6 KPIs to Measure the Effectiveness of your Push Notifications

Recently we asked a business owner how she measures the success of her push notification campaigns. Without batting an eyelid she answered-

“The volume of notifications. That’s the only parameter anyone has to measure as far as push notifications are concerned. Isn’t it?”

And that’s not the worst part. She and her team had diligently tracked the total number of notifications sent to each user for the past two years. And that’s all they had measured!

Here is a piece of friendly advice - If you hear from someone that the total count of push notifications is the only parameter you need to measure, turn and run the other way. And don’t look back.

However, there’s nothing wrong with measuring the count of push notifications. After all, it is an indicator of your team’s efforts to convert users. But there are far more important KPIs that you can measure - KPIs that identify the impact on your business and get you closer to your desired result.

In this post, we are going to focus on 6 such KPIs.

View Rate

View rate easily takes the #1 spot on our list. It is the ratio of the number of users who viewed your notification to the total number of notifications sent. In case your view rate is low, the culprit is most likely your timing. Sending notifications when the user is not active is as good as not sending the notification.

Find out days and times when your customers are most active. For example, if you are an e-commerce store, then your push notifications will have a higher view rate during holidays and weekends. If you go to a grocery store, then it will be higher during the beginning of the month when most people purchase groceries.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR indicates the number of users who clicked on your notifications. A click is the next logical (and positive) step once a user views a notification. A high CTR indicates your message has successfully reached the audience and they are curious to know more about what you want to offer.

Vajro considers a CTR of 8-10% as an ideal value. Here are 4 simple tips to achieve that number -

• Use more emojis in your message
• Make your notifications personalized
• Have 10 or fewer words in every message
• Create a sense of urgency

Engagement

Tracking engagement on a notification basis will not only provide information on who your active users are but also help you identify the peak hours of engagement. For this, you need to track the number of app launches after a campaign starts (preferably within a 24-hour window).

If the number of app-opens is not high even after multiple rounds of campaigns, then you need to rethink your strategy. If things are going fine, then identify the type of messages that are tempting users to launch the app.

The engagement metric can be further subdivided into -

Direct push opens - Number of times users tap on the push notification they receive, resulting in the direct opening of the apps.

Influenced push opens - Number of times users manually open an app after receiving the push notification instead of opening it via the notification.

Time spent on the app - The minutes or hours spent on the app by the user after receiving the push notification.

Re-Engagement

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Imagine you received a push notification like this. You already had plans to buy a jacket from this brand. There can be two scenarios out of this situation-

Scenario 1 - You see the notification, click on it and purchase the jacket right away.

Scenario 2 - You see the notification but you are super busy right now. You also know that the offer is valid for a few more days and hence delete the notification without taking any action. But you go on to purchase it on Monday.

Most businesses would measure scenario 1 but ignore the second one, even though the push notifications worked splendidly on both scenarios - The message reached the target user successfully and prompted him/her to take action.

Not measuring re-engagement can result in the undervaluation of the effectiveness of your push notifications. You might end up making unnecessary changes even when it was doing well.

Conversions

Every marketing activity including push notifications has a purpose - convert users to paid customers. Hence it makes complete sense to measure new revenue generated per user once the user clicks on a notification. A low conversion indicates that the message on your push notification is not in sync with the message on the landing page. For example, let us revisit the same push notification -

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The user clicks on the notification and is taken to the jackets page. Over there his preferred jacket doesn’t have the 20% discount. Though the message says ‘all jackets’, not every jacket has a discount, clearly leading to user dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction will result in low conversions.

App Uninstall Rate

Most business owners feel measuring app uninstall rate due to push notifications is a waste of time. After all, there can be many other reasons for users uninstalling an app. A study even confirms this. It says that the top reasons for app uninstallation include -

• Frequent push notifications - 71%
• Frequent crashes and freezes - 62%
• Taking too much space - 50.6%
• Security/Privacy Issue - 29.6%
• Consuming too much data - 20%

From this data, though it is clear that there are multiple reasons for app uninstallation, it is also evident that sending frequent push notifications is the #1 reason for it. In other words, there is a higher chance of people uninstalling your app due to push notifications, making it worthwhile to measure it.

This information will indicate how frequent and relevant your push notifications were. A high uninstall rate indicates either you are sending push notifications too frequently or you are sending irrelevant content.

Pro tip - Test your push notification campaign through a control group before going live to avoid a high app uninstall rate.

Wrapping Up

You may run as many push notification campaigns as you want but don’t make the mistake of not measuring its effectiveness. Push notifications without measuring KPIs is like practicing archery blindfolded. You will never know whether you hit the bull’s eye or whether you are improving your skills. The above 6 KPIs are a good place to start for any type of business managing push notifications.

If you are an existing Vajro customer, then sending and tracking push notifications is easy. Just Go to your Vajro admin app and go to the Analytics section on the dashboard. Over there, select the Push Notifications analytics tab. Voila! You get access to all the important data of your push notification campaigns.

If you are not a Vajro customer yet, then you are missing out on an excellent opportunity to multiply your sales through the power of apps and push notifications.

Contact us to know how Vajro can help.