Introduction
Push notification marketing strategy is indeed the best and most powerful marketing tool in the market to interact with your customers. However, we can’t use the same push marketing strategy and expect to have maximum user engagement and improve conversions. This is where push notifications A/B testing will help you to experiment and provide insight into push notifications campaigns and users’ behaviour.
In this article, we will focus on push notification testing and know what are the key methods of sending effective push notifications.
What is Push Notification A/B Testing?
Why waste your time on assumptions about effective strategy when you have a chance to test push notification samples.
With A/B testing, also referred to as split testing you can experiment with the best competent strategies and find optimal ones to reach your goals. The marketers can try all push notification best practices like using different designs, content, CTA’s, and more. You can compare one or more versions of the same push campaign and see which performs better.
Marketers can divide the audiences into small groups and conduct push notification testing. They can check the impact of this push testing, pick the optimized web push notification sample and send the winning version to the majority of users.
For example, your website has 500 subscribers who are divided equally half which means each segment has 250 subscribers. Now, again divide one of the segments in half with 125 members in each. We have three different segments with 250, 125, and 125 subscribers count. Send push notification samples A and B respectively to these subscriber segments for analysis. You can check the campaign results with push notification statistics like view rate, open rate, or click rate. The push notification with the good stat rates will be adopted and sent to the higher subscribers count section.
- You can test different types of push notifications when you are uncertain about campaign results.
- Push testing results provide the best timings and frequency of pushing notifications for high user engagement.
- Keep on experimenting with different combinations of variables until you find an optimized and best web push notification strategy.
- You can segment users based on different parameters like location, browser, last visit, day of subscription, etc.
Steps in Push Notification Testing
Here is the optimized process for starting push notification A/B testing. Make sure you follow these steps that can lead you to marketing growth.
Set Up Goals for Push Notification A/B Testing
Before starting A/B testing set up goals you want to reach for metrics like user engagement, retention, or conversion. Also, determine the hypothetical results for the campaigns. So you can work towards them while interchanging the variables of push notifications testing.
Run A/B Testing
Write two different push notification samples with variations in text, images, CTA, emojis, etc, and send them to the audiences. In popular free push tools like Truepush, you can split subscribers and send push notifications respectively. Users can check the campaign stats in the dashboard to observe the effectiveness of push notifications.
Here you can see the push notifications campaign stats. It provides details about reach, delivery, clicks, views, subscriptions, and more.
Note Down Results
Document every detail of the push notification examples like notification content, timings, frequency, and their results. Make sure you note slight changes in the variables of push notifications and their impact on the push notification campaign’s success.
Apply Results
Observe the push notification A/B testing results carefully by considering all stats like open rates, conversion rates, traffic increase, engagement rate, and more. Choose the best sample and send it to your subscribers for better benefits of push notifications.
The campaign goals and user needs change frequently so you can always experiment with different samples for the best push notification strategy. In the next section, you can find the various push notification variables that you should consider for push notification testing.
What Variables Should You Test Push Notification?
Push Notification Words & Phrases
The content of push notifications includes message copy, images, and links. You can observe the user’s reaction to changes in notification content like using emojis, humour, power words, etc. We have curated the tips for writing perfect web push notification copy. You can experiment same campaign with different push notification copies and choose the converting one.
For example, here are two push notification samples sent by a food blogger about their new recipes.
The above push message is a simple notification with no emojis and a straight message.
Here, you can see the emojis, and humour touch in the push notification messages.
You can experiment and check which notification has driven more users to click and view the push message.
Push Notification Timing
Sending relevant push notifications is necessary but your work doesn’t end there. Users receiving push messages at odd times will evoke them to click on “Clear Notification” and you can never reach your users. So, you need to find the optimal timing and frequency to send push notifications.
The push notification A/B testing technique gives you the advantage of testing push notifications online for different timings. We have analyzed thousands of push notifications sent by our clients and listed out the best push notifications timings for all industries.
For example, if a user checks his notification panel after work hours and notices there are numerous push messages from websites and apps. There is a high chance that your subscriber clears all notifications in which you are losing a conversion. So, the timing of push notifications is very crucial.
Urgency
Check whether creating urgency among customers can engage more customers or a friendly push. For this you can use power words like “Hurry Up”, “Offer Ends Now”, and “Today Only” in push notification content.
For example, let us observe two variants of the same push notification.
Sample 1: Discount Expires Today, Shop & Redeem Now!!!
Sample 2: You Can Save $10 With Coupon for Today.
The first web push notification may have higher clicks because of adding powerful words and creating FOMO among users. Keep evolving and try to add new words in the messages to have the attention of the users.
Location-Based Notifications
The push messages may not work the same globally especially when there are different occasions, seasons, and holiday sales. For this push notification A/B testing, you can group subscribers as per their countries, states, or cities. It can be helpful for advertisers to plan promotional campaigns around the events.
Let’s say, a football game is happening only in a few states of the United States. An event booking website can test push notification effectiveness in different cities by segmentation. According to the results, the advertisers can concentrate only on a few regions for more conversions. You can collect the subscriber’s location information using push notification tools and can segment audiences easily.
Tips for Push Notifications A/B Testing
We have curated some tips to follow and get accurate results while testing your push notifications.
- You need to test one variable at a time. It is helpful to know which variable has contributed more to the success of the push campaign.
- Always divide subscribers into larger-sized segments so that you can take an accurate reading of the campaign outputs.
- Try to put similar audiences in one segment according to parameters like location, browser, platform, last visit, and others. It will help you to send similar push notification samples and observe users’ behaviour.
For example, you can’t send abandoned cart push notifications to new users and welcome notifications to regular customers. So, dividing it into similar segments will help you to get more clear insights into push notification effectiveness.
- We can never hold on to one push notification sample with huge competition and changes in customer expectations.
- Check for overall analytics of the push notification campaigns like signups, traffic, increase, sales, customer engagement, and more.
- Follow the push notification best practices while writing samples for your A/B testing.
Hopefully, we think this article has helped you to conduct push notifications A/B testing for better customer engagement. Once you learn this process you can easily sort out the push notification strategy for your business growth. Keep evolving and try new things in your push notifications samples that work best for your campaigns.
