What are Android push messages? Don’t worry, we’ll tell you all about it. But first, picture this…
Building an app business is hard as is. And promoting your apps can be super difficult. The good news is that there’s an effortless way to generate repeat visitors on autopilot:
- Even if… you’re just starting and your fan base is still tiny;
- Even if… you’re running an e-commerce store with hundreds of promos every month;
- Even if… you have a mega blog that’s already generating a ton of SEO traffic;
The answer is:
Android push messages!
In this article, we’re going to show you how to get repeat visitors instantly every time you hit publish. And it’s completely free to get started. So, you don’t have to wait around for search engines to start sending you any traffic.
Let’s dive right in.
What Are Android Push Messages?
An Android push message is a short, clickable pop-up message that appears on a subscriber’s device and redirects the subscriber to your content with one click:
The best part is that the push message pop up even if the subscriber isn’t using a browser. It’s like an email blast, but with a web push notification, your subscribers don’t need to be using an app to see your message.
In short: An Android push message is a simple way to send out a clickable link to your content to anyone who opted in.
With push notification sequences, your audience now has no excuse to ignore you. And unlike social media websites, there is no algorithm throttling your reach to get you to pay for ads.
The coolest part about Android web push messages is that you can use them to complement your lead magnets and email opt-in forms!
Pro Tip: If you’re not using lead magnets yet, you should start creating lead magnets with OptinMonster to boost your conversions.
In the next section, we’ll show you exactly how to set it up in 15 minutes or less.
How to Install Android Push Messages On Your Website
We recommend using PushEngage to get started with Android web push messages for free. Every time you publish a blog post, PushEngage will automatically send out a push notification to all your subscribers.
Let’s start growing your audience with Android push messages for free.
Step #1: Create a Free PushEngage Account
Head over to PushEngage and click on Get Started for Free:
Select the Free plan or whichever suits your needs the best:
Step #2: Sign Up for PushEngage
Signup for the plugin with your user details or your Gmail ID:
And just follow along with the instructions and finish setting up your account.
Step #3: Install the WordPress Plugin
NOTE: If your website isn’t built using WordPress, you can install Android push messages using other methods. We don’t cover those methods in this article but check out our installation guide if you’re interested.
Once you sign up, you’ll be taken to the PushEngage dashboard:
Head over to Site Settings »Site Details:
Click on the Click Here For Setup Instruction button:
Then, click on the Install WordPress Plugin button:
If you’ve already set up your site’s URL, PushEngage will install itself automatically on your site.
Step #4: Connect Your WordPress Website with PushEngage
When you’re done installing and activating the PushEngage WordPress plugin, you’ll see the PushEngage onboarding wizard:
The wizard is fairly straightforward. If you’re a new user, click on New? Claim Your Free Account. And if you’ve already signed up, click on Connect Your Existing Account.
Next, you can select your site from the Select a Site dropdown under Connect a registered site if you’ve already registered a site during signup:
Or, you can click Register a new site to add a new site if you have a Premium pricing plan or higher. In the next step, the onboarding wizard will prompt you to install other must-have WordPress plugins.
If you followed each step correctly, you’ll see this success message from the wizard:
You are now ready to create campaigns and push notification popup modals. The best place to start is to install a web notifications WordPress plugin.
How Do Android Web Push Messages Work?
Let’s get a little bit technical now and explore how Android web push messages work.
The simplified version is that every time a new visitor enters your website, they get prompted to become a push notification subscriber.
Next, you use a web push notification service like PushEngage to create and schedule the Android push messages you want to send out to your subscribers. You can choose to either send it to every subscriber on your list or to specific segments of your subscribers.
You’ll want to start by creating a Drip Autoresponder:
Finally, your subscribers receive your push messsges when their device comes online and take the suggested action.
This is all perfectly true, but this is only a small part of what happens in the background. So, let’s take a look at the technical details. But first, if you haven’t already, get started with PushEngage today.
First off, PushEngage has servers that connect to your subscriber’s devices and send them your Android push messages. Now, these servers don’t store any personal information such as the name or email address of any subscriber.
So, what do these servers store?
To PushEngage and our servers, your subscribers are a unique hash number generated based on your subscriber’s device and browser. Besides, the server can also store the geolocation of your subscribers.
Now, you won’t have direct access to these servers. You can only use the PushEngage Dashboard to create, optimize, and manage push notification campaigns.
In other words, PushEngage is your service provider. This means that you don’t need to know anything about coding or how to maintain the original servers. We take care of all that for you. All you have to worry about is setting up your campaigns and making a profit!
By now, you’re probably wondering how personalized push notifications work if the servers only store a hash number and no personal details. This is where the service provider API comes into play. For you, that would be the PushEngage Javascript API.
