Taking into consideration that 96% of people that visit your site are not ready to buy, In previous articles we’ve talked about the importance of implementing retargeting strategies for online businesses. We’ve specifically compared using web push notifications VS. retargeting ads with the purpose of bringing customers back, connecting with anonymous users and, ultimately, retaining clients and increasing revenue.

There are many channels available to include in the digital marketing mix to accomplish this purpose. Social media platforms have become the top choice for many brands to connect and engage with users. They offer many possibilities, are very versatile and people spend lots of time there. According to Statista, “As of 2019 and 2020, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 145 minutes per day, up from 142 minutes in the previous year.”

No wonder most brands seek to have a strong presence on, at least a couple of social media platforms. However, building a follower base and cutting through the noise in these channels nowadays is a daunting task. Social media is great to engage with users but has become a jungle of content in which everyone wants to stand out from the crowd. Actually reaching people, getting their attention and urging them to take action is an uphill battle. That’s why social media platforms are almost obliging you to use their ads to even reach your own followers. 

That’s why it’s so important to don’t rely on just one channel to achieve your goals. In this case, we want to talk about how to mix and match social media retargeting with web push notifications retargeting strategies. Combining multiple channels and creating a multi channel marketing strategy can do marvelous things for your online business.

But first, let’s take a look at some stats (considering paid posts for social media not exclusive for retargeting):

 

Channel	Reach/Deliverabilty	CPM	CPC	CTR	Cookies required for retargeting
Web push notifications	99+%	$6.0* (Estimated)	$0.09* (Estimated)	6,7%	No
Instagram Feed	Depends on CPM	$7.7	$3.4	0.2%	Yes
Facebook	Depends on CPM	$8.7	$0.8	1.1%	Yes
Twitter	Depends on CPM	$5.0	$0.58	0.9%	Yes
LinkedIn	Depends on CPM	$5.8	$3.20	0.2%	Yes

With info from Q1 2020 Paid Media Benchmark Report – https://www.adstage.io/

*It’s an estimate, because push notifications are not based on bidding. Amount calculated based on the average of millions of web push notifications sent by Frizbit’s clients

Now, let’s break down a little bit more and talk about the benefits of each channel specifically. 

Social Media Retargeting

Social media platforms offer a pathway to reintroduce a product to a user. If someone visited your site and liked something, you can retarget him/her through social media and offer a special incentive, like a discount, to encourage him/her to come back and finish a purchase.

By placing a cookie on users when they visit the site, it’s possible to show them an ad on social media platforms, like Facebook or Instagram when they’re browsing later on. These ads offer many possibilities for brands, making it easier to create engaging content like videos, photos or image carousels. 

Social media ad campaigns allow brands to work with all kinds of budget, segment the audience based on location, likes, interests, gender and age and choose daily spent on a period of time. Setting up social media retargeting ad campaigns is very simple and doesn’t add a lot of workload, once you have already designed the pieces you want to use. However, optimizing them and making them as best as possible, involves a great deal of analysis and time. 

These platforms also allow brands to connect with customers through organic non-paid content. However, as time passes, it’s getting harder and harder to get non-promoted posts to reach people. According to Hootsuite “On Facebook, the average reach of an organic page post hovers around 5.20%. That means roughly one in every 19 fans sees the page’s non-promoted content.” So when it comes to social media retargeting strategies, paid posts are the way to go. 

Benefits of social media retargeting

• Brand awareness: as we mentioned earlier people spend a lot of time of their days on social media and everyone has at least one social media account. In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, according to Statista. As this number is expected to increase over the next few years, having a social media presence increases the chances for brands to be present in their consumers’ minds. 

• Availability: nowadays there’s practically one social media for every interest, taste and demographic. We have LinkedIn for business and professional relationships, Twitter for news and world-events, Facebook and Instagram for entertainment, Tik-tok for younger audiences and now even only-audio chat rooms with Clubhouse. Every time a user accesses one of these platforms they do it during a time they’re open minded to consume said type of content. This makes it a golden opportunity for brands to try and connect with them when they’re available to engage with the content. 

• Versatility: continuing with the previous thought, every social media platform offers a different and versatile way to create retargeting content. Videos, photos, reels, stories and influencer marketing offer a range of different possibilities for brands to create engaging content. 

• Adaptability: one of the main advantages of social media retargeting is that you can do a lot with little money investment. Social media allows you to set up campaigns with even just 1 euro a day and reach around 15,000 people and have complete control of the amount spent. This makes it ideal for new business, entrepreneurs and small companies to reach a lot of people with very little budget. 

Web Push Notifications Retargeting

Web push notifications are a very pretty new digital marketing retargeting channel. When users visit a site that has enabled them, it’s possible to send them messages relevant to the actions they took while browsing, inviting them to come back once more.

By asking users to accept and subscribe to web push notifications (opt-in), it’s possible to send them a hyper-personalized message based on their behaviour when they are browsing online later on. This channel offers brands the opportunity to reach non-registered users on both mobile and desktop with engaging messages. 

Depending on the provider you work with, web push notifications allow you to segment the audience with all types of demographic data and use dynamic parameters to make the message as relevant as it can be. The setup of the campaigns only needs to be done the first time and then everything basically runs on autopilot.  This means there’s not any extra workload that needs to be done through time. 

One of the main attractions of web push notifications is their reach. Unlike social media, this channel has a deliverability of 100%.  If users opt-in, the next time they open up the browser, it’s guaranteed that they’ll receive the message. With web push notifications you don’t have to fight against social media algorithms that almost randomly choose whether to show or not your post. With web push your message will be delivered. 

Benefits of Automated Web Push Notifications Retargeting

• A message for every step of the funnel: web notifications are set up to be triggered by events you define on your site: category viewed, product viewed, product added to cart or any other you wish. This means you’ll have multiple opportunities to connect with users that leave without completing an action with a specific message related to the step of the shopping process where they abandoned the site. 

• Hyper-personalised messages: web push notifications are 100% based on user behaviour. If someone who accepted them visits your site and takes any action that triggers a notification, he/she will receive a message containing the image, product name, brand and even price of the article. You can also put your own brand’s personality to the notification by adding emojis and customizing the text. 

• Guaranteed deliverability: as we mentioned before, web push notifications have a deliverability rate of 100%. These messages are browser based which means that, as soon as a user opens its browser, the notification will be delivered. They also work for both mobile and desktop. With one campaign you can reach users on any device they own. 

• Time efficient: web push notifications automated campaigns only need to be configured one first time. Frizbit offers its clients ready-to-use templates that allow brands to start sending messages right away as soon as the implementation is done. Of course, you can customise said templates as much as you want and modify them through time as well, but it’s not something that needs to be optimised and analysed on a regular basis in order to achieve great results. 

• No CPM/CPC cost: when using web push notifications as a retargeting channel with Frizbit, you don’t have to worry about CPM and CPC costs like in the case of social media promoted posts. With automated web push notifications you have unlimited messages to send, with no costs for impressions or clicks. 

What retargeting strategy should I use for my online business?

Social media platforms and web push notifications are inherently very different channels. Nonetheless, both of them are used by big and small brands in the pursuit of  reaching and engaging with users with retargeting strategies. 

When it comes to planning a digital marketing strategy to retain users, the ideal scenario is to combine channels. In this case both social media and web push notifications, present very clear and unique characteristics that can greatly complement each other in a well-thought communications plan. 

There are many big brands and online businesses that invest a lot of their budgets on working with social media ads agencies to promote their products and services. Most of these companies haven’t considered including web push notifications campaigns in their marketing strategy because they don’t even know the benefits of this new retargeting channel. 

If you would like to try it out, get in touch with us and we would gladly introduce you to the world of retargeting with automated web push notifications campaigns.

Since we got your attention, you might also like to read:

• Web Push Notifications: A Complete Guide for all Levels
• How to Conduct Successful A/B Testing: Go from Beginner to Pro
• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores

Digital marketing news from March 2021 cover updates from Google Search to important social media new features. It’s amazing to witness how, every month, marketing technology changes and takes a step forward into making marketers jobs easier with new features added to existing platforms and new tech being developed.  

As we do it every month, we have gathered the most relevant marketing news and information worth revising for search marketing, tech marketing and social media marketing. you never know which new feature of technology will help you improve your digital marketing strategy. So keep on reading for the:

Digital Marketing News, Insights and Updates from March 2021

1. Search Marketing Updates

Google puts to the test displaying a cost estimate for local search queries

Google has announced that the company will be testing a new feature to show cost estimates in local search results. The feature is inspired by an alliance between Google and Homewyse, a site that provides contractors a system to calculate accurate quotes for their clients. They provide cost and pricing estimates for common houseworks, such as maintenance, repairs or remodelings. 

The new costs feature will show an estimate of the price range. Google says “The price information provided should be used as a guide only. The actual cost of service may vary widely based on the provider you choose and the specific details of your job.”

 

The results will show a price range for the service the users search for in the local area near their homes. According to Google, “Knowing the typical prices for a service in your ZIP code can help you estimate the cost of your job before booking it with a Local Services provider.” This feature is limited to the U.S. for the moment.

Google brings Full Coverage news to search results

Another marketing news by Google is that they’re bringing the Full Coverage feature to show on search results. This feature was already available for Google News since 2018, but the company has decided to now add it to Search Results as well with an announcement on their blog last March 8th.  

According to Google, the reasoning behind this decision is that “People are hungry for context that helps them break down and understand (…) complicated stories from multiple perspectives.” This decision has been inspired because of how important and ongoing news and stories, such as Covid-19 or the U.S. elections are “consumed” by people. 

The “Full Coverage” page will show next to the carousel of articles that appear at the top of the Search results page when users introduce a query. If users want to dig a little deeper on any big developing news, they just have to click Full Coverage.

With this launch, we’re introducing new technology that is able to detect long-running news stories that span many days, like the Super Bowl, to many weeks or months like the COVID-19 pandemic. We then organize the Full Coverage page to help people easily find top news along with additional content like explainers and local coverage that are helpful to understanding these complex stories.

Right now the Full Coverage feature is only available for mobile devices in English and limited to U.S. users. Google says they intend to roll it out to more countries and languages in the upcoming months. 

Microsoft Bing updates search results interface

There are several updates coming up for Microsoft Bing interface. Recipe results, carousels, infographics and local answers are getting a revamp with the purpose of making the search experience more “visually immersive” for users. 

• Infographic-like search panel experience: one of the first changes is a new, knowledge panel design. The objective was to make it more visually appealing and “provide both style and substance”. 

