Web Push Notifications Inspiration Guide for e-Commerce
Given that Web Push is still a relatively new channel, you may be struggling to find campaign ideas. Worry not! Over the last 3 years we have analyzed the web push campaigns of some of the most successful brands. We have accumulated that wealth of knowledge in the following list of over 30 web push notification ideas.
These templates will help you strike an emotional rapport with your customers, which can be the potential difference between an intent to buy and a sale. Based on your objective, these templates will help you create meaningful campaigns to boost conversions and engagement for your online business. Let’s jump right in.
1. Cater directly to their interests
Push Notification Template – Subscriber Interests
Each push notification should relate to your customers’ interests, this would make them feel a connect with your brand. People feel empowered when you understand their individuality. Each push notification should make your users feel as if they are catered towards them specifically.
2. Keep them guessing with time specific offers
A “Deal of the Day” is a tried and tested methodology to boost sales of a specific product or service. People look forward to the deals section for such offers and it makes them spend more time on your site. Moreover, given the surprise element of what can be in store for them on any given day also helps boost engagement. Another brilliant strategy is to have a specific weekday dedicated to a store/category wide sale. This helps build a habit and customers come back to your store instinctively.
Push Notification Template – Deal of the Day
Push Notification Template – Specific Weekday Offer
3. Instill a sense of Urgency
By defining a fixed time after which the sale ends or the products are bound to go out of stock can help you sell more. This sense of a real urgency regarding the products they like helps convert users faster especially with the help of action keywords like “Buy Now”, “Shop Today”. There are four different templates listed below each with its own way of instilling urgency in a customer’s mind.
3.1 Last Minute Deals
Push Notification Template – Last Minute Deals
Nothing instills a sense of hurry than a sudden flash sale. An unexpected sale within a limited time frame can grab the attention of any customer.
3.2 Last Chance Deals
Push Notification Template – Last Chance Deals
A Coupon expiration or sale expiration notification, just ahead of when it is expected to end can further persuade your customers to complete their purchase.
3.3 Evoke FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
Combining time limited deals with limited stock instills fear that they may miss out on the particular deal. This works especially well when run sparingly.
Push Notification Template – Induce FOMO
Push Notification Template – Bulk Orders
4. Keep customers updated on season specific collections
You have a new collection on your website? Let notifications do the talking. Tell users what’s new, whether its your new spring or summer offerings. A notification announcing a new collection creates excitement among your customers and gives them an instant reason to come back to your site.
Push Notification Template – Summer Collection Sale
Push Notification Template – Winter Collection Sale
5. Get your customers in the holiday spirit
Never miss an opportunity to get your customers back to the store for special occasions or festivities. Everyone would be looking to buy gifts for their loved ones. This is the best time to offer discounts, combo offers and faster shipping options to help customers make the jump. The messaging should highlight the current offers running on your store and also the occasion.
5.1 Help them find the perfect gift
Looking for the perfect gift can be the biggest stress in the holiday season. You can help your customers with specific collections to help them navigate your store, you can also highlight your most popular products. The best part about holidays is that people are quite generous and you can easily upsell combo offers.
Push Notification Template – Gift Guide
Push Notification Template – Gift Collections or Combo Offers
5.2 Show them your curated collections
Make it easy for your customers to find gifts for their significant other. These can be through gift ideas, a handy guide or a selective collection. Many users like to window shop, where they just look at products, save them for later or are just comparing prices. Curated collections make it easier for customers to choose from. Re-targeting such users with push notifications would encourage them to make a purchase.
Push Notification Template – Gift Guide for Women
Push Notification Template – Gift Guide for Men
5.3 Gift Cards
It can be a difficult to get gifts for picky people. Therefore providing an option of gift cards for your store can be a brilliant idea. Pre-paid gift cards ensure a sale and can be a great way to acquire new customers.
Push Notification Template – Gift Cards
6. Pamper customers with exclusivity
The best way to show your customers that you care is through exclusive offers. It could be a cashback offer, a specific discount code or reward points. This helps build loyalty towards your brand and the additional offers also help you get more sales.
Push Notification Template – Exclusive Offer
7. Up the ante with Envy
Take advantage of one of our basic emotions – envy, to create a desire for your products. One thing Envy brings to the table is making your customer take note of what they are missing. Everyone wants to have the latest in fashion or accessories, use this to motivate your customers.
Push Notification Template – Emotional Marketing
8. Keep them coming back for more
A great way to make sure customers come back to your store is to offer them a reward on their next purchase. This could be in the form of cashback or discount offers. There are a lot of ways loyalty mechanisms help boost conversions in the short term but also fuel long term brand loyalty. These give users a sense of achievement and appeal to their sense of bargain.
Push Notification Template – Next Purchase Offers
9. Upsell Combo Offers
Bundles always sell well when they make sense to your customers. Combining similar items can immediately boost your overall average cart value. The best time to upsell is when customers already have a product in their cart and are ready to make a purchase. So, the three things to keep in mind while up-selling a combo offer is timing, the relevance of the products in the combo to the ones the customer was looking at and value proposition. You can combine your upsell strategy with urgency to further persuade the customer.
