Sunday is a time for relaxing, catching up on sleep, cleaning and personal admin.
But this Sunday I felt extremely proud of LinkedIn and Apple as both organisations worked together to deliver direct marketing to me.
What’s more, the marketing they delivered didn’t require me to load an app on my iPhone or view my emails. The marketing was on my phone’s screen BEFORE I accessed any of my phone’s features.
How did they do this? It’s called Apple’s Push Notification Service.
Push notifications have a number of benefits, the ones most interesting to marketers are:
- Free – if a user has your app installed Apple will allow you to message them via their servers for free
- Branded – your icon/branding/logo is next to your message creating brand association
- Permanent – these messages last for a long time compared with other marketing mediums, and appear on the notification screen once the phone is unlocked ensuring the user can find and action the message
- Direct – if a user interacts with this message, the app will load relevant content allowing a direct relationship between the message and the app’s functionality
- Scheduled – push notifications can be told when to display on the phone meaning they can be setup during business hours and appear at a specific time on a user’s phone
Think of the power this type of notification system could do for your brand or product: offers that are easy to accept via a mobile phone, show relevant information as soon as the message is actioned, track the different messages and who reacts to them, send extremely cost effective news releases straight to your customer base.