What Are Rich Push Notifications & How Your Company Will Benefit from Their Usage

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Please note, I originally wrote and published this story or article on my personal site and blog.

Rich push notification are a new method of sending push notifications to customers or clients. They replace the standard and traditional push notification full of a line of text with multimedia content, such as images — and in the case of the iOS platform, video and sound as well.

Companies are looking at new ways to reach audiences and stand out in the sea of text that mobile users are bombarded with daily. If your company offers a product that needs to be showcased, it is a lot easier to do it visually or with multimedia than simply describing it in text.

That is how you and your clients will benefit from rich text modifications. You will be able to offer a different and more visual way of reaching your target audience that may have short attention spans and not want to read a standard text notification to begin with.

Your clients will have a more optimized experience reading multimedia content, such as images of new products or app features, than trying to visualize it with standard text on a regular push notification. Your company will benefit because you will have a more customizable way of reaching your audience and standing out from the competitors with multimedia content and customizability options (thus increasing ROI and revenue).

The options include (depending on operating system the users are connecting from) interactive and customizable buttons, GIFs, standard images, video supporting multiple formats and sound.

To get an example on the high ROI and customer satisfaction rates, refer to this study, which showed that push notifications with images alone have a 56% higher chance of being opened vs standard notifications.

Examples of Rich Push Use Cases

There are various benefits companies operating across the different mobile ecosystems and app stores available. The use of multimedia in content has benefits to virtually any sort of firm on the market. Messaging clients information with images included alongside sound or video is something that you should take advantage of no matter the content you work with.

Lets take an example of how a hotel-booking firm, for instance, can benefit from rich text notifications. A firm specializing in hotel bookings may send a user a rich push notification informing him that his reservation has been cancelled or altered. They may include an image with the hotel having a leak or some problem that the cancellation was driven by. Thus, the user can get the sense they are not being just taken for a loop with not much proof or reason for the cancellation and everyone is satisfied. Thus, the hotel can retain this customer’s business with a new room and a rich test notification showing its interior to the customer.

Another example can be a dating site such as LOVOO. The dating service uses push notifications on a regular basis to show customers updates in its business model and mobile app. Users are shown visual cues to some changes they can expect like new ways to order features within the app as in-app purchases helping them to make a love connection easier.

The Specifications and Tech Briefly Outlined

There is a clear difference between iOS and Android rich push notifications. Ever since Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, mobile users on Google’s platform can receive images with text as rich text notifications. Apple followed Google’s lead and upped the ante with the release of iOS 10, when it introduced rich push notifications to users with images, text, sound and video all available as options.

The process of sending a rich push notification is simple and automated using various CMS systems. The ones I saw demonstrated goes like this:

You go into our app from your mobile device and click on, “Rich Notifications,” then select from a list of options. These options — depending on the OS you are sending from — include things such as the ability to send a rich push with image, a rich push with a GIF, a rich push with a video among others. Then you send it out and can reach your user base with it.

Most aren’t personalized to the users, however, but the masses of customers the CMS targets at once. However, there are some ways to make them more personalized to each user. It will depend on the CMS younare using among other things.

Sending such a rich notification with images, a song the user may enjoy, or even a GIF, can make the user laugh or be further engaged with the company to see what additional products it offers. It is a great way to reach the audience and keep them retained with the product.

Just think of how many notifications users get every day from various apps and the fatigue this can set in. A new way to be noticed, especially with visual flair or multimedia content, is the perfect way for your clients to see your notifications and updates you want to share with them.

Here is an in-depth and technical tutorial on creating or sending rich push notifications when using iOS devices.