Push Notification Performance: Essential Metrics to Measure Success

Measurement and optimization of critical indicators are essential to the success of push notification campaigns. In this post, we'll go over seven key indicators for measuring the success of your push notification campaigns and how to leverage them to your advantage.

Why Tracking Push Notification Campaign Performance is a Must

If you don't have a good understanding of how your notifications are performing, it's difficult to determine whether your push campaigns are meeting their intended objectives or if they require some tweaking. When you determine which messages get the most people interested or generate the most sales, you can use those strategies in your future marketing efforts.

We at Reteno track the following push metrics:

Metric 1. Conversion Rate

The percentage of users completing a desired action after getting a push message is the conversion rate. This could include completing a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading an eBook. A high conversion rate indicates that your push notifications convince consumers to act.

Uninteresting content, a lack of clear CTA buttons, or badly personalized push notifications might cause low conversion rates. It may suffer if your push notification does not give enough value or motivation for the user to take the desired action.

Metric 2. Revenue

This metric is applicable only for Commerce activities.

Revenue tracking is an easy method to see how profitable your push notifications marketing is. If a single push notification generates a large amount of revenue, consider it a success.

Ineffective push notifications that fail to promote conversions can cause a negative revenue rate. Push alerts that do not resonate with your audience, do not provide enough value, or are not targeted to the proper section of users may not earn the intended revenue.

N.B. To keep track of the revenue generated from push notifications, you'll need a system that can link the revenue to particular user actions. This feature is usually available in more advanced push notification platforms or mobile analytics tools.

Metric 3. Opt-In Rate

The opt-in rate is the percentage of people who receive push notifications out of everyone who saw your opt-in popup. This is a crucial metric as it shows the potential reach of your push notifications.

A high push notification opt-in rate means many users are interested in your content and have agreed to receive more. This is a positive indicator of the growth and success of the push notifications strategy. 

If users don't find your push notifications useful enough, they may opt out of getting them, resulting in a low opt-in rate. This could be because of issues with push notifications frequency, quality, or overall negative experience with your product.

Metric 4. Opt-out Rate

With this metric, a negative tendency is a good thing. Your push marketing campaign is doing well if your opt-out rate is low. 

It is the opposite of the opt-in rate and is the proportion of users who have actively unsubscribed from your push notifications..

Every push campaign should be followed up with a check of this statistic because it provides valuable feedback on the message's efficacy in content, timeliness, and user impact. 

Tracking push notification performance metrics is not an option but a requirement. The insights and data you gather can help define your push notification strategy, resulting in increased user engagement, higher conversion rates, and income.

Other Metrics to Pay Attention To

You can also encounter additional metrics if you use a non-SDK-based platform to configure your push notifications (Ionic, Android Studio, etc.). The following metrics also help you measure the success of your push campaigns and understand when you need to implement some changes.

View Rate

This is an important push notification performance measure because it tells how many users see your messages. 

A high view rate implies that your push notifications effectively reach your target audience. If your view rate is poor, it might indicate a problem with the frequency or timeliness of app push notifications.

Open Rate

The open rate of a push notification is the number of times it is opened compared to the number of times it is sent. This measure is critical since it provides information on the relevance and efficacy of your material. 

Low open rates indicate that your web or mobile push notifications are not appealing or engaging. This could be due to poor headlines (for example, because of push notification character limits), a lack of personalization, or irrelevant content. Users may also be experiencing notification fatigue due to receiving too many alerts, which may cause them to ignore or discard your communications.

Click-Through Rate

A click-through rate (CTR) measures how many people clicked your notification to visit a website or landing page. When your in-app push notifications have a high average CTR, your audience finds your content engaging and interesting enough to click on and explore further.

One possible reason for low CTR could be that the call-to-action is unclear or attractive enough, the content is irrelevant, or the notification design is ineffective. The low rate indicates that the targeted audience is uninterested in your notifications.

How to Improve Push Notification Metrics

Once you grasp the push metrics, you can move on to refining your push notification strategy. Data becomes truly valuable when you utilize it to make informed decisions and improvements. This can result in more people engaging with your notifications, higher conversion rates, and more money for your business.

Let's explore ways to help you enhance your push notification metrics.

1. Create value from receiving notifications

When sending push notifications, focusing on providing value to your users is important. As a user, you should see a clear advantage in opening and interacting with the notifications you receive.

Here are some suggestions for implementing a plan:

• Tailor your content to your users: Utilize your information about the audience to craft customized messages that resonate with them. This information may consist of their name, past purchases, or the way they have been browsing.
• Make exclusive offers: One way to make your in-app messages more appealing is by offering exclusive deals or offers that can only be accessed through such messages. When you give users a good reason to stay opted-in, they are more likely to engage with your notifications.
• Provide relevant details: You can send updates on orders, announcements of new products, and newsworthy events to your users via web or mobile push notifications.

Check out our blog post with inspiring push notifications examples so you can make outstanding messages.

2. Optimize the timing of the notifications

The timing of your mobile or web push campaigns can greatly impact their effectiveness. Sending notifications properly can enhance users' likelihood of noticing and interacting with them.

Tips for implementation:

• Recognize your users' activity patterns: Analyze your users' activity to learn when they are most engaged with your app. This information might help you determine the best times to send push alerts.‍
• Consider time zones: If you have a global user base, account for different time zones. Sending a push notice at 3 a.m. is unlikely to pique users' interest.‍
• Use intelligent delivery tools: An advanced push notifications platform can provide tools that automatically optimize delivery time for each user based on previous engagement trends.‍
• Work with the context: The time of your message should also be related to the content. For example, if you're telling users about a lunchtime deal, sending this notification just before lunch is a good idea.

3. Do A/B testing

A/B testing allows you to compare the performance of different versions of the app push notifications. You can learn what resonates with your audience and what doesn't by adjusting one element at a time (such as the message, design, or timing).

Ideas on how to conduct A/B tests more efficiently:

• Test one element at a time: When conducting A/B tests, change only one element at a time. This way, you can be sure that any differences in performance are due to that specific element.
• Send tests to large groups: To get accurate results, you need to gather enough analytical data. Think of a backup plan in case some tests turn out to be damaging to your sales/brand reputation.
• Run tests on different campaign components: Not only visual and text elements can influence the campaign’s success. For example, the best delivery time may differ based on factors such as the user's time zone, their regular app activity, and the type of your notice. It's critical to run tests at various times of day to determine when your users are most likely to engage.

Once you've conducted your tests and gathered the data, analyze the results and implement the winning version in your push campaigns. With push notification best practices, you can provide a smooth transition in every sales funnel stage for your users and make push notifications even more effective.  

Always remember the key to effective push notifications is to provide value, relevance, and personalization and continuously refine your approach based on data-driven decisions.

Final Thoughts

Push notifications can be a game-changer in your digital marketing strategy. However, their success depends largely on tracking the right push notification performance metrics; the ones mentioned above provide a comprehensive view of your app push notifications' effectiveness and help you make data-driven decisions for future campaigns.

You can significantly improve your push campaigns by focusing on these metrics and implementing strategies like providing value, offering relevant content, and conducting A/B testing. This will enhance your user engagement and drive your overall business success.