 

• Local answers with more information: when users search for anything on local answer, they’ll get more information. Microsoft Bing added more than just a single images carousel, they added more to Bing Maps, top images and reviews.

 

• Expandable search carousels: they also added a feature with expandable carousels that show high-level information results in order to avoid a crowded results page. A user can hover an specific result and it will expand showcasing more detailed information.

• Similar looking items feature: when users make a search on Microsoft Bing Image Search, they can now click on it and use the “similar looking items” feature to highlight a portion of said image and get more results of images similar to that specific portion and can even directly go to a retailer’s site to purchase an item if that the case. 

• Recipes result with more information: when looking for a recipe, users will get a list and have the option to expand them to see more. The information can go from nutritional information to, users reviews and ingredients list and possible substitutions. 

2. Marketing Tech Updates

Google Chrome can now caption audio and video

Google rolled out the Live Caption Feature for Chrome. This allows users to automatically generate real-time captions for media on their browsers. The feature works for social media, podcasts, radio, personal video libraries, embedded video players and most web-based video and chat services. 

Captions make online content more accessible. If you’re in a noisy environment, trying to keep the volume down, or are part of the 466 million people in the world who are deaf or hard of hearing, having captions lets you follow along to whatever content you are watching — whether it’s viral feta pasta videos, breaking news or a scientist discussing their latest research. – Google Blog

One of the most interesting features of the new Live Caption, is that the captions are generated on real-time. This means that they appear as content plays and they work offline as well. 

To turn on the Live Caption Feature, users just need to go to Chrome Settings, click on Advanced and then go to Accessibility. The captions currently only support English and are available worldwide on the latest update of Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux. 

Google My Business report shows how people found your business

If there’s an important piece of information for every business, is definitely how people found them. Google’s aware of this and has rolled out an update for Google My Business that shows how users got to you. 

The new performance report insights upgrade shows a section of people who viewed your business and how they found it, whether through desktop, mobile or either Search Results or Google Maps.

Businesses can access these new reports by logging to their My Business accounts and selecting the Insights tab. From there, go to the top of the page to access the new performance reports and scroll down to the section that shows “how people discovered you”. 

The reports breakdown the information by device and type of search. This feature has been available as a beta since late January and Google pointed out a few details:

• The metric represents the number of unique users so it might be lower than the number of views found on Google My Business and in email notifications. 
• The metric focuses on views of the Business Profile, not overall views of the Business in Google. 

Hootsuite adds new “best time to publish” feature

The social media management web platform has rolled out a new feature that shows you the best time to publish on your different social media channels. These suggestions are completely personalised based on your own publishing history of the last 30 days. 

The new feature aims into helping content creators “build awareness, boost engagement and drive traffic”. Knowing when to post is so important to reach as many people as possible on social media, and this feature has the objective of helping with that. 

This month, Hoostsuite also included an update that allows you to add Magento into your dashboard. This will allow you to:

• Add streams of your products to Hootsuite
• Share to multiple networks, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• Schedule when posts are sent
• Respond to users on Twitter with product information
• Use templates for frequently used posts/replies

3. Social Media Marketing Updates

Instagram is testing new auto-caption feature in stories

Instagram is testing a new auto-caption feature for stories. It’s called “Closed Captions” and shown in the stickers tab. A social media consultant shared a video showcasing how it works and it seems the captions are really accurate.

After recording a video with voice, you just have to open the stickers tab and select the Caption one and the app will automatically generate a transcription. There are different options for styling the captions, very similar to the ones available for the transcription of lyrics from the music sticker. 

The feature is just under test by Instagram and not available to the public yet. However, we can expect it to be launched very soon. 

Twitter is testing new e-commerce features

Twitter is testing a new feature that links to e-commerce product pages. It displays the tweet with a different card format design that includes a big “Shop” button and showcases details about the product directly into the tweet.

The information displayed on these new tweets format for e-commerce show:

• Product name
• Shop name
• Product price
• Shop button

Twitter confirmed that these new e-commerce tweets are an example of a new “organic” type of tweet. The social media platform is aiming into helping content creators monetize their work with many new features. Joining forces with newsletter platform Revue a few months ago and a new Super Follow feature that will allow creators to charge followers for “exclusive content” , are definitely aiming in that direction. 

Facebook looking to launch audio-only rooms

All the world has been on a hype since the popularisation of the new audio-only social media Clubhouse. Other social media platforms don’t want to be left behind and Facebook has started working on its own version of audio-only chat rooms. 

In May last year, Facebook rolled out a feature called Rooms that allowed users to create private video chats others can join. So, creating a new one that’s audio-based only wouldn’t be a major work or effort for Facebook.

The new feature will allow users to create public or private audio group rooms. It’s basically the same thing as Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces. Maybe this would suppose a threat to Clubhouse since the app still works just for iOS and it’s based on invites only. 

We can expect Facebook to roll out the new feature very soon, since the amount of work behind it is basically ready. 

Summary

This is it for the most important digital marketing news from November covering everything from search marketing, tech marketing and social media marketing. Which news caught your attention more?

Bonus Material

We’ve recently created the Digital Marketing & E-commerce Experts group on Linkedin for all of you marketing professionals and enthusiasts. Here you’ll find all sorts of content related to digital marketing and e-commerce, you can share your own experiences, questions and just rub shoulders with other marketers on a daily basis.

Since you’re already here, you might want to check out:

• Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies for E-commerce – Recover Lost Sales
• How to Orchestrate your Marketing Strategy on Multi-Channel?
• Troubleshooting Web Push Notifications: Why I’m I not Getting Notifications

Cart abandonment recovery is the biggest issue e-commerce sites face every day. According to Statista on a study including different industries, for March 2020 an average of 88.05% of online orders were left behind without completion. Specifically, the online retail sector has an average of 84.51 percent shopping cart abandonment rate.

Since it represents a huge leak of sales, it’s one of the most (if not the most) important problems to tackle if you own or run any type of online store. There are many reasons why customers abandon their shopping carts. Before we go into detail on how to mitigate this issue, let’s point out some of the:

Main reasons shoppers abandon carts:

• Confusing site
• Unexpected costs in shipping or taxes
• Confusing checkout process
• Online “window shopping”
• Security concerns
• Found a better deal on another site

If you want to implement cart abandonment recovery strategies, there are many techniques you can apply as for today and start getting results. Even though all users are different, with their own likes, dislikes and needs, there are some similarities and commonplaces to be identified within the segments and come up with a strategic approach that offers the right solutions.

Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies

1. Use retargeting channels strategies

Marketers are very lucky. Yes, cart abandonment is a big issue for online stores, but there’s a wide variety of channels and marketing tools to use and tackle the problem from all angles with a tailor made strategy that fits your needs and fulfill customer’s expectations. One of the most important moves to make is to implement retargeting strategies. 

The following table shows an estimate of how each channel performs for cart abandonment recovery strategies. The numbers where measured for a average e-commerce site.

• Opt-in rate: The op-in rate shows how many visitors subscribe to each channel.
• % of subscribers in sequence: the % of subscribers in sequence makes reference to how many of those subscribers can be reached by the respective channel.
• Number of messages in sequence: when it comes to the number of messages in the sequence, it shows how many messages where designed to include as a series.
• CTR: is the click-trough rate for each channel, it show how many subscribers who received the messages clicked on it.
• Conversion rate: how many subscribers who received the messages and clicked on it, finished a purchase.
• Increase in sales: how much revenue said channel generated for the site.

Channel	Opt-in Rate	% Of Subscribers in Sequence	# Of Messages in Sequence	CTR	Conversion Rate	Increase in Sales
Email – Cart Abandonment	1- 3%	100%	3	17,2%	3,8x	4%
SMS – Cart Abandonment	0,5-1,5%	100%	1	35,4%	5,2x	2%
Web Push – Cart Abandonment	5-10%	10-15%	3	12,1%	2,3x	1%
Web Push – Full Funnel	5-10%	100%	3	10,7%	0,8x	2%

Users that have reached the checkout stage of the shopping funnel are easier to convert than visitors or potential customers. There’s no reason not to make the biggest effort on this step. 

You have three main channels available for cart abandonment recovery and recover lost sales while retaining users: automated web push notifications, emails and SMS.

• Cart abandonment recovery automated Web Push Notifications

Web push notifications are messages sent through browsers to, either mobile or desktop, to subscribers that opt-in to receive them. They’re delivered the moment users open the browser and start navigating online, indistinctly of the site or page they’re on at the moment.

Automated web push notifications allow to send users automatic messages related to the step of the shopping journey they were on the moment they left the site. For example, when users put an item in the basket, but abandon the web without completing the order, they will receive an automated web push notification reminding them about the product they left behind. 

You can recover lost sales from abandoned carts by sending automated notifications to users who left products in their basket but didn’t complete the purchase. You can schedule a sequence of messages to be delivered after certain amounts of time, like 1 hour, 1 day and 3 days after the user abandoned its shopping cart. 

The most engaging feature about using this channel to recapture lost customers, is that you don’t need any type of personal data from them. Unlike email or SMS, you can retarget visitors and anonymous users with web push notifications and bring them back to your site so they can finish their purchase. 

• Cart abandonment recovery emails

Cart abandonment email might be the strategy online stores use the most to tackle this issue. When using automated emails, they’re automatically sent to users that left the site on some step of the checkout process without completing a purchase after they added products to their cart.

Frizbit allows you to set up automated behavioural emails to recover abandoned carts.  The configuration process only needs to be done once, so implementing this strategy won’t represent a continuous effort or add to your normal workload.

Recovering abandoned carts emails should be as highly customised as possible. When users identify and relate to the content of the message, click-through and conversion rates increase significantly which translates to a recovery of lost sales and an increase in your revenue. 

This strategy has always been so popular, because it has presented a direct communication with users by contacting them through their email accounts. The downside is that, in order to do so, you need people to share with you their personal information and they don’t always do that. So, basically, if a user leaves the site before reaching the part of the checkout process where they’re supposed to submit their email address, you lose that user for good. 

Even though cart abandonment emails have always presented encouraging results for online stores, combining them in a strategy that also includes automated web push notifications will help you optimize your strategy and take it to the next level. Keep in mind that with emails, you can only reach those people that registered, while losing visitors and anonymous users. Adding an additional channel, that allows you to communicate with all visitors might be what your strategy is missing. 

You can check out our Success Story with Bidcom, an online retailer in consumer electronics that uses a combination of Frizbit’s automated behavioural emails and web push notifications campaign to recover abandoned carts. 