You can use this API and connect it to any other CRM or database you might have. This allows you to use the personal details of your subscribers to send them personalized Android push messages.
You can also use the PushEngage API to send out advanced campaigns such as cart abandonment campaigns.
What Are the Different Parts of Android Push Messages?
Now that we understand how Android push messages work, let’s a look at the different parts of a push notification that you can customize (or can’t):
#1. Push Notification Title
The title is the most prominent text on the push notification. It’s restricted to 60-80 characters for clear visibility. The purpose of this title is to attract the subscriber’s attention. So, it’s important to have the entire title clearly visible.
Check out our push notification copywriting guide to create killer titles that your subscribers will love.
#2. The Domain
The domain on a push notification is just the URL of your website. You can’t change this either. But unlike the browser icon, your domain needs to be clearly visible as it adds to your brand recognition.
Now, there is an option for you to store the push notification data on a subdomain of PushEngage. If you use the subdomain, then this part of the push notification will display the URL of a PushEngage subdomain instead of your brand.
We don’t recommend using this option as it can lower your brand value.
#3. Push Notification Content
The notification content contains the largest portion of text in the entire notification. It’s restricted to 120-150 characters for visibility just like the title. While you can work in more character, we recommend keeping it short and sweet.
Typically, this part serves as a way to offer more context about the title or to complete an offer. Don’t bother using a call to action in the text itself. With push notifications, you can add call-to-action buttons.
Pro Tip: You can use regional languages to make your push notifications feel more personalized. Read this case study on how Phooto used local languages in push notifications to boost their engagement.
#4. Notification Large Image
The large image is the belle of the ball and it’s the first thing you spot in any notification. It’s typically a 360×180 image that serves as the most attractive part of a push notification.
The notification image is also entirely optional. You can choose to not use one if you like. Using a notification image can make your push notification feel like an advertisement. This can cause the notification to be ignored by many subscribers.
But if you do it right, images can improve CTR (click-through rates) by up to 62%. Check out our study on the impact of images in push notifications by industry.
If you’re not sure whether you should use a large image, we suggest A/B testing the notification with and without the image.
#5. Push Notification Icon
The push notification icon is like the site icon on your website, but for your push campaigns. It’s an image that’s 192×192 or larger to represent your business. Typically, this will be your site icon and you can only set this one time for all your Android push messages.
Pro Tip: If you rebrand at any time, remember to change the push notification icon in PushEngage as well. Also, remember that you can’t use animated images for your icon. So, GIFs won’t work here.
#6. Call to Action Buttons
Every push notification supports up to 2 buttons. We recommend using customized call-to-action buttons for your campaigns. You can even add separate URLs and button icons for each CTA.
Check out this list of web push notification tricks for some nice CTA ideas.
#7. Browser Icon
The smallest part of the push notification is the browser icon that denotes which browser your subscriber is using currently. It’s one of the most overlooked parts because you can’t change this in any way and for the most part, a subscriber won’t notice the browser icon either.
#8. The Browser Label
The browser label is just the text version of a browser icon. Like the icon, you can’t change the browser name label.
#9. Time Stamp
The timestamp is a simple way for your subscribers to know when the message was received. It’s system generated and you can’t change this either.
Different Types of Push Notification Opt-ins
Every push notification campaign begins with consent. It’s an extension of Seth Godin’s idea of permission marketing. The idea is very simple: before you send your web visitors any content that they may or may not want to see, ask for permission.
The process of getting permission to send any push notification is called “opting in”. So, before you can send out a push notification campaign, you first need your website visitors to opt-in and subscribe to your notifications.
If you’re a content creator on YouTube, then you’re already familiar with how subscribers work. The only difference is that you don’t own the list of your YouTube subscribers and you can’t control the notifications you send them.
With PushEngage, you do own that list because that information is stored on your domain. Now, there are two types of opt-ins you can use for your website:
- Single Opt-ins
- Double Opt-ins
The primary difference between them is very clear. Single opt-ins ask for permission to send push messages only once. Double opt-ins ask each subscriber to confirm their decision.
So, which one should you choose?
We’ve observed that single opt-ins can get up to 150% more subscribers than double opt-ins. Check out our article on how to increase your opt-in rate if you’re struggling with this.
From a legal point of view, GDPR requires you to only have a single opt-in. But with double opt-ins, you get way better engagement because your subscribers actually want more of your content. In terms of sheer opt-in numbers, though, single-step opt-ins are way more effective.
Another point to consider is that you NEED to install an SSL certificate on your website to be able to use single opt-ins. But you can install two-step opt-ins even without a secure website.
