon or similar]
• High churn risk: We miss you! Here’s…[a strong incentive for coming back — free one on us or similar]
• Re-engage inactive users with interest-based notifications triggered by inactivity duration: We think you’d love [this deal, product, artist, etc.]
• Update your users on what’s been happening since their last engagement with your brand, like [We’ve launched X new restaurants in your area]

Monitoring user behavior and engagement metrics closely is important to ensure optimal cadence for these re-engagement notifications. Keep an eye on opt-in/opt-out rates, direct and indirect opens, and app deletions. These metrics can provide valuable insights into user preferences and help you adjust the frequency and content of your notifications.

Not all who wander are lost. Just because a user hasn’t engaged with your brand for an extended period of time, doesn’t mean you can’t still retain them. By monitoring user behavior and sending targeted, personalized re-engagement campaigns, you can minimize churn and keep your customers engaged.

Remind or Alert Your Customers About Time-Sensitive Matters

Customers aren’t thinking about your brand all day (even though we’d certainly love them to), and it’s good to give a nudge with time-sensitive push notifications. Here are a couple of examples of reminders that can keep your customers retained and engaged:

• Reminders: Don’t forget, today is the last day to register for [class, training, webinar, etc.]
• Support information: Your support ticket has been created. We’ll be in touch by tomorrow!
• Action required or requested: You can try anything from turn-based game notifications (it’s your turn to play) to conversation replies (your contact is waiting to hear back from you) to encourage users to take action

Experiment and Test Constantly

Even the best strategies need testing and constant improvement. Choose the testing strategy best for you, and learn more about Airship’s Experimentation capabilities here.

• A/B testing: Try A/B testing different messages and offers to see what resonates best with your audience. This can help you improve your reminders to boost engagement and conversion.
• Control group: To measure the impact of a message, take out a portion of your audience and then compare their actions to those of the treatment group that did get the message. This is a solid way to prove the impact of your campaigns.
• Holdout group: Take a small portion of your audience and suppress them for all your messages for a view on how your overall messaging strategy is impacting retention and revenue.
• Feature flags: Don’t stop at testing your messaging. Roll out in-app carousels and new features to a small audience first to minimize risks before making them available to your whole audience.

Push Notification Strategies in Action

Orange is a major French telecom company that differentiates itself in the industry by offering a wide range of mobile apps and engaging events. However, keeping customers engaged and retaining their attention has been a recurring challenge. To tackle this, Orange partnered with Airship to implement an effective push notification strategy across its portfolio of over 30 apps.

Airship’s push notifications helped Orange drive opt-ins for new users, re-engage less active users by highlighting valuable app features, cross-promote other Orange apps and livestream events, and automatically survey a sample of users daily to track customer satisfaction. This approach delivered impressive results, including a 25% higher opt-in rate than the industry average and 30% more users tuning into a livestreamed event promoted via push notifications.

Final Thoughts

Airship benchmarks show opt-in rates for push notifications are 64.0% for Android and 49.4% on iOS. With so many people opted in to receive push notifications, the strategies outlined above are brilliant ways to connect with your customers when it matters most — keeping them engaged and loyal to your brand while reducing churn.

Our blog section on push notifications is a great place to go if you’re ready to refine your strategy and start forming authentic relationships with your customers. To take a look at Airship’s mobile app solutions, click here.

We Can Help You With Your Messaging Strategy

Our platform provides all the tools and capabilities you need to implement effective push notification retention strategies. Don’t leave your retention rates to chance — let our experts help you achieve measurable results. Book a demo to find out more!