• Cart abandonment recovery SMS

SMS cart abandonment are messages sent to users that left a site during some step of the checkout process after adding a product to their basket. They work with the same principle of cart abandonment emails, but instead of receiving the message in the inboxes, users receive them on their mobile devices.

The format of SMS presents a great opportunity for online stores, since the information is delivered directly to the hands of the user through their phones, which makes it a very direct form of communication. Everyone has their mobiles nearby and constantly checks them during the day. Unlike emails, with SMS you don’t have to wait for users to go and check their inboxes to get the message. 

They are also highly customisable as well, and can include user name, product name, category name, brand or pretty much anything you wish to highlight about the article. This helps by making the message more relevant and harder to ignore by the user. 

However, the way it happens with emails, you need users to provide information: their phone number. If people are already reluctant to share their email address, this unwillingness increases a lot when it comes to sharing much more personal information like their personal number. If they don’t, you’ll lose them as well. 

Create a multichannel cart abandonment recovery strategy

There are multiple roads you can take to deal with cart abandonment: optimizing the web experience, using retargeting emails, sms or web push notifications. The way we see it, the real solution for this issue is to combine all of them in a well-planned retargeting strategy. 

FYI, we’re not saying that you should harass your users with messages while you follow and stalk them through every possible channel. What we’re saying is that you need design and execute a multichannel cart abandonment strategy in a way each channel complements the other.

Create a strategy thought out like a service you’re providing your customers. You want to bring them back to finish their purchases and recover lost carts in a way they feel they’re also gaining something. You can use each channel available in a different way, with different types of messages, different frequencies and segmenting by users by creating a flow of messages. 

Remember to always make the message as relevant as possible by using the dynamic fields available such as user name, product name, image, price or any information you see fit. The most important thing you need to keep in mind when designing your multichannel cart abandonment strategy is to use the frequency cap parameter so you can regulate the time periods your messages are delivered.

This is especially important if you work with different providers for each channel. You’ll have to coordinate the time frames in which you want each message to be delivered so they don’t clash with each other. For example, if the recovery cart email is sent after one hour, you’ll have to change the web push notification timing to be sent after two hours. If the user clicks on the email and completes a purchase, that event will be fulfilled, hence cancelling the web push notification automatically. 

If you work with the same provider for web push, emails and SMS, this won’t present a problem or extra work. Frizbit allows cross-platform event triggering coordination, meaning that if a user clicks on the cart abandonment recovery notification, the email and the SMS won’t be sent and so on.

Additional Tips to Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates

1. Optimize your site

When we talk about cart abandonment issues, we’re referring to the last step of the shopping funnel. So why are we even mentioning the quality of the site as an important element here? Simple: user experience from top to bottom. 

• Simplify navigation

Simplify the journey as much as you can. A lot of users abandon carts because of a confusing, complex navigation. The more clicks you put them through, the higher the chances that they leave before completing a purchase. The ideal number here is up to three clicks. To get there, make sure you organize your products in different, identifiable categories with names that clearly describe what’s in them.

• Create engaging informative product pages

Remember that before any user even thinks about adding a product to the basket, they browse through your site. They get a feeling from what they see, from the homepage to the product page. You want to focus on creating an engaging experience for them that also presents all the information they might need to know before making a decision.

Include product visuals that portray as best as possible the characteristics of the article: photos from different angles, videos, details. When shopping online, customers don’t get to touch, smell or experience the product in any physical way, and that can be a huge barrier to the shopping process. Reduce it by adding as much visual and descriptive information as you can.

• Reduce loading times

Long loading times can greatly affect cart abandonment rates. Keep in mind that people get easily bored and distracted when browsing online. If you make them wait too long to go through checkout after finally deciding to shop for a product on your site, you can very easily lose them. 

This risk is even bigger for mobile users who already present higher cart abandonment rates as they are. Bottom line, if your site is slow, users will abandon. The checkout page is the step where you want to boost your site’s loading time as much as possible. Making the shopping journey easy and fast in this stage is crucial for customers to complete their purchase and avoid cart abandonment. 

2. Increase site trust

As we mentioned before, one of the main reasons for cart abandonment is a lack of trust in the shopping process. Even though by now most of us are extremely used to shopping online and we do it all the time, there are still a lot of barriers regarding the level of trust on online transactions. 

You’re asking people that don’t know you from anything to trust you, not just with personal information, like email or phone number, but with very private and sensitive credit card and bank account details. It’s your job to increase the level of trust. You can do it by:

• Displaying logos of security companies your work with: One study done by Actual Insights found that, on average, 61% of people did not buy because a trust logo was no were to be found on the site, and over 75% said they didn’t buy because they didn’t recognize the logos used.

 

 

• Including social proof: If you also let users know that others have purchased products from you and had a great experience doing so, you might tilt the balance in your favor. It’s all about adding valuable information that reduces hesitation by increasing trust leves of your site. 

 

 

• Avoiding to request unnecessary information: nobody likes to share their personal details on the internet. Especially if you don’t know what they’re going to be used for, so refrain yourself from asking people to fill endless forms with personal data. If possible, create a “guest checkout” option that doesn’t require users to create a profile on your site.

3. Be honest about your prices!

Unexpected and hidden additional charges in the checkout page is the biggest reason customers leave without completing a purchase. 56% of shoppers claimed to have abandoned their cart because extra rates were not mentioned before. 

To lower this stat, be as transparent as possible from the get go. Make sure to display shipping rates and tax charges as clearly as you can so people can see it and don’t be surprised when they’re about to click that final “complete purchase” button. 

You can add a shipping calculator where customers can introduce their addresses and learn how much it will cost them. Another option is to offer free shipping when a certain basket price is met. This way, not only will the costs be clear, it will be an extra incentive for customers to maybe spend a little more on your site. 

You can reduce cart abandonment rates dramatically if you plan and execute a seamless retargeting strategy. If you want to request a one month demo period to try it out on your site, let us know by clicking here, we’ll be happy to help. 

These articles might also interest you!

• Bidcom reached a 37x ROAS with automated Emails and Web Push Notifications from Frizbit
• The Bible of Web Push Notifications: A Complete Guide for all Levels
• How to Conduct Successful A/B Testing: Go from Beginner to Pro

If you own an online business and have implemented web push notifications as a digital marketing channel to connect with customers, you want to make sure everything is in order and that they’re actually working. You might realize that you don’t receive on one of your devices or browsers and that’s why you should read this article.

Troubleshooting with web push notifications is not that uncommon considering how new this channel is and many people know very little about it. So we have developed a troubleshooting guide to help you solve any problem you might be facing and to make sure your web push notifications are working properly. 

Why am I not getting web push notifications?

Web push notifications work differently for every device and browser. You can read more extensively about it on our Web Push Notifications Bible. However, we are going to list the most common troubleshooting issues you might encounter and how to fix them for every device, browser and operating system and explain each one in detail:

1. You haven’t allowed them
2. You have all push notifications blocked by default on your browser
3. You have an extension such as an ad blocker which blocks receiving push notifications
4. You have reset the settings of the browser, that’s why the service worker is removed
5. You have them blocked by default on your operating system
6. You have enabled “do not disturb” mode on your OS.

Why you’re not getting web push notifications 

1. You haven’t allowed notifications from the site 

If you are a user and you visit a website that has enabled push notifications, you’ll receive an opt-in prompt asking you to allow or block them. If you click “block”, you won’t receive any type of notification from that site, and you won’t be asked again to accept them.  In this case you have to:

1. Go to the lock icon on the top to the left of the address bar

2. Click on it and you’ll see that you have the web push notifications blocked

3. Click on the drop down menu that shows “blocked” and change it to “allow” and refresh the page

2. You have all push notifications blocked by default on your browser

If you tried the previous solution and you’re still not getting web push notifications, the problem might be that you have them blocked by default on your browser. To fix this problem you have to:

1. Open and click the three dots located at the right top side of the browser

2. Go to Settings

3. Type “notifications” in the search bar located at the top of the page

4. A list of options will be displayed, click on “site settings”

5. Scroll down until you see the “notifications” option and click on it to open the configurations panel

6. Make sure the toggle bar that says “Sites may ask you if you want them to send you notifications” is enabled to allow your browser to ask you for the notification permission from the websites that are using them!

7. There’s a second toggle bar that says “Use unobtrusive prompts (block pop-up notifications to avoid interruptions)”. Make sure you have it enabled as well so the opt-in box to ask you for push notification permission is visible just below the bell icon on the address bar as a box. . 

3. You have an extension such as an ad blocker which can prevent receiving push notifications

With the overwhelming amount of internet advertisement out there, there are an equal amount of browser extensions with the sole objective of blocking them. There are hundreds of ad blockers users install to get rid of ads and have a peaceful navigation where they can focus on the content that really interests them. 

Major and the most popular ones like Adblocks, uBlock Origin, or Ghostery don’t block web push notifications. However, with the rise of this alternative digital marketing channel to get in touch with users that usually block ads, or don’t share personal information with webs, some of the new ad blockers specifically designed for blocking web push notifications are rising and new blocking features added to existing ones. 

If you have installed an adblock extension to your browser, check the two previous steps and if you are still not receiving web push notifications, go to your extensions, search for the ad blocker and enable them.

4. You have reset the settings of the browser, that’s why the service worker is removed

In this case I can speak from personal experience. One day I realized that I wasn’t receiving web push notifications from a lot of sites I subscribed to. When I checked, it turned out that on the intent of eliminating a malware installed on my browser I erased all of my browser settings and restored them to default. This caused me to lose all of opt-ins to web push notifications.

To check if this is what’s happening in your case, you need to go to your browser and visit a page in which you were already subscribed. Make a right click anywhere on the site and hit “inspect”. A tab will open with several options, choose “applications¨ and click on “Service Worker” on the left panel. If there’s nothing there, you’ll now know what’s causing you not to receive web push notifications. 

The solution here is very simple: go back to the sites you want and subscribe again by clicking “allow¨ when the opt-in prompt is shown.

If doing this still didn’t work, go to inspect element storage and “clear site data” which will delete all the settings for this site and when you refresh, you’ll start as a new clean user and that should do the trick.

5. You have them blocked by default on your operating system

If you have followed these steps so far and still have problems, the issue might come down to your operating system blocking web push notifications by default. The process to check this depends on your OS, so we´re going to talk you through how to do it on MacOS, Windows and Android. 

• Why am I not getting web push notifications on MacOS?

