Push notifications: Re-engage and retain users effectively

Dear Apptics community,

Have you ever wished to proactively engage and communicate with users even when they are not actively using your app? Apptics already empowers you with features for app health, performance, usage, engagement, and growth.

We are excited to add Push notifications that will help you take user engagement to the next level and facilitate re-engagement with users!

Introduction to push notifications

Push notifications allow you to trigger notifications to your app users about important updates, events, offers, posts, etc. As the name suggests, these push notifications are app-related messages shown to your users as pop-up messages on their devices. These notifications are sent to users who have already installed your app and have enabled push notifications on their device settings.

Push notifications complement traditional methods like email, SMS, and phone calls. They serve as a highly effective channel to communicate with users, keep them informed of any updates instantly, and encourage active engagement. You can send these notifications even when your users are not actively using the app. This way, you can open new opportunities for re-engagement and boost user retention for your app.

Sending push notifications using Apptics

To start sending push notifications in Apptics, you must first complete the push notification setup. This involves authenticating the appropriate push notification service provider certificates with your app and later adding their details in the Apptics console. You need to upload the Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) credentials for Android apps and Apple Push Notification service (APNs) certificates for iOS apps. Once the necessary certificate details are provided for the package name/bundle ID, you can proceed to create and send push notifications to users. You can refer to our push notifications guide for detailed guidance.

A push notification contains many elements including text, media, action buttons, and much more. Usually, you would have to trigger them natively by sending the notification payload in your app code or using third-party tools. In Apptics, we have simplified and streamlined the process of creating a push notification in five simple steps.

1) Schedule

You start by providing a name to the push notification you are drafting for your reference. Then, you set the timing of the push notification. For the first phase of push notifications, you can either trigger the push notification immediately after publishing it or schedule the notification for a later date and time.

2) Audience

Define the target audience for the push notification by using filters and criteria.

• Filters - Select at least one application ID to target your push notification. You can refine your audience further by filtering based on device type, model, app version, OS version, country, and user group. To measure the effectiveness of your notification, you can track the conversion rate by specifying a desired action you want users to take within the app after interacting with the notification.
  
• Criteria - Set the criteria based on which you want your selected audience to receive push notifications. You can set the criteria pattern based on previous user activity (the events triggered or screens visited by your users) within a selected date range.

Note: The number of devices targeted for the notification based on the filters and criteria you apply in the Audience tab will be shown as the target device count.

Apart from selecting the audience for the notification, you can also analyze how effective it was amongst your users. You have an option as Conversion. It allows you to choose an event (that is already being tracked in Apptics for your app) and measure how many users have taken the desired action within your app after interacting with your notification.

Example: Say you send a notification for a webinar happening tomorrow. The desired action here would be for your users to register for the webinar after interacting with the notification. If the action of registering for an event from the app is tracked as an event in Apptics, you can select the same event to know how many users registered for the webinar after interacting with the push notification.

3) Content

After scheduling the notification and targeting your app users, you must provide the notification content. The content mainly includes the title, message, and image. If you have a desired action you want your users to take after interacting with the notification (of course!), you can provide the URL of the page/screen and redirect them.

4) Additional elements

Now that you have provided what needs to go in the notification, you can provide additional details to customize how the notification should appear and behave on the user's device. They include:

• Sound to play while the notification is delivered
  
• Notification payload
  
• Increment app badge icon to notify unread notifications

You can also add some Android-specific elements like the notification channel, app icon, and app icon color that you can add to customize the notification appearance and sound.

5) Action buttons

The final step is to add interactive elements in the notification to encourage active user engagement. You can add a maximum of three action buttons and provide the associated details, such as:

• Category name - It decides the notification type and action buttons that will appear. This applies only to iOS apps.
  
• Action ID - A unique action ID to track user interaction associated with each action button.
  
• Button label - The text is displayed on the action button.
  
• Icon path - The file path of the image that will be used as the button icon.
  
• Click action - The display name for the button icon.

While you create the notification and provide the necessary details, you can get a preview of the notification based on the entries you have provided so far.

Testing the push notification

In Apptics, you can test the notification once you select the timing, define your target audience, and provide the message for the notification. You can view the option to test the notification starting from the step to add content for your message.

You can test the notification on devices that are registered with APNs/FCM and have debug mode enabled in them. You can select the application ID and provide the device token, which will be available in Xcode/Android Studio for the test device. After testing the notification, what's next? Hitting the publishing button, of course!

Once you finish all the steps with the necessary details, save the notification as a draft for future iterations, test on devices, and finally publish when it is ready!

Monitoring the results

After creating push notifications, it is much more important to know if they have been successfully sent to your users. So once the notifications are triggered, you will be able to view the performance stats for the notification. They include:

• Target count - The number of targeted devices for the notification.
  
• Success count - The number of notifications that were sent successfully from the push notification service provider.
  
• Failure count - The number of notifications that couldn't be delivered due to technical issues.
  
• Received count - The number of notifications delivered to the user's device.
  
• Opened count - The number of notifications that users opened and interacted with.
  
• Conversion count - The number of times users took the desired action after interacting with your notification.

We have rolled out the push notification feature in its BETA phase, and it awaits enhancements in the future. Some of them include recurring notifications, user segments, and automation of push notification workflows. Stay tuned for interesting updates!

Cheers,

Team Apptics

• Topic Participants

• Supraja Gayathri S

  

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