Streaming in the media industry has seen rapid growth in recent years. Currently, 56% of US households choose to watch their media on digital streaming platforms like Netflix instead of traditional cable TV. This percentage is expected to keep rising in the future as consumers seek more relevant content and have less tolerance for traditional advertising.
However, this also means that marketers need to be smarter to be heard through the clutter of this saturated landscape. Standard, traditional marketing strategies are not going to cut it anymore. We all know customers are fickle and will change service if they get a better offer, therefore you need to develop your customer relationships to inspire loyalty to your brand. One effective way of doing this is through relevant micro-targeted messaging, particularly push notifications.
Push notifications are the ultimate way to reach out to your customers. But 96% of standard push notifications are often ignored with little thought and an almost subconscious swipe to the right. With properly targeted, personal push notification campaigns you can increase engagement with your push notifications by, on average, 8 times. That’s 8 times more engagement which means more retention, more conversion, and more ROI.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
A Push Notification to Drive Subscriptions
As subscriptions are the key to profitability, your messaging must support the drive to convert as many users as possible from free trialists to fully paid subscribers.
But doing this can be a delicate process. Trial management is essential, and push notifications play a major role here. During this time it is crucial to fully demonstrate your service’s value so that users trust you enough to sign up for a subscription. So if they haven’t engaged with one of your key selling points, be it a cool feature or exclusive content, let them know about it.
Be smart about timing messages around expiring trials, and demonstrate the value of upgrading to a full subscription. Use deep-links to bring the user right to the signup page from the push notification. And A/B test subscription package offers to optimize the process, implementing the one that brings in results for you.
Push Notifications to Increase Engagement
Nudge theory is a concept in behavioral science which argues that positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions are effective in influencing the behavior of your users. Nudging your users with push notifications can be a great tool to increase engagement with your app, but getting the right balance so that you don’t annoy your customers can be difficult.
The key is using behavioral data to target your customers with relevant nudges. Take this example encouraging a user to engage with the streaming service using payload targets: the user has watched Game of Thrones Season 7, has previously searched for Game of Thrones Season 8, and their account has been inactive for the past week.
Other examples of a gentle nudge to your users could be to remind them that they still have content left to consume (“you’ve only got 3 episodes of Fawlty Towers left to watch”), content soon to be released, or an upsell to reduce advertising content. After all, who wants to see an ad right before Ned Stark loses his head (spoiler alert)?
Read more: