Advertisers are steadily venturing into sending messages to consumers phones, but research shows that the impact on consumers is more likely to be irritation than gratitude.
“Fifty-two per cent of the people we surveyed said that push messages are an annoying distraction and only 26 per cent were grateful for being informed of things they had an interest in,” reported US software firm Localytics following a recent survey.
“However, the results are not a surprise as push notifications have a reputation for being unwelcome. When you consider the fact that over 35 per cent of them are generic broadcast blasts to all users, it is easy to see that a lack of relevancy plays a major role in this perception.”
Indeed, the lack of personalisation of push messages has contributed directly to their low reaction rate, finding that although mobile phone users have opted in to push notifications they hardly interact with the senders because they do not relate to the messages sent.
“In 2015, the average opt in rate for push notifications among mobile phone users was 71 per cent, mostly because Android users are automatically opted-in by downloading an Android app.
However, despite the high opt in rate, consumers rarely engage with brands via this platform as the average reaction rate was found to be 8.7 per cent due to a lack of personalisation of these messages,” said a 2016 study by Accengage, a company that specialises in push notification technology for mobile apps.
Keeping consumers engaged and loyal therefore requires personalisation, especially where brands are investing in digital platforms, such as the Kenyan banking sector.
Personalisation
In this, Equity Bank is typical, in having launched a mobile application as a marketing tools to acquire clients. But without personalisation, using the platform becomes counter productive.
According to the Localytics research, sending more than one push notification in a week will lead to consumers either deleting the application or disabling the notifications.
“Forty six per cent of people will opt-out of push notifications if they are sent two to five times a week. Another 32 per cent will stop using the app altogether if they get between six and 10 push notifications in a week,” reported the researchers.
“The more the push notifications a person gets in a week, the lower the open rate of these messages. If a marketer sends one message per week, it will be opened 12 per cent of the time whereas 10 messages will only be opened six per cent of the time.”
Preferences
Improving consumers’ perceptions, reactions, and opening rates rests on sending messages that are unique and add specific value to them, so that they do not feel overwhelmed with information that is irrelevant.
“Offering consumers information based on their preferences can make a brand relatable. It also creates an opportunity because customers will find it convenient to engage with the brand thereby giving them a reason to open the application and react to the push notification message,” reported HubSpot, an inbound sales and marketing platform.
Thus, aggressive push marketing remains a viable tool, but unless it is sparingly used, and actually useful to consumers, the result can be losing customers instead of gaining them.
- African Laughter
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