It’s November, and that means we are all set for the upcoming holiday season — besides welcoming the season’s spirits, customers are also busy getting their shopping lists ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Mobile advertisers are carefully planning their budgets to make the most of this season to turn their users into customers.
As new devices are unpacked and new apps installed, this time of the year is crucial for businesses to connect with and activate their users. Check out these eight top tips in incorporating Thanksgiving into your seasonal push notification strategy and watch your success ratings soar.
Go Big, Or Go Home
Don’t be afraid to bring out the Thanksgiving-themed pictures, sounds and copywriting. If you’re going to use a seasonal theme, go large!
You will be fighting for attention in a crowd of notifications being sent out around this time, so make sure you stick out from the crowd and make your notification the one that gets remembered. Remember to get in with the spirit of the season and give thanks! People will appreciate that you’re on-board with the seasonal spirit.
Make it Personal
If you want maximum attention you need to make push notifications highly personalized and individual. Put all that research you did to good use and figure out when is the best time to send notifications and the kind of content your audience is looking to see. Sending messages too early or late in the day can mean the difference between a read and unread message, so timing is everything. If you need a little extra help then make use of widely available tools that help craft push notification copy.
Less is More
While you might feel like you’re on a roll, don’t be tempted to send out endless messages promoting your product. Filter your messages and make sure you’re focussing on quality rather than quantity. Make sure your messages reach the right people at the right time and you’ll see a far greater return than a blanket approach.
You don’t need to send out the same message to all your groups, remember that finely-tuned messages to the right groups are the most effective forms of communication.
Mix Up Your Messaging
Choose your channel wisely. You might choose a push notification or an in-app version, but don’t choose both to deliver the same message.
Whatever you do, just choose one channel to deliver one message. Don’t be tempted to send the same message out through different mediums, it will just annoy your customers and that doesn’t help anyone. Pick wisely and stick with it.
Get the Stats
Gather enough data to help you study your users and optimize targeting based on audience segmentation. By getting to know your audience you can find critical user behaviors that will help you to refine your messaging.
Once these facts are in place, send out your push notifications at the perfect time, including over the holidays. If you’ve got your statistics right, you’ll be able to see real results in real-time.
Take time to analyze your responses and see if you’ve made the right choices. Always be prepared to adjust your push messages and timings as necessary.
Don’t Be Your Own Worst Enemy
In all your keenness to use push notifications over Thanksgiving, don’t make the mistake of bombarding your audience. Not only will you lose their interest, you will also run the risk of seeing your most important messages lost in a pile of your own holiday advertising.
Push notifications can feel like the answer to all your marketing problems but they can also be your worst enemy. Nothing drives people to the unsubscribe button faster than being overwhelmed with notifications.
Tell Your Users What to Do
As in all marketing, you need to remember that there is a point to these notifications, even during Thanksgiving. By all means, wish your subscribers a happy holiday but remember to add your call-to-action.
If you’re having a sale, link to it or to the item you know your segments most look for. If you’re asking subscribers to try out a Thanksgiving quiz and win a voucher, make the most of that one notification and include it in your mailout.
Offer a Reason
In fact holiday, times where people have paid out for gifts or travel, are the perfect opportunities to incorporate offers into your push notifications.
Thanksgiving might be about time spent with family, but rewarding that good feeling with a 30% discount might well seal the deal with a purchase on your site. Remember to use your research to send specific offers to users who have previously left abandoned shopping carts on your site.
However you spend Thanksgiving, making use of the holiday season to promote your business is a fantastic opportunity if used wisely. Using clever, targeted and perfectly timed notifications to bring customers to you, rather than constantly chasing the market, is how you’ll see your customer base grow and respond to your seasonal messages.
