What are push notifications?
You’re probably familiar with push notifications. They’re messages from apps that appear as banners on your phone, whether or not the app is open. They might be reminders about appointments, updates on the progress of an order, or a special offer / promotion.
For app owners or developers, the benefits of using push notifications are well recognised. They are immediate, with your messages reaching your target audience directly, avoiding spam filters. Also click through rates that are generally much higher than for email.
But there are pitfalls. If users feel overwhelmed with messages from a specific app they can be put off. Even to the point of deleting it. Many apps misuse the feature, as well as leaning on it too heavily. They might fail to offer real value to their audience in the messages they send.
Of course, SitePodium end-users have signed up because they want to receive real-time updates on your development. Not for half price offers or promotions! We’ve found this means they largely welcome receiving the right sort of information delivered to them proactively via push message. Our measurement data bears this out, indicating that 50% of SitePodium push messages are opened by end users. And, when you consider that many more users will read messages without opening them, it’s clear the reach is huge. All without time consuming or expensive efforts on the part of the project managers or comms pros involved.
Push notifications on SitePodium
The SitePodium app offers functionality around push notifications unavailable with other stakeholder comms apps. This enhances the value your end users derive from using the app.
Our notifications offer “deep linking” as standard, which means that the user is immediately forwarded to the correct message when they open the notification. Without having to search or click on anything else. SitePodium also enables you to send notifications to pre-set target audiences. These are both features that no other stakeholder comms app provides. Many of our clients also find our advance scheduling feature a huge benefit when they are planning their comms activities ahead of time. We’re constantly innovating and adding to the range of services we offer and we’re currently working on GPS clouds that will allow you to reach out to users within a fixed radius of a defined area.
Getting the best out of SitePodium push notifications
We work closely with all our clients to make sure project managers and comms professionals know how to get the best out of the SitePodium app.
When it comes to push notifications, to avoid saturating your subscribers with updates, we advise using them no more than once a week, and carefully filtering the posts that you push out.
Push messages are invaluable for informing local residents and other stakeholders about the day-to-day activities in a development project that might directly affect them. From diversions and parking restrictions to excess noise. If you need to update a large group of residents urgently about an acute or dangerous issue, a push notification is indispensable.
For best effect, it’s worth thinking about the wording of your notification . As we know some 50% will open the message. However, all will see the banner on their phone or tablet and have the chance to read it. So make sure those first words pack a punch and convey the essence of what you need to say.
Where you have information that is ‘nice to know’ but not essential or likely to impact subscribers directly, we suggest you simply post on the app in the usual way, without pushing out. As we know, overuse of these notifications can be counter-productive and you may run the risk subscribers disabling the feature, denying you one the most valuable tools in your stakeholder comms arsenal.
For more tips and advice on best practice around the use of push notifications, or information on how SitePodium could transform your stakeholder comms, please feel free to contact us.