1. Go to System Preferences by clicking on the apple at the top left corner of your device.
2. Click on “Notifications” and here you’ll get a list of every software that uses any type of notifications of some sort. You have to look out for two things here:

a) Do not disturb mode: The first thing you have to check is if you have enabled the “do not disturb” mode. If you have, this will automatically block any type of notification. And there are other options here, for example you can select not to get notifications if you’re sharing your screen or during certain hours of the day. Make sure your setting adjusts exactly to what you want.

b) Browser notifications: you can select each browser you use from the list of softwares displayed to the left. Select the one you want to check for permissions, and make sure all the options are marked to receive notifications. 

• Why am I not getting web push notifications on Windows?

1. Select the Start or Windows button, and then click Settings 

2. Go to System > Notifications and actions

3. Do any of the following:

 

1. Choose the quick actions you’ll see in the action center.
2. Turn notifications, banners, and sounds on or off for some or all notification senders.
3. Choose whether to see notifications on the lock screen.
4. Choose whether to see notifications when you’re duplicating your screen.

• Why am I not getting web push notifications on Android?

• Browser permissions: 

a) Open your Android device Settings

b) Scroll down and go to Applications and Notifications

c) You’ll get a list of all applications, select your browser 

d) Click on the “notifications” tab

e) Make sure the toggle bar is enabled to allow receiving notifications

f) You can also select one by one the site you wish to allow or block by marking the checkbox. 

 

• Silent mode: Android devices have a “do not disturb” mode and a “no distractions” mode. If you have enabled either of these, you won’t receive any notifications.

• Unofficial apps or OS: Since you might already know, Android stopped supporting Huawei devices. This has caused many unofficial alternatives to come out and a lot of people install them on their mobile devices. If you use one of these versions or apps, most certainly web push notifications won’t show on your device. 

We hope these tips will help you enable web push notifications so you don’t miss out on any news, update or launch from your favourite websites!

Since you’re already here, if you feel like reading a bit more, make sure you check out:

• Web Push Notifications Campaigns VS. Retargeting Ads Campaigns
• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores
• Primor Reached a 36x ROAS with Web Push Notifications from Frizbit

If you own an online store or work on any branch of the digital marketing environment, you know and value the importance of advertising on the web to reach potential customers and bring back visitors. Nowadays, there are many platforms, media, channels and strategies to do so, but one of the most popular is definitely retargeting. 

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is a digital marketing strategy used by online stores to bring back customers that visited a site but didn’t convert, whether completing a purchase, subscribed or filled a form.  Even though retargeting is mainly known for ads, There are many possibilities within the retargeting scenario other than: ads:, email, sms and web push notifications.

What are retargeting ads?

One of the most popular strategies is retargeting ads. When a user visits a site, they usually get a cookie or a pixel that tracks their behaviour on the webpage. After they leave, said cookie helps brands follow the user and show ads related to the category or product they expressed interest in the site, with the objective of bringing them back and completing a conversion.

This strategy doesn’t require users to fill forms or leave any type of information such as email or phone number, since their actions are tracked based on browser and not personal data. However, for the residents in the EU, they should have allowed cookies first.

One of the main benefits of retargeting ads is that they are directed to users that have already expressed interest in your brand and products, hence increasing the conversion rates probabilities. It’s always easier to re-engage with people that already visited the site because of an own, genuine interest than by targeting potential customers that haven’t even heard of your brand before. That’s why retargeting ads have become such a popular and powerful tool. 

Should I use retargeting ads for my website?

Even though they have a well-deserved reputation, retargeting ads also have some downsides to take under consideration before deciding to use them as a part of your digital marketing mix. 

• Reach: One of the main advantages of using retargeting ads is that they allow you to reach almost everybody who allows cookies anywhere on the web. After a user visits your web, it practically doesn’t matter where they’re browsing next, either a blog or media website, social media or any other type of web page who shows ads open to ad exchange. If you’re using retargeting ads campaigns, you can reach them very easily and invite them to go back to your website. Consider that, even if you don’t get a conversion, by using this channel your brand will be on the top of mind of your target audience.

• People use ad blockers: Users tend to feel harassed and can find retargeting ads creepy because of the “following around” sensation they cause. According to Statista “In 2019, roughly 25.8 percent of internet users were blocking advertising on their connected devices” and that number is expected to continue growing in time. The overwhelming amount of advertisements displayed on websites, make navigation uncomfortable for users who ultimately decide to install ad block extensions in their browsers. This means that a bunch of the budget destined to online ads is lost and the message never reaches potential customers. 

• Dependence on deliverability: consider that people who don’t use ad blockers, are bombarded with ads on every website they visit. They are used to seeing a lot of advertisements and it’s very easy to overlook them to just focus on the content they actually want to see. On top of that, for users to come across that ad you put so much love into, they have to navigate a web site that belongs that reaches your display network, which minimizes the probability of the ad fulfilling its function.

• Uplift in sales: you can reach up to a 10% uplift with retargeting ads if you choose your bid targeting properly. If you bid higher, you generate more sales while being less profitable, or if you want to be more profitable you bid less and you reach less people and uplift will be more limited. The point with using this strategy is to re-engage with users that have already visited your site and have expressed interest in your product or service. Since you already got their attention once, it’s much easier to obtain a conversion with them, translating into an uplift of your sales. 

• Profitability: are retargeting ads profitable? The short and simple answer here is it depends. You have to keep in mind that it mainly depends on your CPC and ROAS objectives and also the quality of your campaign, your audience segmentation. The higher CPC you bid, you get more impressions but your ROAS decreases and vice versa. When retargeting the right audience you can see a great increase in conversion and end up with a great ROI. But one of the most important factors when it comes to using retargeting ads, is that you’re bidding against your direct competitors and if their CPC bids are higher, your ad won’t get the impressions that you expect. 

• Retargeting the wrong audience: If you don’t do the integration properly using the “tracking pixel”, you could be losing money by reaching a customer that already bought a product because retargeting ads are not behaviour based. When users enter your site and you leave a cookie on them, if they directly decide to purchase a product on that first visit, they’re going to get an ad later. Not only will you waste your budget by displaying an ad that’s going nowhere, your brand’s reputation will be negatively affected by appearing intrusive and irrelevant.

• Additional workload: depending on the platform you’re working with, your retargeting ads might need to be updated frequently, if you keep showing the exact same ad, with the same message and images to your potential customers, they’ll get bored. You need to dedicate time into designing and creating different versions of the ad that you want to display periodically so users don’t get used to seeing them or bored by them. This translates into an additional workload for you.

Is there an alternative to retargeting ads?

The brightside is that technology is offering marketers new, innovative ways to re-engage online visitors. The direct and best alternative to retargeting ads campaigns are automated web push notifications. They also don’t require users to provide any type of personal information, are browser based and take the lead when it comes to personalisation and reach. 

• Ad blockers don’t affect them: ad blocker extensions don’t block or affect web push notifications in any way. When a subscriber opts-in and consents to receiving them, the message will always be delivered when users open their browsers, on both mobile or desktop, and start navigating any site. Web push notifications have a much higher acceptance than retargeting ads, especially because you give people the choice to allow or block them and opt-out whenever they want to: you put them in control so they don’t find them creepy or inappropriate. Some extensions can block them.

 

• The right message to the right person at the right time: automated web push notifications allow you to create message sequences based on individual consumer behaviour. These messages are triggered by events the users complete on your website. For example, if a user browses a product page but doesn’t add the article to the basket, he will receive a retargeting web push notification as a reminder to continue with the shopping process. This triggered notification won’t be sent if the user ads the product to the cart and so on: one event excludes the other. This automation guarantees that users will receive the right message with a high level of personalisation that retargeting ads don’t allow. 

• Guaranteed deliverability: one of the biggest advantages of web push notifications is their reachability. Users who opt-in receive them on both desktop and mobile devices, regardless of the website they’re navigating on. Unlike retargeting ads, web push notifications are shown on any website, not the publishers or a network display one. This guarantees that your message comes across every time. As another benefit, when it comes to retargeting ads, as we mentioned before, it’s very easy for them to get lost in a jungle of ads displayed on a site. This will never be a problem with web push notifications, as they’ll appear on a corner of the screen (on desktop) or a regular app notification on mobile devices. Users just won’t miss them. 

 

• Automation reduces workload: the setup process of the campaigns has to be done just one time only. Service platforms like Frizbit take care of the integration process in just a day and hand over ready-to-use templates that clients can customise as much as they want. This means that you won’t have to be creating, designing and changing your campaigns constantly to keep it interesting for your potential customers. Web push notifications by Frizbit include dynamic parameters that fill in automatically to make the message as personalised and relevant as it can be by adding user name, product name, brand and images and more. There’s no other retargeting channel that allows as much customisation as web push notifications do. 

Should I use retargeting ads or automated retargeting web push notifications?

To sum up, the truth is that a great digital marketing strategy includes a mix of channels combined to get the best results and achieve objectives the most efficient way possible. Retargeting ads and web push notifications can easily coexist in the same online strategy. However, the pros and cons of each channel are very clear. 

Ultimately the decision will have to be based on your industry, type of products and budget. Between both channels, web push notifications have shown to offer greater results in terms of ROAS, click-through rates and conversion rates. 

You are welcome to read our clients success stories and see for yourself what an automated web push notification retargeting campaign can do for your online business. 

• Bidcom Success Story

• Primor Success Story

• Mi Cuento Success Story

February is a very short month. With only 28 days, there seems not to be enough time for things to change in the digital marketing world. However, there are some remarkable events to take note of and we have gathered the most important digital marketing insights and updates from February 2021 just for you. 

Digital Marketing Insights and Updates from February 2021

1. Search Marketing Updates

Responsive search ads now the default in Google ads

Responsive search ads are ads adaptable to show more text and relevant information to customers. When creating one, you can enter multiple descriptions and headlines that Google will automatically test with different combinations and, in time, learn which ones perform better. The goal is to discover what type of messages adapts better to customer’s searches and ultimately improve the performance of your paid search ad campaigns. 

Google recommends to have at least one responsive search ad per ad group. Very recently, they announced that they’re making responsive search ads now the default in Google ads, based on how promising result are:

Using machine learning, responsive search ads automatically identify the best combination of headlines and descriptions to deliver the right ad to the right person. In fact, we’ve seen advertisers that add responsive search ads in their ad groups achieve up to 10% more clicks and conversions. – Sylvanus Bent, Product Manager, Google Ads

Google claims that Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way consumers conduct online searches, thus accelerating the need to change how those results are presented to them. According to Google responsive search ads (RSAs) are the answer to that need and they can offer much better results for businesses.

They have shared a list of best practices to optimise RSAs as much as possible:

• Use Ad strength when writing headlines and descriptions to understand the effectiveness of your ads. 
• Take advantage of location insertion and countdown customizers to show ads that are relevant and meaningful.
• Use Smart Bidding and broad match keywords.
• Review cross-campaign asset reporting to understand which creative assets resonate most with your customers.

New association functionality added to Search Console

Google also announced they’ve added a new association functionality to Search Console that will allow to connect a Search Console property with another Google property such as Analytics, a Youtube channel or a Google Chrome Web Store. 

This new feature allows sites to access and unlock other functions:

• Google Analytics: View your Search Console data, such as organic search queries, in your Google Analytics property. 
• Google Ads account: View the paid and organic report in Google Ads.
• YouTube channel: Link your videos to your associated website.
• Play Console app: Use App Indexing.
• Actions Console project: Verify your brand and enable cross-platform functionality.
• Chrome Web Store account: Publish apps and extensions to the Chrome Web Store on behalf of your site.

The association features depend on the association type and you can access them through the Association Page via the settings menu in your Search Console account. 

2. Marketing Tech Updates 

Microsoft announced limited access to neural text speech AI

The Microsoft Custom Neural Voice text-to-speech AI allows developers to create custom synthetic voices. The recently announced limited access to this technology.

The Custom Neural Voice is a Text-to-Speech (TTS) feature of Speech in Azure Cognitive Services that allows users to create a one-of-a-kind customized synthetic voice for their brand.  – Azure Microsoft

The neural speech AI has many possible applications for different brands and industries that can benefit both customers and businesses. Chatbots, voice assistants, audio books, online learning and translations can take advantage of this technology and improve customer experience by customising their synthetic voices. 

The technology consists of three main components that improve results: text analyser, neural acoustic model, and neural vocoder. These three elements work together to reduce by 50% pronunciation errors and optimise workflow. 

Interested brands must apply and be approved by Microsoft to access it. “Alternatively, developers can add text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities to their apps quickly by creating an Azure Speech instance and selecting from a rich choice of over 200 voices” stated de Microsoft announcement.

Magento released Magento Commerce 2.4.2 for Digital E-commerce Growth

Magento recognizes the importance of digital businesses, especially since 2020 and the migration of many stores to a digital environment. That’s why they keep focusing on offering their customers the best service and experience possible. 

Early this month Magento released Magento Commerce 2.4.2 along with security-only patches 2.3.6-p1 and 2.4.1-p1 that focus on enhancing performance and increasing security. 

Magento Commerce 2.4.2 assists merchants in maximizing their opportunities with enhancements to B2B purchase approvals, expanded PWA and GraphQL support, and improvements to the Page Builder and Media Gallery performance and developer experience.  

The update includes improvements to:

• B2B capabilities for purchase approvals
• Image optimisation
• Faster time to market
• In-product guidance
• Several enhancements to platform quality

3. Social Media Updates

Twitter develops “Spaces” a competitor for Clubhouse app

If by now you don’t know what Clubhouse is, I’m sorry to tell you that you’re living under a rock. The popular only-voice based app has been causing a bit of a stir in the social media world. It’s gaining popularity and subscribers by the second and everyone wants to get invited.

No wonder competitors are starting to raise and Twitter has rolled out Spaces. This new feature allows Twitter users to create audio-only chat rooms with up to 10 speakers at a time with no limit on number of participants. To create a Space, the users has to long press the compose icon and tap a new Spaces button that will show on the far left. 

The user that creates the room gets to decide who has permission to speak, choosing from everyone, people you follow or specific individuals. Spaces requires users’ permission to access the microphone and it will activate automatically as soon as the “Start your Space” button is clicked. 

To this moment, this new feature is only available for a small group of iOS users while Twitter gathers feedback from users. They claim that soon, Spaces will be available for more people and for Android devices as well. 

LinkedIn is developing a new freelance marketplace

As an effort to help professionals face the working crisis created by Covid-19 pandemic, LinkedIn is rolling out a new Freelancers Marketplace. The objective is to help professional freelancers and businesses to find each other, connect and work together. 

LinkedIn’s network counts with over 740 million users and the new Freelancers Marketplace will compete with similar websites like Upwork, Freelancer of Fiverr. It will count with a digital wallet through which businesses can pay professionals, facilitating the transactions and offering some type of insurance to all parties. 

The general opinion is that this is a very smart move from LinkedIn as it will revalue the platform for many professionals. Due to the pandemic, this new feature could open the door to professional freelancers to work from home to any part of the world and for businesses to find the perfect candidate for the job anywhere around the globe. 

Instagram to launch multi-participant live stream 

Digital meetings and e-gatherings have never been so popular (and necessary) as they have since last year. The appearance of softwares that allows groups of people to join video chats is on the rise and, so far, Instagram has been a little behind on the run, until now.

Earlier February, Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri, revealed that the popular social media platform was working on a multi-participant live stream feature to be launched at the end of the month. 

“We have been working on live groups – finally. […] We’re releasing the ability to go live with more than one other person, so with up to four other people, in the next couple of weeks, which we’re really excited about.”

Instagram has been working on this feature for a while now. Since last December they rolled out a version in India as an attempt to capitalize on the ban on TikTok. They had very promising results with a rise of 60% of views. 

While there’s still no official date for the new multi-participant live stream release on Instagram, from what we’ve read, it doesn’t seem like we will have to wait much longer. 

If you’re interested in digital marketing trends, tips and updates keep track of our blog: 

• The Bible of Web Push Notifications: A Complete Guide for all Levels
• How to Conduct Successful A/B Testing: Go from Beginner to Pro
• The Future of Digital Marketing Without 3rd Party Cookies

Bidcom, an online retailer leader in consumer electronics, partnered with Frizbit to implement a retargeting strategy to recover abandoned carts. With a masterful combination of automated behavioural email and hyper personalised web push notifications campaigns, they managed to bring back 15% of their subscribers and reach a ROAS of 37x with a cost per session as low as 0,04€.

Bidcom Success Story!

We have put together a complete and comprehensive Case Study of Bidcom’s success working with Frizbit. We get into details on the challenge the client was facing, their needs, expectations and how Frizbit’s platform presented a new, top-notch digital marketing retargeting strategy as a solution. 

Email marketing has always been the favorite marketing channel to reach users and tackle the major issue online stores face: abandoned carts. Frizbit wanted to integrate this channel to Bidcom’s strategy to offer the best result possible. Behavioural automated emails offer a high level of personalisation by including relevant information like user name, product name, price and image. 

However, to create a bullet proof abandoned cart recovery strategy, automated web push notifications were the key ingredient. This new channel offered Bidcom the possibility to reach and engage visitors that didn’t fill any form or completed any type of registration on both desktop and mobile.

Bidcom is now retargeting even anonymous visitors through the entire shopping funnel with highly relevant messages that enhance user experience, focusing on cart abandonment recovery. 

The integration process is very simple as Frizbit’s team takes care of implementing via Google Tag Manager. With the ready-to-use templates, in just one day, clients can start sending campaigns as soon as they want, or they can choose to customise the messages, designs and timings to fit the brand’s identity as much as they desire. 

Request a demo

If you are interested in learning more about Bidcom’s success with retargeting email and web push notifications, download the case study by clicking here: https://get.frizbit.com/bidcom-success-story-frizbit/

You can get in touch with Frizbit to request a demo and see the benefits it can present for your online business as well. 

SUMMARY

1. What are web push notifications?
   • Definition (what are they, what are they used for, where are they shown and in which formats)
   • What’s the difference between web push and mobile push notifications?
   • What’s the difference between pop-ups and web push notifications?
   • What elements compose a web push notification?
   • What operating systems do they work on?
   • What browsers support web push notifications?
   • What devices support web push notifications?
2. How do web push notifications work?
   • Opt-in process
   • Manual web push notifications
   • Automated web push notifications by Frizbit
3. Why should I use web push notifications on my website?
   • Retention of anonymous users
   • Reach users outside of the website
   • Desktops and mobile reach without having and app 
   • Quick traffic generator
   • Time efficient
4. Are web push notifications effective?
   • High opt-in rate
   • High CTR
   • Profitable channel
   • How much can you increase revenue?
5. How do I send web push notifications from my website?
   • How to install web push notifications
6. What metrics should I track to optimize my web push notification campaign?
   • How to measure web push notifications performance
   • Metrics to keep track of
7. Are web push notifications GDPR compliant?
8. What makes a good web push notification?
   • It’s relevant
   • It’s personal
   • It’s specific
9. How to choose a web push notification service provider?

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1. What are Web Push Notifications?

Web push notifications are clickable messages sent by a website and appear on the screen of a user’s device, even if the website is closed and the user hasn’t filled any type of registration form. It is the latest and a very powerful digital channel for websites to re-engage and communicate with subscribers who opt-in to receive them, providing useful/interesting information.

• What are web push notifications used for?

They’re used as a direct communication channel to keep users informed about news, promotions, abandoned products on their shopping carts or general information and updates. Web push notifications can be installed on any website: e-commerce, newspapers, blogs or magazines and their purpose is to entice users to return to the site and complete an specific action.

• Where do web push notifications appear?

The format and position of web push notifications changes depending on the operative system, browser and device they appear on. They slide on the top right corner on Mac devices, on the bottom right corner on Windows devices , and on mobile they appear in the same way to a regular push notification from an app.

• What’s the difference between web and mobile push notifications?

Mobile push notifications are messages sent by an app that is installed on a mobile device or tablet. In order to receive them, users need to give permission and they’re shown on the screen of the device, no matter if the user is actively on that app or not.

Web push notifications are simply the website version of the app push notifications. They are messages sent by a website and delivered through browsers even when the users are not on that website, to both mobile and desktop devices.

The first time a user accesses a notifications-enabled website, users will be asked if they would like to to allow or block them by a browser permission prompt, just like apps would ask their users to allow notifications.

• What’s the difference between pop-ups and web push notifications?

A pop-up is a message that suddenly shows-up on a website over the content while the user is currently navigating on it. The majority of them show-up as soon as a user lands on the page. In some cases they can be activated based on users’ actions, such as a click, scrolling down, spending a specific time period or closing a window (exit intent pop-ups).

