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Targeted marketing is the most effective with a multi-channel approach, and the best mobile campaigns often use a combination of mobile push notifications and in-app messaging. That’s because the complementary channels each offer their own advantages and disadvantages.

Mobile is personal. It’s more tailored to user interests than any other before it, which means app marketing has to be less about blatant agenda pushing and more about targeted engagement.

App messaging techniques are a key part of this strategy, working to reach the user at the right time, with the right content, to engage him or her further. The two most important are push notifications and in-app messages. So, what’s the difference when it comes to your app marketing?

Push notifications are probably what comes to mind when you think of mobile app messaging; most marketers use it often because it’s an easy-to-implement industry standard. But since 2014, in-app notification has become much more widespread in mobile marketing. Used to highlight new features, showcase special offers, onboard new users, and more, in-app is a powerful tool to create more targeted, purposeful user sessions. Our research has shown that apps who use it see a 27% increase in app launches and a 3.5x increase in retention.

But when do you use push notification, and when is an in-app message the right call? Let’s discuss it!

A Quick Introduction

The Difference Between Push Notifications and In-App Notification

The two most important ways to deliver app messaging campaigns are push notifications and in-app messages. So, what’s the difference between in-app notification and push notifications?

What are Push Notifications?

Push Notifications allow you to deliver messages to the user’s home screen. It’s like an SMS message, but coming from an app instead of your mom. Traditionally, push notifications were solely text, but now, rich push notifications let mobile marketers include text as well as images, video, and sound. Great for prompting immediate interaction and engaging users not currently active in your app, push messaging directs attention to the desired action. Users who opt-in for push notifications are a high-value demographic, those users tend to engage with your app on a regular basis 88% more. But often, push messaging comes down to three key considerations:

• Content
• Frequency
• Timing

In-App Messaging

Recently, in-app notification has become more common in mobile marketing. It can be used to draw attention to new features, highlight special offers, better onboard new app users, and much more. What’s more, in-app messages can deliver rich content like images and video too. Overall, in-app notification is a powerful tool to create more targeted user sessions. There are stats floating around the industry that say those who use in-app notification see around a 30% increase in uptake of app launches and a massive 4 times increase in app retention.

When To Use Push Notifications?

Push notifications are great for prompting immediate interaction and engaging app users who are not currently active in the app. A weather app sends push-notifications of severe weather, for example. Social media users receive notifications that someone has sent them a message. You can also consider this approach in these cases:

Transactional Updates

Notifications about order placements, delivery status updates, abandoned carts, payment success/failure, etc. are best served as push notifications as they need the users’ immediate attention.

Deliver Time-Sensitive Deals & Offer

Time-sensitive alerts and reminders are best sent via push notification, as users aren’t always in the app when important news needs to be relayed. For appointment reminders, low-funds account balance warnings, and last-minute travel changes, users need to be notified via the fastest channel possible.

App Related Updates

Whenever there are any updates in your app or new versions of the app, feature upgrades, service enhancements, etc, these can be communicated to the users with timely mobile push notifications. This conveys a straight message to the users that you are constantly improving the overall app usage experience.

Nudge Users

Push notifications are the best tools for nudging the app abandoners. With precision push notification service, brands can woo users back with customized messaging based on a variety of factors: a number of days inactive, best re-engagement times, response to previous re-engagement attempts, and previous in-app behavior.

When To Use In-App Messages?

You can use in-app messages to:

Help Users During the Onboarding process

With the advancements in the technology and creativity of the people, apps have become tricky and have complex features. Because of this, a process of onboarding has become fairly popular among the app makers and especially when there are changes in the UI. For example, many brands use in-app notification as part of its onboarding process or for walking users through design changes.

Offer Recommendations

There is a huge opportunity for cross-selling and upselling products when the user is active on the app. Giving smart recommendations based on the user’s search or buying history can be very beneficial for sales growth and customer life-cycle. In-app messages can do this job seamlessly.

Share App features & updates

Sometimes, users just forget about a feature. Sending an in-app message to point out the feature can give users more value out of the application.

Gather Feedback

Getting users’ feedback is usually complex. In-app messages for feedback sent right after a user experiences an update or beta feature can give brands some of the highest percentages of responses and the best feedback.

What’s Best For You?

The decision of what suits the best for your app depends a lot on your marketing and customer engagement strategies. How you plan to engage your users and increase retention.

Talking about Push Notifications, often, the decision of using push messaging comes down to the content, frequency, and timing of the messaging. If you get all three right then push messaging drives lapsed users back into your app and brings awareness to your mobile marketing campaigns. But wait, don’t misuse it. Push notification can be a strong tool to gain user attention but can also be the biggest reason for the app being uninstalled.

Note, Push Notifications can be irritating for the user and ineffective if they lack context or purpose. Overdo push notifications and you will risk an app uninstall.

When it comes to In-App Messaging, Due to its tailored style of triggering based on user interaction, it creates a more seamless progression from an app user’s initial session to the desired conversion. If it’s done well, in-app notification should feel like a natural part of the app.

But again, just like push notification, if in-app messages are not done right it can end up feeling too much advertising. Also, if the messages are not sent in real-time they can present irrelevant content.

The gist of it all comes down to one thing, that push notifications and in-app notification should go hand-in-hand to help you run highly efficient marketing campaigns. Smart marketing always knows the ways to combine the power of these two to get the maximum out of the app.

Wrapping Up

Both push notifications and in-app notifications are the next waves of communication for businesses. Research shows 7.33 billion people worldwide will own a smartphone by 2023, which means businesses must embrace mobile marketing methods to ensure a continued connection between brands and consumers.

At the end of the day, push notifications and in-app notifications each provide an invaluable opportunity to connect and re-engage users with your app. And, when done well, creative strategies can help boost app engagement and revenue.

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