All you need to know about Push Notification delivery in Android

Being a marketer, identifying the most effective channel for sending marketing communication is vital. Push notification is such a channel that improves user engagement over android, iOS, and web if it is deployed correctly. Leveraging push notification to target your users cannot be done without optimizing the technicalities behind it. Thus, it is crucial that you must know about the basics of the channel to create compelling marketing campaigns for maximum impact.

The success of android push notification in android is largely dependant on the deliverability of the messages. Understanding the fundamentals of the technical aspects related to the delivery of push messages is the key to improve delivery rates. Moreover, it would also help you to find the factors that are limiting the performance of your push campaigns, and troubleshoot for better results.

Push notification delivery mechanism

The performance of your push notification is conditional to your campaign objective and the platform to launch it. The platform must include capabilities like segmentation, personalization, and analytical dashboard. Some of the push notification platforms allow advanced features such as carousel app notifications or lets you send trigger-based notifications too.

Irrespective of the push notification platform you are using, some features play an important role in your push campaigns to succeed. They are:

Pre-configured push templates

The basic principle of sending push notifications requires you to select your target audience and send them information about the relevant products. Most of the push notifications allow you to automate the process by scheduling the message.

Once the message is scheduled, it passes to the Cloud Network Delivery (CDN) of Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) service. The final delivery of the push message depends on this particular network delivery system and can be configured according to the delivery criteria set by you.

Once the process is completed, the push message is delivered to your users. You can track the performance of your push campaigns using an SDK, supplied by the push platform. You can check and analyze the actions taken by your users, and modify your future campaigns accordingly.

Factors that affect Push Delivery Rate

Although push notification campaigns are considered as one of the top-performing channels when it comes to user engagement, the following factors can affect its performance:

1. Connectivity issues: Push notifications might go undelivered to your users in case of internet connectivity issues. Since the cloud network gets disconnected from the device during these cases, the delivery rate may falter. Although there is a "Time of Expiry" for the push message in the cloud network, a lengthy pause between the internet connectivity might result in failure in message delivery altogether.

1. Opt-outs: Despite push notifications having a high opt-in of 91%, it suffers from a high opt-out rate too as it stands at 40%. Unless you find a way out to arrest the number of users opting out from your services, your marketing ROI might take a heavy impact.

1. Uninstalled Apps: App uninstallation is another major contributor to the low delivery rates of the push notification sent to your users. When a user uninstalls an app, it is usually registered by the GCM as a non-functioning address, and it refrains from forwarding a message to the app in that particular device. However, due to the occasional delay in the identification of the device as non-functioning, the failed attempt by the CDN affects the delivery rates.

1. OEM control: Various device OEMs are increasingly trying to optimize the device battery life, and provides an option to the users to turn off the app notifications in order to do so. Turning off mobile notifications also contributes to the low delivery rates of your campaigns.

Optimizing Push Notification performance

Despite the challenges you might be facing regarding the delivery rates of push messages, you can consider the following strategies to optimize the performance of your push performance:

1. Be creative: Including attention-grabbing creatives by using features like rich-media, carousel notifications, product labels and more can help you to create compelling campaigns using push notifications.

1. Putting the right words: Almost all the marketers understand the value of mobile screen real estate and the importance of the relevant messages. Consider using power words for describing the products and provide a value proposition of each to make your messages interactive.

1. CTAs and links: Try to provide as many details of the product through your push messages so that your users immediately know what the communication is about. You must also include well-directed CTAs with deep-links across apps and websites to redirect your users to the appropriate pages. This would help you to analyze the performance of your push campaigns by tracking the CTR and CVR generated and optimize your future campaigns.

1. App mailbox: You can use fall-back techniques such as app mailbox as a safeguard to your push delivery. It will help you to counter issues like network connectivity, or irregular use of the apps by your users. App mailbox stores the notification in the app, and the users can check it out once they open the app.

Closing Thoughts

Push notification can improve your marketing efficiency and ROI by quite a notch if you optimize them according to your users’ behavior. However, nothing would work much if the notifications you send goes undelivered. Knowing the factors that impact push campaigns and optimizing them is the best way to take your campaigns to higher standards.

Varsha Singh is a Digital Marketing professional from Bangalore at Affle India Pvt Ltd. I use my articles to provide quality content & tutorials to assist marketers.