Pop-ups can appear both on desktop and mobile, and are typically used for advertisement with the purpose of directing the user’s attention to a specific message in the site they’re visiting. User experience is usually diminished by these types of messages as they’re considered intrusive and annoying.

Web push notifications differ from pop-ups mainly because they’re shown on the screen of the user not necessarily within the browser window even if the user is not on the website, while pop-ups can only be shown within the browser window when the user is actively browsing on that website. 

• What elements compose a web push notification?

Web push notifications are composed of various elements that conform their anatomy. They include: icon, headline, description, call to action button, a large image and the page url from where it’s being sent. All the elements are modifiable for each notification, you can change the icon, image, text, CTA for each one if you wish to. 

• Icon: The icon is usually the logo of the brand. Its position inside the notification varies between different OS and browsers, but is always visible. The icon has to be a square image preferably at least 256 x 256 px.
  • Tips and insights: if you use your logo, you can adapt the design to match the season or a holiday!

• Headline: The headline is the first text line of the notification. It usually appears in bold letters as an attempt to catch the user’s attention in most of the browsers & OS’s. The length of the visible area varies between 43 to 69 characters depending on different OS and browsers 
  • Tips and insights: use the most appealing words at the first 43 characters of your content to make sure it’s visible regardless of the OS and browser.

• Description: The description is the textual content that follows the headline and it’s used to offer a more detailed explanation. The length of the visible area varies between 50 to 136 characters depending on the OS and browser. 
  • Tips and insights: use the most appealing words at the first 50 characters of your content to make sure it’s visible in all OS and browsers. Personalise the content using the dynamic parameters in this section as it has more area which can accommodate longer values of parameters

• Large Image (Optional): An image that complements the message, it should be descriptive and appealing. It’s only visible on Google Chrome, Windows and Android OS.
  • Tips and insights: push notifications with images have a 20% higher CTR, according to A/B testing conducted by several Frizbit clients. The ideal ratio of the image to make it visible on all OS and devices is 2×1 horizontal, minimum size being 512 x 256 px and recommended size being 1024 x 512 px. You can read more about the ideal size and resolution for rich web push notifications here.

• Page URL: Is the domain of the website that’s sending the notification, the one the user subscribed to. The subscriber can be directed to any destination URL, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same domain. 
  • Tips and insights: send subscribers to a page as close to the lower end of the shopping funnel as possible. This will increase the possibility of conversion. Don’t forget to add UTM tags to track the traffic coming from each different push notification campaign

• Action button (Optional): Action buttons (you can have up to two) are optional buttons which can be used as call to action to tell users what you want them to do, what action is expected from them. Its visibility also varies depending on OS and device. It is possible to define a distinct URL to action buttons, other than the main URL of the notification.
  • Tips and insights: be precise on the CTA (Call to Action), tell the subscribers exactly what you want them to do: finish your purchase, book now. Don’t forget to add UTM tags to track the traffic coming from each different push notification campaign.

Even though all web push notifications include the same elements, how they’re shown will depend on the browser, operating system and device. Some will include the image, some won’t and the visibility of the text and action buttons will vary as well. 

All the elements can be highly customised with personalised text, images and even emojis. If you make use of the dynamic parameters, you can include even more specific information such as category name, product name, product image, product price and user name to make the message as relevant as possible for each user, making them feel that you’re talking directly to them.

• What operating systems support web push notifications?

Web push notifications are supported by all major operating systems, except iOS. Windows, Android, MacOS work properly with web push while iOS doesn’t support them by default. 

• What browsers support web push notifications?

All major browsers, Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and Microsoft Edge support web push notifications, except Internet Explorer. 

• What devices support web push notifications?

Web push notifications are shown on desktop, mobile and tablets even if the user has left the website. Their appearance and where they’re shown will vary depending on the operating system of the device. 

2. How do web push notifications work?

• From the publisher’s perspective

Web push notifications work for any kind of website. Any brand or business that owns a website can configure and send web push notifications very easily. No mobile app is required to do so, and the implementation is fairly simple by adding a small piece of code from a web push notification service platform to their site. We explain the process with more detail ahead in this article. 

• From the user’s perspective

Web push notifications is a permission based marketing channel, which means that it can be only sent to a user if they allow a website to do so. In order to start receiving web push notifications all a user needs to do is basically to opt-in (give permission to that particular website to send push notifications) and become a subscriber. This can be done by two ways:

• Native opt-in: is the browsers’ default prompt to ask users their permission to subscribe to the web push notifications channel. It includes a non-customizable text and uses the language settings chosen by the user. It triggers when a user visits a site for the first time and they have to click “allow” or “block”.

 

• Custom opt-in: is a form of opt-in which shows first a pop-up that can be customized with the website’s branding that also appears the first time a user visits the site. It offers the possibility to personalise the message and include the logo of the brand. It can be shown on the top middle of the screen and after clicking “allow” on, it triggers the browsers’ opt-in prompt, in which the user must give permission again to become a subscriber. The downside of using a custom opt-in, is that it requires two clicks from users in order to actually allow the notifications and this results in a 3x decreased opt-in rate.

• Opt-out: How to disable web push notifications?

When it comes to this channel, the users have complete control over them. In order to unsubscribe from web push notifications, subscribers just need to access their browser settings panel, look for the notifications option, find the website they would like to opt-out and select “block”. The process may vary a little depending on the browser you use, for details you can check these articles:

• How to disable push notifications on Chrome,
• How to disable push notifications on Safari,
• How to disable push notifications on Firefox

• Types of web push notifications

There are two types of web push notifications: manual and automated. Depending on the service provider you choose, you’ll have more options regarding the type of messages you can send. The difference between them is their triggering mechanism:

• Manual (bulk) push notifications: manual web push notifications are used to send manually a massive communication to all or a segment of users informing about special discounts, promotions, time sensitive sales or new products. They could be understood as the push notification equivalent to email newsletters. You can send messages regarding:

• News
• New blog post
• Event information
• Flash sale
• New products

• Automated (triggered) push notifications: automated notifications are highly personalised messages sent to users based specifically on their individual behaviour on the site. They’re designed and scheduled to be sent automatically in predetermined time frames after a user completes an action. You can define as many scenarios as you wish to trigger an automated web push notification, depending what type of site you have:

• E-commerce: you can define events that send a message to users for every step of the funnel. Ex. Cart Abandonment, Product Retargeting, Category Retargeting.

• Travel: you can define events to trigger notifications to recover lost reservations of the users that didn’t complete the booking or to improve the UX of the trip. Ex. Last Seats for a specific destination, last available room, check-in, boarding, luggage reminders.

• B2B/SaaS: you can generate more leads by sending a sequence of web push notifications to nurture leads that visited a page but dind’t complete a sign up.

• Real Estate: you can generate more leads and interactions by  communicating with users about a listing they have viewed but didn’t engage with it or recommending similar properties or announce them about new listings.

• Why should I use web push notifications on my website?

Web push notifications present a direct and real-time communication channel with users. Subscribers receive the message when they’re online, which highly increases the chances of interaction within minutes of the notification being sent. There’s no other digital marketing channel that has this inherent power that web push notifications have. 

• Engage anonymous users 

The main reason web push notifications are becoming so popular amongst marketers, is because it is a unique channel to retain users that didn’t leave any personal information on the website. To become a subscriber, a user has to simply click “allow” on the opt-in prompt without filling any form, sharing their email address or any other type of personal data. This presents a major opportunity for businesses to create a flow of communication with users that might never decide to drop their email. 

• Reach both desktop and mobile without having an app

One the most attractive features of web push notifications is that they don’t require an app to function. In order to send a push notification, you just need to have a website and you can reach your subscribers on both desktop and mobile devices. This means that you don’t have to wait for users to check their emails to get the message through. Being able to reach people at any time, on any device is a unique advantage of web push notifications.

• Reach users out of the website

What makes web push notifications so special is that they can reach audiences even when they’re not actively browsing your website. If a user subscribes, leaves and starts navigating any other site, they’ll still receive notifications from you. There’s currently no other direct digital marketing channel you can do this with, which adds to the list of reasons why you should use web push notifications on your website. 

• Generate traffic in seconds

Web push notifications is a real-time communication channel. This means users get the message the moment they’re online which inmensely increases the chances of interaction. On average, most notifications are clicked within the first hour after receiving it. For example, with manual web push notifications, you can direct lots of traffic in a very short period of time. In less than a minute after sending it, you’ll see sessions being generated on your web and users engaging with the site in real-time in your web analytics solution.

• Time efficient

Digital and online businesses are used to working with multiple marketing tools to get their message across. Most of the time it would seem overwhelming to add one more channel to the mix. However, web push notifications is different. The campaign setup is extremely simple and you don’t have to spend a lot of time creating each message and manually sending it. Using automation you can create templates that will be sent automatically when triggered by an event you define on your site. You’ll only need to invest some time once to configure your campaigns and that’s it!

• Are web push notifications effective?

The most simple and straightforward answer is YES! But let’s dig a little deeper. If used wisely it can become the most effective retargeting channel for online businesses. 

• High opt-in rate

Web push notifications have proven to be much more effective than other traditional channels. They have an average 3x higher opt-in rate than emails, which can easily be related to how seamless the process is. With just one click, visitors can become subscribers without handing over their email address or other personal information. Reducing the steps one person has to follow and complete to opt-in to any type of digital communication, will decrease the hesitation and make them more open minded to subscribe. 

• High CTR

Stats have shown that web push notifications have a 4x times higher click through rate than emails. That’s a 8,5% over in comparison to the 2.4% CTR of emails. The hyper-personalisation capabilities of web push notifications, allow to significantly increase the CTRs. When people feel like you’re really talking specifically to them, it will translate into more clicks and that is one of the biggest benefits of using web push notifications. 

• Profitable channel

Web push notifications present a very valuable alternative for marketers that allocate a big part of their marketing budget to retargeting ads. Most web push notification services are based on monthly fees that vary on the amount of subscribers or visits to the website. There are no extra fees for the amount of messages sent, implementation nor PPC rates involved. You can send unlimited notifications. 

This makes the cost of retaining a customer very profitable. Consider that returning users that have already converted are the biggest asset to your business. Web push notifications allow you to bring them back without having to spend a large marketing budget chasing them around with expensive retargeting ads. 

• How much can you increase your revenue with web push notifications?

Web push notifications offer varied results depending on the industry, type of business and amount of traffic of the site. You can access our calculator and introduce a few data to estimate how much you can increase your revenue using web push notifications in just a few clicks: https://get.frizbit.com/revenue-calculator/

• How do I send web push notifications from my website?

