On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Josh Wetzel, Chief Revenue Officer of OneSignal – the most widely used push notification delivery and marketing platform for mobile applications and websites. They are an 8 year-old company based in Palo Alto, California. Josh is a veteran in the eCommerce industry and has been part of OneSignal’s incredible growth over the last few years.

The growth of eCommerce has inevitably been fast tracked this year. And given our post-COVID lifestyles, it is likely to grow all the more. ECommerce businesses are investing more than ever into adopting an omni-channel marketing approach. In the past few episodes, we have covered many of these marketing channels. Today, we talk all about Push notifications, and who better to learn from than the biggest player in the business.

Josh shares insights and some do’s & don’ts about using Push notifications for marketing and branding. You will get to hear about the enormous potential of Push notifications – so enormous that OneSignal’s founders pivoted to this business after launching as a mobile game studio!

OneSignal has over 1 million customer companies (!), and Josh shares some very useful nuggets and best practices learned from their experience. So whether you already use push notifications or are curious on how to get started, be sure to catch this episode!

Here is a summary of some of the most important points made,

• OneSignal sends out over 7.5 Billion messages everyday
• The optimum frequency of messages depends on the specific use-case
• Overpersonalisation can get “creepy”
• Upto 52% of mobile users enable push notifications
• Utility focused notifications – like Shipping updates
• Broadcast ‘Announcement’ based notifications like – Price Drops
• Broadcast vs Personalised Messaging

Covered Topics:

On today’s interview Kunle and Josh discuss,

• Push notifications in eCommerce
• Use Cases
• Optimum Frequency of messaging
• OneSignal’s functionality
• Personalisation

Timestamp:

• 5:25 – Every marketing channel matters
• 6:57 – A bit about Josh and OneSignal
  • OneSignal has over 1 million customers from 125 countries
  • They send out 7.5 billion messages daily!
  • 73% of all websites using Push use OneSignal
• 10:20 – Can you use Push notifications on iOS devices?
• 13:10 – How leading eCom clients use Push
  • Cart abandonment (image + CTA)
  • Strategise similar to retargeting / email
  • Personalise messages as much as possible
• 14:25 – Common use-cases:
  • Abandoned cart messages
  • New product drops
  • Shipping info
• 16:25 – Ideal frequency of sending out push notifications:
  • Decide how much is “Too Much” as per your use case / product
  • Restrict it to max of 2 touches in a day for cart abandonment messages
  • Segment your users correctly – “fans” don’t mind getting more, others do
• 20:15 – OneSignal’s functionality:
  • Segment based on freq of visit, channel visited, various data tags and more
  • Out-of-the-box integration with Shopify with free trials
• 21:40 – Things to keep in mind regarding permissions
• 23:05 – How an opt-out on Push is different from email and SMS
• 27:00 – Subscription trends:
  • 52% of mobile users enable Push
  • 3-15% of web traffic subscribe over a 1 year period
  • 5-10% of your core audience (fans) are usually subscribed
• 29:15 – Examples of Push contributing to ROI growth
• 29:58 – Broadcast vs Personalisation:
  • Personalisation is critical but not easy to get right
  • Collaborative filtering is a good approach
  • Over personalisation can be detrimental
  • Best use cases for broadcasts
• 35:10 – Useful resources

Takeaways:

• Push notifications have higher adoption rates in mobile
• Over Personalisation is detrimental
• Frequency of messaging depends on use case & user segment

Links & Resources

• OneSignal Blog
• OneSignal’s Shopify App
• OneSignal’s Magento Integration
• The OneSignal Podcast (iTunes)
• The OneSignal Podcast (Spotify)

Tweetable Quotes:

“Netflix changes the cover photo of their content depending on what they know about you.”

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SPONSORS:

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