Push Notification Template – Up-sell Combo Offers
10. Show them you care
At the end, notifications too are a way to communicate with your customers. Use these to show you care about them. Tell them what they should be doing to protect themselves or what you are doing to keep them safe. Say, before a monsoon you can ask them to prepare themselves by buying an umbrella or looking after their skin on a harsh summer afternoon. All notifications need not be about selling stuff and this would help customers align with your brand on a personal front.
Push Notification Template – Show Concern
Push Notification Template – Help Customers Plan
11. Use suspense to fuel attention and curiosity
Suspense helps build hype. By hinting at something surprising or unique coming their way, you can boost engagement with your campaigns. However, these should be limited and not run in a repetitive manner, or they start boring your audience. The steps successful marketers use to fuel suspense is to set the right expectation, build up the anticipation and deliver on your promise. Create a long term narrative towards a new product or category launch, and utilize notifications to immediately grab attention.
Push Notification Template – Secret Sale
Push Notification Template – Surprise Gift
12. Convert Window Shoppers to Customers
It is always great to have multiple channels of communication open with your customers. Since web push notifications do not require any personal information to subscribe, users find it very easy to work with. But you can use push notifications to entice window shoppers to sign up for your website. This helps you convert leads and also opens up other channels.
Push Notification Template – Get Users to Register
Push Notification Template – Convert Leads
13. Make them feel part of your brand family
Make your customers feel appreciated. The first touchpoint with every customer is a welcome message. Use this opportunity to build a rapport and make them feel a part of your brand family. This is not just about notifications, but building a new relationship with your customer. Adding an offer for new customers further primes them for a conversion the very first day.
Push Notification Template – Welcome Notifications
14. Excite users with value-based offers
Instead of going down the discount driven road, you can add more value to your existing product line-up by offering free services on your products. These could be exchange offers, free shipping or returns, free installation or additional warranty. Bundling free gifts with purchases, no matter how small (a key-chain, a pocket notebook, stickers), not only helps the customer feel special but will also help with brand re-call. Your users will identify the value you bring to their purchases and are more likely to convert.
Push Notification Template – Value Based Offers
Push Notification Template – Additional Value Based Offers
15. Incentive customers with loyalty offers
While most marketing strategies are geared towards getting new customers. Sustainable businesses know the value of existing customers. Building loyalty can be tricky as there is nothing holding them to your brand, another brand can be more accessible or offer similar products for less. This is where loyalty marketing comes in with initiatives and incentives to bring back and retain existing customers. Cashback, loyalty or reward points, wallet offers are the best way to provide value to a purchase and keep your customers coming back again and again. Customers should be notified of such rewards and also how these are beneficial. Your loyalty marketing campaigns should further be fortified with a feedback loop to know what your customers think about your strategy.
Push Notification Template – Cashback Offers
Push Notification Template – Double Reward Points
15.1 Keep users in the loop about their rewards
With automated reward and loyalty programs, users can lose track of the points they have accumulated. It is up to you to keep them abreast and also assign an expiry to these. Prompting customers to use their loyalty points to get free shipping on an abandoned checkout or notifying them about their expiry can be an instant trigger to get a conversion.
Push Notification Template – Reward Points Expiry
16. Make it more interesting with Gamification
Keep your customers coming back by introducing game elements on your store. We have already talked about rewards, but we can introduce more elements like challenges and contests to keep your customers engaged. Consider a contest to become the number one shopper in a specified duration and they would win store vouchers. Similarly, you can reward the highest spender in a month with a special gift. There are limitless possibilities and they would keep your store irresistible.
Push Notification Template – Number One Shopper
Push Notification Template – Shop and Win
17. Use Social Proof to Influence Customers
We always like to know what others are wearing/buying and where they bought it from. This social need to fit in helps build trust. If your friends or family are buying from a specific store, you are automatically inclined to trust that brand. You can use notifications to build a similar feeling by telling users what others are buying from the store.
Push Notification Template – Social Proof
18. Build trust by keeping customers in the loop
Inform your customers when their order has been shipped or if there is any delay. You can also use notifications to tell customers when a product they like is back in stock or has a price drop. Timely updates foster trust in the brand and these personalized notifications add a human touch to the communication.
Push Notification Template – Order Update
Push Notification Template – Back In Stock
19. Delight users with location specific targeting
With the advent of smartphones and globalization of trade, hyperlocal targeting has become the need of the hour. It wouldn’t make sense to send a notification about a summer sale to customers who are having summer. Segmentation based on location helps you send relevant updates and boost conversions up to 2X in the process. Location targeting is especially useful for travel and tourism sites.
Push Notification Template – Location Specific (Season)
Push Notification Template – Location Based (City)
Wrap-up
Be considerate. That should be your mantra when using push notifications as a channel. Find the right time to send, be consistent with your messaging and use proper segmentation.
Push notifications instantly bring users back to your store and boost conversions, so it may seem logical to send multiple notifications throughout the day. That is not the case. Avoid spamming users, as it would result in mass unsubscriptions and you would lose the benefits of this wonderful channel. For e-commerce, it should be a thumb rule to not send more than 1 mass notification in a day.
Trigger emotions to drive a specific response from your customers and keep a lookout at analytics on how these campaigns are working for you. Study and iterate. Give web push notifications as much love as you give to other channels and it would reward you multifold.
