In the rapid world of e-commerce, being faster and more responsive than your competition is the key to attracting new customers. As smartphones are becoming the #1 device for online shopping, sellers are looking for new digital marketing strategies to keep in touch with their customers. For a long time, e-mails were the primary means of communication for e-commerce businesses to engage with their customer base. But the world is on the verge of a drastic digital transformation, and e-mails feel like they are from a former era, to be honest. They are slow, they are the furthest thing from being responsive, conversion rates are low, and they require an additional subscription approval to even enter a user’s mailbox.
On the other hand, the alternative and the superior option, push notifications, provides e-commerce businesses with new and much more effective ways to keep their customers engaged. But enabling push notifications and turning your emails into push notifications is just not going to cut it. It would be best if you were precise and thoughtful about how you connect with your customers so that you can unlock the full potential of push notifications. So, let’s review why you should choose push notifications to engage with your audience and how you can improve your results with them.
Ease of Use
Let’s get obvious out of the way; push notifications are the easiest way to communicate with your customers effectively. When you have your mobile e-commerce application, just a simple touch would be enough for you to send push notifications to your customers. Since push notifications highly increase your brand visibility, your brand awareness will also rise. With push notifications, you can reach out to thousands of people in an instant, and preparing push notifications takes a considerably shorter time than an e-mail, too. So, why stick with e-mail when you have a faster and easier option? No-code e-commerce app builder Mowico lets you build your e-commerce app from scratch and easily send push notifications to your customers.
Better Than an Email
As we mentioned above, e-mail was the primary medium e-commerce businesses use when connecting with their users. But with the emergence of mobile devices and mobile applications as a new way to shop online, push notifications also gained traction. And when compared to e-mail marketing, push notifications are the most effective option out there. Let’s see why;
First things first, unlike phone notifications, mailboxes have a personal sense that makes people want to avoid email subscriptions. And with hundreds of advertisements raining into users’ inboxes, e-mail is not the place where you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. Also, if you like to send an email to one of your customers, first they need to approve that they want to receive emails from your end. This is a challenge for e-commerce companies since users generally don’t want their inbox to fill with e-mails that they will not read anyway. But unlike e-mails, push notifications require the user to approve receiving notifications from your app. That is a much more feasible request to accept since push notifications act like every other notification and can be removed easily when not interested. Also, push notifications do not require a customer’s active use to get in touch with them. For example, users need to actively check their emails to see the message you sent them; but with push notifications, users will notice your message even if they are just checking their lock screen for the time.
Retargeting & Remarketing
When people start looking for a particular product online, the options are abundant. That’s why e-commerce businesses need to focus on users who are already exposed to their products or services to turn visitors into customers. This marketing strategy is called remarketing, and push notifications are easily the most effective way to retarget your customers and conduct a remarketing campaign. This is because push notifications are highly visible, and as the exposure increases, users’ probability of making a purchase increases too. After a user viewed an item at your store and left without making a purchase, you can notify them about the diminishing stocks of that item or a new deal that they can enjoy. Or, you can focus on people with unpurchased items in their shopping cart and attract them back to complete their purchases. Either way, push notifications massively help you in your remarketing processes. Also, don’t forget that push notifications are highly customisable, and personalising a push notification can raise its open rates by up to 800%.1 So, you can call your customers with your names, add pre-ready texts depending on the items they are interested in, or further personalise the text with any information they shared with you while signing up.
Improved Engagement
In the e-commerce industry, maintaining a successful amount of engagement with your users is the key to expanding your customer base. Aside from attracting new customers and increasing your revenues, customer engagement also helps your business turn your visitors into buyers and one-time buyers into regulars. Because of that, having a means of communication that allows you to reach out to your customers as you like will directly impact your customer retention levels. And push notifications are exactly what you are looking for. A study by Respnsys has shown that 50% of mobile users allow push notifications to find out about special deals and exclusive offers.2 So, it’s safe to say that with push notifications, you will be addressing the majority of your customers in a straightforward yet effective way.
Real-Time Reach
One of the most significant advantages of push notifications over other ways of keeping in touch with your customers is its ability to reach out to users in an instant. Unlike e-mails, push notifications are really hard to miss when they pop up on users’ screens. Since you can be more or less sure that your push notifications will not go ignored, it’s safe to say that when you send a notification, users will see it in a short amount of time, if not immediately. This real-time nature of push notifications opens new possibilities for businesses to attract their users. For example, you can notify your users about a deal the moment it starts, or you can create timed offers and let your users know through push notifications. While creating a sense of urgency, timed sales also add an external value to your product. And according to a study by NRF data, nine out of ten customers get persuaded by the additional value of a product even if they are not interested in making a purchase in the first place.3
Build your app with Mowico
If you are in the e-commerce business but still don’t have an application for your brand, now is the perfect time to get started with your m-commerce journey. With no-code e-commerce app builder Mowico, you can transfer your e-commerce business into a mobile application in hours. And you will not need any coding knowledge or experience; everything is done through an easy-to-use drag and drop interface so that you can comfortably design and customise your app. Mowico lets you send push notifications to connect with your customers, create targeted campaigns with Geofence Tracking, increase customer retention with loyalty strategies such as loyalty points and many more. Explore all features of Mowico now, and start building your e-commerce app for free.