1. Upload Service Worker

The process of implementing web push notifications is very simple and can be done in any website. The first thing you have to do is to upload the Service Worker file of your provider to the root folder of your website’s domain. A Service Worker is a file that allows a browser to run functions that don’t need a web page such as sending push notifications to a user when they are not on your site. 

2. Add JavaScript snippet

The next step is to add the JavaScript snippet of your provider that will help you create a user profile for every person that visits your site, allowing you to to track their behaviour. There are two options to do this:

A) Via Google Tag Manager: most web pages nowadays already use GTM and you can easily add this snippet as a tag on GTM. Besides, a web push notification service provider such as Frizbit can offer all the implementation on GTM in a few moments.

B) Adding directly to the web: if you don’t work with Google Tag Manager, you have the alternative to directly add the JavaScript snippet by copying and pasting it inside the <head></head> section of your website.

Working with a web push provider makes the process very simple, since they can take care of all the configuration, onboarding and then they hand everything over to you. After the setup is complete, you’ll instantly start collecting subscribers when they visit your site and opt-in. All that’s left is to design the notifications. Some providers, like Frizbit, will offer you templates, advice and support for the optimization of your campaigns.

• How to create a web push notification?

Web push notification service providers usually have a dashboard where you can create the content of push notifications. Frizbit’s dashboard allows you to design your messages personalising with the use of all kinds of dynamic parameters and also see the changes in your design in real time for each browser and operating system. This way you have complete control and awareness of how the notification will be shown to users. 

• Access the dashboard, select “New” and enter a name for your campaign
• Fill in the information of the title, and description and include the icon
• Select the options for Google Chrome and add a large image, write the message for the call to action. You can add a second one if you wish to.
• Follow the same steps for Safari
• In the “Advanced Options” tab, you can set a timer and add a tag for your campaign.
• Proceed to select when and how you want the notification to be delivered: right now, scheduled, recurring or event triggered. 
• Next, continue with the audience segmentation. Here you can select as many filters as you wish, such as language, country, type of event, browser, device and much more. 

Once you’re done, you can save your design as a draft or publish immediately. The web push notification you created, will be saved on your dashboard and you can edit it later or copy it for new creations. 

Remember you can perform different versions and conduct A/B testing. You can assign percentages of users to each campaign variation and see for yourself which one performs better. Use the results to optimize your notifications as much as possible and get the best results. 

• What metrics should I track to optimize my web push notification campaigns?

Web push notifications significantly increase user engagement and improve retention rates. There are several metrics you should keep an eye on in order to constantly improve your campaigns. 

• Opt-in rate: is the percentage of the unique users on your site clicking “allow” and becoming subscribers. Keeping track of this information will give you hints on where to ask users if they want to receive notifications from your site and adjust accordingly. You can place the opt-in prompt in any page you want, and trigger it by an action of the user. It’s not necessary to ask permission within the second a visitor enters the site. 

• Click-through rate: is the percentage of subscribers that click the notification over the total number of subscribers you sent it to. It’s so important to keep close track of this number, because it lets you know what type of notifications your subscribers are responding to. You can test different messages changing the title, image, description and CTA and analyse which ones are resulting in more clicks. 

• Time spent on a page: when sending a notification, you tell users what to expect when they click on it. Directing them to a good landing page that fulfills their expectations is key. That’s why you should keep track of how much time subscribers spend on a page after they click the notification. This will give you valuable insight on how the messages portrayed in the notification meets the landing’s information. If there’s no connection between the copy of the notification and the content of the page you send users to, bounce rate will increase, letting you know there’s an issue in copywriting.

• Opt-out rate: shows the number of people that unsubscribed from web push notifications from your site. This is a vital metric to keep track of. Naturally your opt-in numbers should be much higher than opt-outs. If you discover that your opt-out rates are increasing over time, ring your alarm bells and start looking for the problem. In this case it’s usually related to low relevance of your notifications, or maybe you’re sending too many notifications that your subscribers perceive as spam and decide to opt-out. 

• Conversion rate: this is the ultimate goal of your campaign and the main metric of any type of business. This metric indicates the accomplishment of your goal, whether completed sales, signup or another type of engagement.  All of the improvement efforts for other metrics should be aimed at ultimately increasing conversion rates. You can have great opt-in rate or click-through rates, but if they’re not translating into conversions, it is time to evaluate your web push notifications campaign strategy in place, identify the problem and do whatever it requires to resolve it. 

You can keep track of the majority of these metrics, setting goals on Google Analytics and checking the reports that provide your web push notifications provider. 

• Are web push notifications GDPR compliant?

Web push notifications are GDPR compliant by nature. They present a direct communication channel with users with no personal data requirements. This means that users have to give  consent to become recipients, but they don’t have to provide their name, email, phone number or any other type of personal information. 

These instant alert messages are device oriented. The user is not targeted based on some personal data they share, but to their device. The subscription information is all stored in the browser, so businesses have no access to it and can’t use it or sell it in any way. 

The user is the one in complete control by having access to the notifications panel, where they can easily decide to opt-out if they wish to. 

• What makes a good web push notification?

The best web push notifications have three attributes that bring results: they’re relevant, personal and precise. This channel offers many possibilities that can greatly benefit your online business if used correctly. If you exploit all its features with a well-thought strategy and avoid common mistakes, you’ll be a web push notification lover just like us. 

A great web push notification is:

• Relevant: Tracking the user’s behaviour on your site gives you all that you need in order to make the notification as relevant as possible. Define different scenarios to trigger a specific notification based on each user activity, so that the message they receive is directly linked to what they did on the site. You also want to keep in mind user segmentation. You don’t want to send a special offer on a product today, to a customer that bought it the day before. The same way you should keep in mind to send notifications about sales or special offers during the time they’re active and deactive the campaign the minute the promotion is over. Web push notifications that are highly relevant, have much higher click through rates. 

• Personal: Make use of all the dynamic parameters available: user name, product name, category name, image or any other available parameter to design a super personalised notification. If a user feels that you’re talking directly to him, the message will present a higher value and the user will be more enticed to engage with it. You should also contemplate language and time zone. Customize the campaign for each language and country you’re sending it to. The content of your web push notification has to appeal to each subscriber as an individual. 

• Specific: Great web push notifications let the subscriber know exactly what you want them to do and what they can expect when clicking that action button. Make it clear and precise with your title, message and CTA. Write the text keeping in mind how it will display on each OS and browser. Write the most important message in the title to make sure it’s always visible and make sure you link to the right landing page where your subscribers will find all you promised in the notification. 

• How to choose a web push notification service provider?

There are a list of features and considerations to be made when choosing a web push notification service. It’s important that you do your research and don’t jump ahead and go for the first service you find online. The main aspects you must consider are:

• Customer data protection

There are many well-known free web push notifications service providers in the market. You might feel enticed to choose one of these instead of a paid one. The thing is, that free web push notifications services might sell your customer’s information, they’re “free” for a reason. When using one of these providers, you allow them to collect and sell your subscribers behavioural data, which can be purchased by your very own competitors. You have to decide which price to pay: a normal service fee or to sell subscribers personal information to third parties. 

• Subscriber portability

When choosing a web push notification provider, you want to make sure you collect subscribers under your own domain. Some of the providers offer you an alternative way of subscription where the users will be subscribed to a subdomain of the provider rather than the domain of the business itself. If you agree to this, all the subscribers that accept and opt-in to notifications from you, won’t belong to your website, they’ll belong to the website of your service provider. This means that, if one day, you wish to change providers for whatever reason, you’ll lose all your subscriber’s base and will have to start from scratch.

• Personalisation and automation

Make sure you select a platform that offers the option of hyper-personalisation through dynamic parameters. As we mentioned before, customised notifications that include details like user name, have higher CTRs and lower opt-out rates. The same happens with automation. Notifications triggered by the behaviour of users on the website, have high relevance that translates in better engagement. 

• Good customer support

Whether you’re new with web push notifications, or have been using them for a while, good customer support is extremely important. You want to choose a provider that’s always going to be present if you have any doubt, concern or issue with your campaigns. Frizbit offers its clients a step by step onboarding, ready-to-send templates for your automated campaigns and consulting of any type. 

When choosing a push notification provider, seek one that offers a trial period. This will help you ensure it ticks all the boxes and put you at ease with your decision. If you want to request a demo from Frizbit, click here and let us know!

This might interest you!

• Web Push Notifications Done Right – 7 Mistakes To Avoid!
• 7 Reasons to Start Using Web Push Notifications Now
• E-commerce web push notifications success story

A/B testing is a great method to help you determine in which direction to go with your marketing strategy. Its objective is to shade some light on what type of content resonates with your target audience in each stage of the funnel, by reducing the guesswork on what specific elements will make people want to make that click and convert. 

What is A/B testing?

To conduct A/B testing campaigns, you need to run two versions of one single piece of content: the same piece with one variable changed. Then, you choose a percentage of your audience to show each version to, and analyze which of them performs better during a specific time period. 

For example, let’s pretend you want to send a manual web push notification campaign alerting users about a special summer sale. You’ve done your research on how to increase click-through rates of your notifications, and you have the gut feeling that you should add emojis to your message. 

Instead of going with your instinct on this, run an A/B test. Send one notification with emojis to 50% of your subscribers, and the same notification (same image, copy and CTA) to the other 50%, but without any emojis. When you analyze the results of the campaign, you’ll know if your audience interacts more with web push notifications that include emojis or not. 

This information provided by the testing, will work for you to design future messages that appeal more to your audience. If you already know they click more on notifications that include emojis, you’ll translate that result to your next campaigns by always adding emojis. After that, you can test other variables, like CTA messages, tone of the communication or images. 

You can perform A/B testing to every digital marketing strategy you want: website, landing pages, emails, text messages, ads and web push notifications. Trying out different images, copies and layouts with split tests will provide you with valuable insights to optimize your marketing efforts.

Conducting successful A/B testing can translate into a direct improvement of conversion rates.  By identifying which elements are the most effective ones, and then combining them in one strategy, you’ll see an increase in CTRs and audience engagement. 

How to conduct successful A/B testing

1. Know your audience

This is fundamental information and the most basic step to cover when planning any type of marketing strategy, including A/B testing. Before starting any type of test, you better take into consideration a minimum of basic demographic information about your audience:

• Age
• Gender
• Income range
• Profession

When you have and manage basic, but rich data like this, you can plan the A/B test more accurately. Having insights and understanding the needs of the people you’re talking to, will give you information about how to conduct the test more effectively: what goal you should measure and which variables to change and try out to get the results you’re looking for.

