What is the best time to send push notifications?

Introduction

A push notification is a marketing message that companies can send at any time, regardless of whether the user is currently browsing through the application or website, on mobile phones or laptops respectively. So that means it can be both- app-based and web version.

These days push notification has become the most popular and efficient tool for increasing sales and retention. They are basically used to engage and re-engage your existing users and also create new clientele and inspire them to use your application actively. While sending or triggering push notifications is is really very important to follow a few guidelines so that the purpose of sending such notifications is solved. Here when we talk about guidelines our main focus is when where and how. Because if the notifications are sent in a vague manner untimely that may annoy and irritate the user and chances are that he may opt-out. So it is very to research regarding the frequency and time before sending the notifications. Thankfully because of the emergence of technology, you can automatically segregate and set the time for your notification only once, without repeating the steps every time.

In order, not to annoy your users with unnecessary push notifications, we recommend few guidelines that help you find the right time for sending push notifications to your web users using PushPush.io.

Check the timezone of your users

Technology has bought the world very close. So it may happen that the timezone of your client and you are different. Business is spread across the globe so here time plays a very important role. The time at which your users get notifications from you is one significant aspect adding to the achievement of your campaign. You have to make sure that the scheduling of your push notifications is in inline with the timezone of all your target users. For example: Being a radio taxi cab like Uber, if you send a push notification on its mobile app giving discount coupon during peak commute hours will boost the bookings.

Plan the Days

While planning your push notification strategy, one thing you can not afford to miss is the day. If you have a restaurant and you have planned a promotion -meal for two’ on Friday. Sending a reminder notification to users on Saturday will not really be a good idea. There are particular days and time which has shown evidently high click rates for most of the brands. Make sure you are scheduling your notification around these days.

We have segregated each day of the week with its best time to send push notifications according to our research made and that has given high ROI to companies.

Tuesday: 4-5 pm, 5-6 pm
Wednesday: 10 am-12 noon, 3-6 pm
Thursday: 3-5 pm, 5-6 pm
Friday: 10-11am, 2-3 pm, 3-4 pm
Saturday: 4-5 pm

Check on Upcoming events

You may customize your message based on the time of year or any upcoming holidays to make the brand attractive.

Make sure that your notification calendar is always in sync with the events happening throughout the year. It’s done to avoid a situation where your notification may get ignored reason being that day falls on a busy festival day. Further, following a track of events will ease you develop and create festive offers for those events which have constantly gained considerable response rate.

For example, push notification for a restaurant review set to go out two days prior to Valentine’s Day could be like, “Happy Valentine’s Day! Have a lovely evening. Here’s a discount code for dining out with your loved ones.”

The frequency of Sending Notifications

The frequency at which you send the notifications to your users depends on various factors like industry specific-News app, Gaming app or website, Travel portals, Fitness apps, E-commerce or your Notification purpose like retargeting users, brand awareness of your product. We have segregated the frequency as per the industry.

News: 3-4 times a day which depends on the news, it’s significance and gravity as per your users.
Games: Once a day or less and that too after deciding its time slot as to when the users will be excited to receive your notifications and give the maximum response.
Travel: 2-3 times a day. This number may vary depending upon the holiday seasons. Also if your plan to promote a new holiday package.
Fitness: 3-4 times a week or even daily reminders are acceptable depending on the type of fitness business. For example, if you are a fitness band app then daily morning and evening notifications are fine to alert the user to remind about his target.

Right Content

When the right content is sent to the right audience and that too on right time then that is surely going to help you achieve your business goals.

Push notifications study reveals that there are a huge amount of users that find these notifications as important and essential. It is may happen so since the notifications sent by you are of user’s interest or the content provided is giving valuable. Content that is relevant to users generate high user engagement. As per the recent study, Personalisation can boost push notification open rates by up to 800%. When the content is personalized it boost the open rate 4 times than sending a generic message. This can be done reciprocating your user with their name, including a custom image, a thank you note, personalized message etc.

Content and timing go hand in hand for any push notifications’ success. Giving a customized and personal touch to your notification on right is sure to give an immeasurable response.

Targeting the right audience

Always consider sharing the right content with the right audience with your users. Your information should be as targeted as possible. Creating and recognizing who you plan to target must be an essential part of determining your push notification plan. There is a greater risk of your entire communication being a failure if you target the wrong audience. Therefore, building specific customer personas benefits you plan the most powerful push notification strategy. It is better for companies to learn more about users and take extra efforts to avoid their push notification to be seen as annoying by users.

Let us take an example of women to fashion retail brand wherein they have segmented their target audience in personas like Let’s say you run a female fashion retail chain. You have successfully segmented your audience in personas such as- working class, middle-aged housewife, a young mother, and student. So here you would never want to notify all the personas with one push messaging for the sale of babies wear. That just does not make any sense.

Choose the right timing

You have to choose the right time to share the right content with the right audience. Timing should be an indispensable part of your push messaging plan.Suppose you receive a disturbing push notification message at 5 am when you are in deep sleep. What would be your reaction, will u still like that brand or unsubscribe its offers? Here, you are required to take care of local time notification delivery. For example, In New York, it is morning 5 am and at the same time in London, it is 9am.You can determine the right time for your push notifications depending upon your Industry or targetting persona.

Industry-based time

News-10-12 pm,5 pm
Fashion & lifestyle-12 pm, 5pm, 9 pm
Travel-9 pm
Hospitality-10 am, 2 pm, 8pm-10 pm
Entertainment-8 pm -10 pm
Education-11 am-1 pm, 8 pm
Healthcare-12 pm

Persona-based time determination

Working class-9 am, 12 noon-2 pm, 9pm -11 pm
Young mothers-11 am-12 pm, 7 pm-8 pm
Middle-aged housewives-12 noon 2 pm, 9 pm-11 pm
Students-9 am-12 am, 7 pm-2 am

So to conclude we may say that tailoring your push notifications to your users is not just about what you say and how you say, but first and foremost factor is about time i.ewhen you say it. Lastly, don’t forget to expire messages when they go out of date.

PushPush.io gives a modern day advertising platform where a company or website owner can use push notification to monetize their web traffic and advertiser can send notifications to their targetted audience, wherein the users grant permission to receive such messages.