We downloaded 43 shopping apps. We saved 253 push notifications (see them all here).

Why?

To see how successful brands are using push notifications.

Push is easily the most underutilized, and misunderstood marketing channel in ecommerce.

It’s underutilized partly because you need an app to send push (web push notifications have very low opt-in rates and are not very effective). And a lot of brands don’t realize that you don’t need $100k+, or a dedicated app dev team to have your own app.

It’s also misunderstood. There’s no playbook like there is for email, SMS and social. Apps are still a relatively new thing.

With email and SMS, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to at least be average. Your email or SMS provider has plug and play flows you can set up for welcome messages, abandoned carts, Black Friday promotions and more common use cases.

But with push, the playbook is still being written.

• Should you use it exclusively as a direct response marketing channel?
• Should it be reserved for high-urgency or time-sensitive notifications?
• Are brands even scratching the surface of what push is capable of?

Well, the best way to start understanding push better is to see how brands are currently using push.

The market is small — less than 5% of successful brands even have an app, and of those, not all are using push (or using it effectively).

But that still leaves a significant number of brands that are using push, and are almost certainly making a killing in terms of ROI.

So that’s where we decided to look. We downloaded some popular apps, opted in, and had a look at what kind of notifications they’re sending, how many notifications they’re sending, and in general, how they’re approaching their push strategy.

The results were illuminating. And we’re about to show them to you.

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Don’t have an app yet? No worries! With MobiLoud, it’s super easy. As long as your website is fast and mobile-friendly, you can turn it into an app and start sending push notifications in less than a month, with minimal work.

Find out how easy it is — get a free preview of your app here.

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How Many Push Notifications Do Leading Brands Send?

Push notification frequency is an interesting topic. There’s a lot of conflicting information about the best way to approach it, as a brand.

The most common approach I see is brands afraid to send too many push notifications.