Push notifications are an excellent way to communicate a specific piece of information to your fans. And some brands are taking full advantage of our push notification system to deliver content. Users have the choice to either opt-in or out of receiving push notifications, so brands must implement best practices to draw in subscribers.
The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus app relies on push notifications to increase fan engagement in the app. Part scavenger hunt, part giveaway- during tours, they schedule pushes to attendees of that particular venue.
Taylor Swift uses push notifications to promote important content, like new music singles or videos.
Robbie Williams’ app utilizes the geo-targeting function of our push notification system to send targeted notifications to users. The push below was sent to a target user base in a 100 mile radius.
Push notifications can link to in-app content or external content.
The Dallas Mavericks love to use push notifications to remind fans of special events or to throw giveaways.
This push was sent to a targeted audience using the Map option.
The Miami Dolphins throw day-of giveaways to targeted audiences:
To Wrap Up
Contact all your fans, or a targeted group within a geo-tagged radius of a zip code, to send notifications about your shows and other marketing campaigns. On the iPhone, fans will see your message even if your app isn’t currently open (like a text message).
Android handles it a little differently, which is actually a “pull” service. This means the message may take a few minutes to come through, and appears as a notification in the top status bar.
One word of caution, be sure you don’t overuse this feature. You don’t want your fans getting annoyed by too many messages and disabling the feature. But when you have important updates to relay, then push notifications are very effective.