So, if you have an SSL certificate installed, use single opt-ins. If not, check out this article on how to install an SSL certificate on WordPress websites.
How to Personalize Your Android Push Messages
Before you create a campaign, you should set up segments and audience groups to send personalized push messages.
Nothing beats the level of personalization you can get by creating segments and audience groups for your push notification subscribers. Go to PushEngage » Audience and start creating segments and audience groups right away.
Under the Segments tab, you can create new segments or edit existing ones:
And if you need even deeper personalization, create an audience group in the Audience Groups tab:
If you’re new to push notification segments and personalized push notifications, you should check out our article on how to create segments and our announcement on advanced audience grouping.
How to Create a Targeted Android Push Messages
Go to PushEngage dashboard and head over to Campaign » Drip Autoresponders and click on Create New Drip Autoresponder:
Then, name your campaign (we suggest something like Welcome Drip), and under Content, select the option that says, “Send notification immediately after user subscribes“):
At this point, you can click on the arrow next to the notification to edit the content of your notification.
If you have a Premium or Enterprise plan with PushEngage, you’ll be able to add more than one notification to create a sequence of automated welcome messages. Just click on Add New Notification and edit the content.
Once you’re done, click on Drip Settings and select the option to send your welcome campaign to all subscribers:
Then, scroll down to set your own UTM parameters to track the push notifications:
And when you’re done, scroll back up and click the Activate Autoresponder button:
And you’re done!
How to Send a Targeted Android Push Messages
Head over to your PushEngage dashboard and go to Campaign » Push Broadcasts and click on the Create a New Push Broadcast button:
Under the Content tab, add your push notification content:
And you can set up an A/B test to increase your click rates or you can schedule your push broadcasts to get more views. In either case, you should check out our push notification best practices for the best results.
How to Create Android Push Messages Popup Modals
A push notification popup modal is a small window that appears on top of a website or mobile app interface to display a message or notification to the website visitor.
The popup modal can be triggered by various events. You can set up popups to get triggered on page visit, on scroll depth, and even on custom actions such as button click.
Usually, you’ll see a call to action on the popup modal such as “Subscribe” or “Allow” to get consent from visitors to send Android push messages. If you follow this tutorial, you can create a popup like this one:
You can create popup modals that can segment subscribers directly or create regular popups that simply collect subscribers with the default attributes such as geolocation and browser.
Head back to your WordPress dashboard. Go to PushEngage » Design:
And you can set up as many popup modals as you please. Of course, you can make sure that they get triggered at different times under Display Options for each popup modal.
The idea here is to give your visitors a solid reason to subscribe. If you need some help with that check out our article on how to create a custom push notification opt-in.
And if you want to create more targeted popup modals, you can use the targeting rules under the Targeting Rule tab:
These are global targeting rules and will get preference over targeting rules for individual popup modals. But if you wish, you can create robust targeting rules for each modal by editing them.
For instance, you can create popup modals in different languages to target visitors from different countries.
And if you’d like some templates with a high click-through rate to get started, you should check out this article on high-converting push notification opt-ins.
What to Do Before You Send Targeted Android Push Messages
You’re almost done.
Before you start sending push notifications, you’ll need to set up a subscription opt-in for your website. Your opt-in will convert web visitors into push notification subscribers. So, this is a critical element.
If you need some inspiration, you can check out this article on high-converting push notification opt-ins. Once you’re done setting up the opt-in, your site can collect subscribers. But how do you even know that your opt-in is working properly?
So, the sensible thing to do is set up a welcome push notification.
Pro-Tip: You should spend some time on a full-scale test of your push notifications. This will troubleshoot the most common problems and you won’t waste your time trying to resolve issues later on.
What to Do After You Send Android Push Messages
That’s all for this one, folks!
If you found this article helpful, be sure to drop a comment below.
Getting started with Android push messages can seem intimidating. But if you keep an eye on goal tracking and analytics, you should be fine. More importantly, you’ll make a lot more profit with the help of push notification campaigns. Here are a few cool resources to get you started:
- How to Use Retargeting Push Notifications to 2x Your Revenue
- How to Sort Your Push Notifications and Find Winning Campaigns
- How to Clean Up Push Notifications Subscriber Lists (Easy)
- How to Automatically Send RSS Push Notifications
- How to Use Push Notifications to Promote a News Site
- How to Use Cross Selling Push Notifications to 2x Your Sales
- How to Use Browse Abandonment Push Notifications (4 Steps)
If you’re new to push notifications, you should try out PushEngage. PushEngage is the #1 push notification software in the market. And your campaigns will be in safe hands.
So, if you haven’t already, get started with PushEngage today!
