We all know that push notifications – when used well – offer huge potential for enabling businesses to interact with users. That ‘used well’ is, of course, the key caveat. We have long moved on (at least you should have) from spray and pray broadcasts, to highly targeted and personalized pushes, which are significantly more successful at engaging users – and not irritating to them.

But that hasn’t been the only development that has improved the push landscape.

‘Rich Push’ has added multimedia capabilities, enabling videos, sounds, gifs and images to be sent in a push notification, all accompanied by customisable interactive buttons. Let’s take a closer look at these developments, and find out how they can be used to drive engagement, conversions, and who knows – even delight your customers!

A Picture Tells A Thou…

Let’s state the obvious first – Rich Push notifications look great. Whether an image, a gif or a video, marketers now have the chance to capture mobile app users’ attention with something visually striking that text alone cannot compete with. That means attention, and it means clicks. And whilst clicks are not usually an end in themselves, they are normally the first step on a journey to the mobile metrics that really count.

For example, rich push enables you to show off new app features by sending onboarding videos or gifs right to the lockscreen, which is massively helpful at driving engagement and increasing retention. Another great example: a TV streaming app sending a video trailer when a new season of a show is about to be released.

The upsell opportunities are huge too. In the telco industry the latest phone release can be promoted to customers due an upgrade, with a nice, shiny image of the latest 6-inch anti-boredom device driving all-important contract renewals. Or users who have browsed flights to Barcelona can be sent an image of La Sagrada Familia (minus the queue). There really are any number of possibilities.

The really terrific thing is how easy these campaigns are to create. You simply add any image, video, gif or audio as a URL straight from your CRM, or upload directly to Swrve, and Bob’s your uncle – you’ve got a Rich Push ready to deploy.

Dynamic Interactive Buttons

Even then, it’s not just about images and video. Rich push can include fully customisable buttons that enable your users to complete simple interactions from the lock screen, with no need to open up the app. That removes a serious amount of friction when it comes to completing key tasks and processes. For instance, one button can deeplink directly from the lock screen to a purchase page in the app.

Another smart use case: a simple customer satisfaction survey, for example “How did you like our service today?” Rich Push comes with the ability to configure 3 customizable buttons to say whatever you want e.g. “Great”, “Satisfactory”, “Poor”. The whole interaction takes place with the minimum fuss possible, which means higher completion rates and more accurate data.

Same Great Personalization & Testing

Don’t forget, Rich Push is still a push notification at heart, and so it comes with the same powerful personalization features that are a feature of Swrve’s ‘regular’ push notifications. This goes for A/B testing as well, so that you can see for certain, using real user data, the impact that Rich Push is having on your business.

If you’re doing everything right – the answer to that question should be “a lot”!