If you’re thinking about skipping this step because, either way, the test will give you information on what works, don’t. It might seem like gathering this information is an extra and unnecessary effort, but it’ll help you run a more precise A/B testing and even save time in the long run. 

2. Define your goals 

Kudos if your immediate answer to this was: increase my sales. At the end of the day that’s the main goal of all digital marketing campaigns. However, your A/B testing objective is different, even if the ultimate goal of optimizing your strategies is to increase your revenue. You have to think more detailed here: what do you want to achieve by running an A/B test? 

• To get more newsletter signups?
• Turn visitors into customers?
• Increase traffic?
• To get more form submissions?

Each one of these goals would translate into a different type of A/B testing. All of the channels you use in your digital marketing mix have their own characteristics, properties and final objectives. A landing page has very different elements than an email, a web push notification or an SMS, and each of them its own variables:

• CTA
• Headline
• Copy
• Image
• Graphic elements
• Colors
• Layout

When you have a very clear vision of what you want to achieve by running an A/B test, you’ll know exactly what strategy and channel to conduct it in. Even though you can perform tests on everything you want (web, landing, email) is best if you begin by focusing your efforts on one at a time. 

3. Create a hypothesis to test

By this point you have a clear view of the purpose for your A/B testing and have decided which, of all your digital marketing channels, is the best to begin with. It’s time to choose exactly which variable you want to test. Based on the previous work about your buyer persona and goals, you can now determine a hypothesis and choose the element of your communication that’s going to impact the most towards the achievement of the objectives. 

To create your hypothesis, you have to identify the needs of your target audience, compare them with the objectives of your business and try to minimize the distance between both. There are reasons why your users are not converting and this is when you start to think how to resolve the issues stopping them from doing it. 

For example, the problem might be that your call to action is not clear and your audience doesn’t know what’s the next step. Maybe the offer is not attractive enough, or the message is getting lost in translation due to an unclear copy. 

4. Choose the element to test

When you know your audience and analyse each element on its own, you can start creating hypotheses to test, which will lead you to the selection of the element to try. The one you select to conduct the A/B testing, has its own inherent variables. 

You have to break it down into tiny pieces and choose the component you’re going to change and try out. For example, if you have chosen to test your CTA, now you have to select between its parts:

• Size
• Position
• Color
• Copy
• Shape

It’s normal to run several A/B tests before making a final decision. If you contrast element A against B, after getting your first results, you can then leave A and use something else for B. This is a process that takes time and you have to be patient. 

5. Document you results

If you’re running an A/B testing, your purpose is to learn what works best and apply that new knowledge towards the achievement of your business goals. The only way to get there is to document all the process and the outcomes of the trials. If you skip this part, don’t even bother on doing an A/B testing.

The documentation can be as simple or complex as you like. The most basic metrics you should keep track depend on what element and variables you decided to test. Keep in mind that, even if you’re testing the CTA, the results of this process might lead to insights on your entire campaign that you can later apply to your overall strategy. 

If by testing the performance of the call to action, you discover that your audience prefers straightforward communication, you can use that information to create new hypotheses to run further tests on the rest of your strategy.  That’s why documentation is so important. 

Conclusions

It’s true that planning and running A/B tests sounds like an awful lot of work and that might be a little discouraging. You can keep relying on your marketer instincts if you want, but the truth is that the most successful marketing strategies imply a lot of investigation, testing, analysis and ongoing learning on what works best.

A/B testing is a great method to reduce the guesswork and create strategies that actually offer results and help you achieve your business goals. We’ve summed up the most important and basic aspects to keep in mind to conduct successful A/B testing and going from beginner to pro.

If you want to convey A/B tests on on-site content and landing pages, there are many free or affordable tools such as Google Optimize, Optimizely or Unbounce, for example.  On the other hand, if you are looking to conduct A/B tests on communication channels, such as emails, push notifications or SMS, you’d need to use marketing automation platforms like Frizbit, which includes A/B testing capabilities embedded in their campaigns. Since it allows so much personalisation, you can test out different versions of each element of your email, web push notification or sms, segment the audience and choose exactly how to split the test. 

Happy A/B Testing!

This articles might also interest you:

• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores
• Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2021

Either you’re a hopeless romantic or a lone wolf, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and it’s kind of hard to miss it. If you’re planning to stay at home binge-watching Netflix, or having a super romantic dinner, no one says you can’t benefit from amazing deals and offers. 

And if you’re a digital marketing professional, you can’t let the romantic holiday just pass you by, whether or not you like the fuzzy-love scenario, or not. For 2018, Valentine’s day was reported to be the 4th largest shopping day of the year after winter holidays, back to school, & Mother’s Day according to Microsoft Bing. If you add to this the fact that online shopping has exponentially increased the last year due to Covid-19 pandemic, is a date that can’t go unnoticed. 

As professional marketers, we are well aware of the vast extent of Valentine’s Day marketing strategies out there. From boosting loyalty programs, 2×1 sales to social media contests there’s a lot to choose from. But the most important thing is how we communicate those promotions, offers and special sales to our customers. Having amazing Valentine’s Day sales on your online store wont do the trick if no one hears about them. 

How to use Web Push Notifications to boost your Valentine’s Day Marketing Strategy

1. Create a themed landing page to direct your subscribers

We’ve mentioned before how important it is to send subscribers to the right landing page after they click on the notification. When running a Valentine’s Day holiday campaign you can seize the opportunity to theme your landing page according to the season. It’s important that you portray a consistent look and feel throughout the entire Valentine’s Day campaign.  

Make it clear to the subscribers that you’re presenting something special for this date and that they don’t want to miss out what you’ve got to offer. You might want to create a unique Valentine’s Day landing page where you showcase a curated group of products with limited discounts. Remember that a lot of people conduct their shopping online at the last minute and can be very indecisive. Organizing your deals in one page and making it easy for shoppers will be something they appreciate.

2. Create a Valentine’s Day web push notification calendar

Most digital marketing professionals agree that Valentine’s Day marketing communication should start late January or early February. This means, you’ll have around 15 to 20 days before the love holiday to begin communicating with your subscribers.  

You can design a web push notifications communications calendar with different messages and timings to communicate with your subscribers throughout the weeks and days preceding Valentine’s Day. Sending different notifications manually that alert them about the upcoming date and let them know they can start shopping, or at least browsing your site for gift ideas is a great way to increase retention and conversions. 

Here’s an example of web push notifications sequence for the previous weeks, days and hours before February 14th. Each one includes an alert of the time left to make a purchase, suggestions of products the subscriber might like and even a cart abandonment reminder.

This way, you’ll have increased traffic to your online store and the opportunity to conduct automated web push notification retargeting campaigns closer to Valentine’s Day to all those subscribers that clicked the alert notification and viewed products on your site or already added them to their shopping carts. 

A notifications calendar it’s also a great strategy to increase brand awareness with subscribers that haven’t visited your e-commerce in some time, and a way to keep in touch with those last minute shoppers. Letting them know you’ll be having special Valentine’s Day sales will keep you on their top of mind and tilt the balance in your favor when it comes to the actual holiday shopping moment. 

3. Retarget subscribers that interacted with the Valentine’s Day landing page

After sending the manual web push notifications according to your communication calendar alerting subscribers about the upcoming love holiday, you’ll get insights on click-through rates and their activity within the landing page you sent them to. Knowing which subscribers clicked on that message and which products caught their attention, will allow you to target them specifically with new automated notifications. They have already expressed their interest in the Valentine’s Day sales you’re having, but maybe they need a little extra incentive.

Segment your subscribers based on their activity and their interaction in the site. Users that converted the first time, are more likely to complete a transaction if you send them another notification suggesting a product, informing about a sale, applying a general up-sell strategy or reminding them about an abandoned cart. Sometimes people need a reminder or help deciding, especially when dealing with stressful shopping dates like Valentine’s Day.

4. Dress up your notifications

If there’s a moment to use color, lots of emojis and humor, this is it. Customise all the elements of the web push notification to match Valentine’s Day. Make sure subscribers know there’s something different going on by just glancing at it. You can change the icon of your company logo during the first two weeks of February, adding some Valentine’s Day details! Include bright shades of red and pink in your images, heart and love emojis to accompany the text, and even change the tone of your communication a little bit.

You can use more fun copies and be a little more playful. The perfect way to nail your Valentine’s Day message is to run A/B testing. Platforms like Frizbit allow you to design variations of the same web push notification in order to try them out and see which one works best. Get inspired and bring out the romantic in you!

5. Show your subscribers some love!

Valentine’s Day is the perfect holiday to let your subscribers know how much you appreciate them. Send a special web push notification with a unique offer or discount they can use in their next purchase, even after the holiday has passed. If you’d like, you could segment this for the users who have purchased in the past 2 weeks to award them about being thoughtful on Valentine’s Day, or if you have so much love to share, send it to all your subscribers! 🙂

This is a very nice gesture that shows customers you value their business. It won’t cost you much and it can have great repercussions for your brand by increasing client’s loyalty, brand awareness and web push notification retention rates, lowering opt-out or churn rates. 

6. Use cross and up-sell techniques

People tend to go all out on Valentine’s Day, so it’s the perfect moment to apply some old, but effective traditional marketing techniques like cross-sell and up-sell. You can send automated web push notifications to all those shoppers that already bought a product from your site with a nice suggestion on another one that complements it. 

Maybe a subscriber left an abandoned cart with a product in it. You can seize the opportunity to send a notification suggesting a different article that another user liked better, instead of the one in his cart. It’s all about helping shoppers to make the best decision possible por this unique and special date. 

Summary

When it comes to important holidays like Valentine’s Days, there are so many digital marketing strategies to choose from that it’s easy to lose focus on simple details like how to effectively communicate them to our audience. 

You only have a few days to get your message across and attract as many people to your site as possible. Manual and automated web push notifications campaigns are the ideal channel to do so:

• You can highly customise the messages to carry the Valentine’s Day spirit 
• It’s a direct communication in real time channel based on user’s behaviour
• You can engage with visitors and turn them into subscribers
• 4x times higher click-through rates than emails

We hope this inspires you to use web push notifications to boost your Valentine’s Day marketing campaign! If you want to try it out, get in touch with Frizbit for a demo!

You also might be interested in:

• Digital Marketing Insights and Updates from January 2021
• Guide: How to use Push Notifications for Online Stores
• Top Digital Marketing Trends for 2021