How to Use iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications for Better Engagement

In this competitive world of mobile applications, marketers are struggling to find new and innovative solutions to attract users. A new opportunity for offering them a more engaging experience is provided by Apple with the new release of iOS 10. We are talking about a more improved way of creating push notifications called iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications, which is, as you can easily guess, a method to send push notifications enriched with attractive media elements, like images, animations, audios or videos.

Can we ask for more? Yes, we can. Because Apple took this feature to a whole new level, allowing advertisers to add up to 4 Calls – To – Action, users can respond to alerts without even opening the app. Even though, this doesn’t seem a good idea, if you can visualize this on long term, shortcutting their way to answer to your messages and saving them a lot of time will definitely increase the number of users who enable push notifications and, in the same time it will add a plus of confidence into your brand. If push notifications will start being so captivating, why wouldn’t users opt – in for them? Only following the most important metrics on a large period of time you will discover the benefits of using iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications.

How to Integrate iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications to Your App

Because we saw what iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications mean, let’s see what to do to implement it in order to communicate with our users through this service.

1. Open the project and create a new target. Choose Notification Service Extension.
2. In the options window, select your app for Embed in Application.
3. Add the Notification Service Extension Code.
4. Open plist and add App Transport Security Settings where Allow Arbitrary Loads must be Yes.
5. Go to iOS 10+ Media attachment and add your file’s URL.
6. Confirm your selection.

This is the path to follow if you want to add push notifications for your strategy.

5 Best Practices Of iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications For Better Engagement

Our following recommendations are aimed for you to use the new service in a proper way so you can reach better results. But, keep in mind that developers, marketers, analysts and designers must create a team and stay close for promoting the app. This is not just a one person’s work.

Don’t Forget Personalization

Now that you have this wonderful opportunity to convince users to go back to your app, don’t let it slip through your fingers. If you know (and you do) that a user is looking for a specific item or a more wide category of products, give him what he wants in a more visual and compelling manner. It is one thing to announce to him that the wanted jacket is available in a store and another thing to remember him how awesome it is. Keep your eyes on users’ past actions and provide them useful information related to their requests. If you come across their needs you will win their attention.

Use Professional Visuals for Maximum Impression

A great advantage is that their content can be modified. Moreover, the new operating system makes a small pause while unlocking the phone, so push notifications are more visible for a better engagement. But, the best news is that you can customize them whatever you like. You can add special colors for special events, images that will intrigue users and videos which will make them asking for more. If it is allowed to add GIFs, which can be sometimes ridiculous that doesn’t mean you should make a fool out of yourself. Attract your user in a skillful manner, adding polished visuals. Elegant messages will empower the quality of your app.

Add Fun And Feeling for Millennials

This type of push notifications seems like it was tailored for Millennials. Just the other day we detailed the different characteristics that define Millennials in our article, How To Market Your App To Millennials To Increase User Acquisition. But as we all know, and we said it a thousand times before, it is not enough to fight for acquiring them; you need to keep Millennials engaged, as well. In this section of the Infographic provided by koeppeldirect you can easily see that Millennials spend 18 hours a day consuming media. But how many hours they can spend consuming media push notifications? Maybe the same amount if the messages you send are interactive enough and go deep to their soul. If you target this generation, then you must spend a lot of time in discovering their preferences. Don’t make assumptions because with Millennials it is difficult to handle a strategy based on guessing. They are open to new ideas but not any kind of ideas. So, be prepared to invest a lot of creativity and to touch exactly their pain point.

Use for Special Days

Think about how users will react if you congratulate them for their birthday with a small clip or a happy jingle. They will remember how thoughtful you are and how useful your app can be. Put yourself in users’ shoes. If there is a huge concert near your location and you will receive a snippet with the specific atmosphere? Wouldn’t your engagement reach the peak level and you will rush in a minute to be part of the event? The whole purpose of iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications is to give a personal touch to the entire experience in order to advertise your app in a futurist way. The opportunities are limited only by your imagination. The occasions are endless. Think about all the holidays where customers are decided to spend even more than usual. And we are talking about the long period between Black Friday and New Year’s Eve. Speaking of which, you can be the first to wish your users a “Happy New Year!” so they will remember your app for the next 12 months and beyond.

Avoid Over Do

This rule is available in every domain. But with push notifications, it is even more imperative because an annoyed user will disable them and you won’t have any chance to use this type of messaging for impressing him. Apply A/B testing to discover what is too much and how users will react to your creations. Every idea you have you must apply it only when and if you are sure about its positive results. Maybe not every spectacular media will meet the same response as you think. Even if iOS 10 Rich Push Notifications are “rich” they can be also intrusive in the same manner as old fashion push notifications.

Final Thoughts

Apple recently launched a new solution for improved push notifications along with iOS 10. This is great news for both marketers which have the opportunity to engage users in an augmented manner and for users that are bored of the same boring ads and notifications. Of course, there are conditions for both sides in order to take advantages of this improved feature. Marketers must get really creative (if they weren’t already) and users need to enable the option for push notifications. But, who doesn’t love win-win situations?