The Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Push Notifications

Push notifications are those messages that you get on mobile devices or on web browsers. They are extremely effective by themselves and in combination with eCommerce email campaigns.

Push notifications get 4X the click-through rates of emails at 8-10% on average. They are also much more personable and open up at opportune times on web browser, exactly when a user opens up their browser.

In this post, we go over all the ins and outs of push notifications, the strategies, and some of the top tools to use to launch this channel for your eCommerce business.

[Add Banner Here]

How to Send a Push Notification

It’s really easy to set them up.

There are a variety of tools that integrate with your eCommerce platform and send these notifications for you.

For example, if you are using Shopify then you can use an app like Subscribers.

Here’s how you create and send a push notification campaign.

Step 1 - Login to Subscribers

When you go to their site you will see the little login button on the top right? Make an account and log in.

Notice Neil Pate’s shining face, if you see it means you are in the right place.

Step 2 - Insert the code into your site

Next, install the code on your site. You can use their WordPress plugin or Google Tag Manager, or just put it in manually yourself.

Make sure that you test whether the code is firing and then when Subscribers gives you the green light, then you are good to go.

Step 3 - Create a new notification

Now it’s time to create a new notification.

Click on “ + New Notification” on the left menu, and create a title and the body of the message. Then paste the destination URL and add the appropriate UTM parameters.

And this is what it would look like on the various devices that your site users might be using:

Step 4 - Send your notification

Once you've created your notification click send or schedule it for a different time and you’re all set.

So how does this work?

Here’s an example of a successful implementation for an eCommerce store.

STRATEGY: Send out a weekly push notification with your weekly email

One of the home decor brands that we've worked with, Brightech, created a really successful push notification strategy.

They were able to grow their email marketing revenue 10X by combining their emails with push notifications.

Here is how they did it.

They would send their weekly newsletter emails on Sunday mornings, around 10 am.

They found that they would get more sales when they first sent a push notification at 8 am.

Now you might think, that’s brutal!

8 am on a Sunday?!

In fact, these notifications were web-only, so they would appear when the customer would first open their browser.

This means, whenever they would wake up, start checking their email, shopping online, or look at the latest cat memes, they would see this notification.

This particular brand was in the home decor space, and they were able to get CTR’s as high as 4-8%, which is about double the CTR on an average email newsletter.

Here’s a close up of their most successful push notification (8% CTR):

When you implement push notifications, you’d be surprised how many people sign up and respond to your messaging.

Read the next section for a quick step-by-step process of creating and sending one.

The Top Push Notification Tools

There are a variety of tools you could use to create push notifications.

Here are a few of the best ones to use for your eCommerce store:

VWO - is one of the leading push notification companies and has some chatbot features as well.

Subscribers - a great tool to use for beginners, have a freemium plan, and some advanced eCommerce features like recurring notifications and welcome drip campaigns.

OneSignal - another great free tool that sends mobile push notifications, web, in-app, as well as email notifications.

LeanPlum - a great tool to use for larger businesses and enterprises. It has a ton of features and advanced integrations, A/B testing, reporting, analytics, and an advanced campaign builder.

PushBots - this tool is great for a more advanced marketer and has some of the advanced features for a low price ($29/mo). Features include localization, smart schedule, targeting, and A/B test. It has a unique polls feature that allows you to send out polls to your mobile users.

MobileMonkey - no list would be complete without this tool. This is a great tool for all of your mobile communication. You can use MobileMonkey to set up SMS, chatbots, Facebook Messenger ads, live chat, and push notifications.

Recap