• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, October 7, 2016

According to Tapjoy, studying over 4.4 million push notifications sent between February and August, 2016, every misstep reduces open rates, and in turn, retention and engagement. Notifications, says the report, are both a powerful tool and a minefield for app developers, risking interrupting or annoying users.

Notifications sent early in the week have the highest open rates. As users approach Friday and Saturday, the imminent end of the work week and upcoming vacation days seem to draw their attention away from their phones. And, a case study with partner developer Nekki, showed that Tapjoy’s push notification lifted average revenue per user by up to 46% for a targeted sales campaign, by sending notifications in each country’s native language at mid-day in their local time zones.

The just right point for scheduled notifications “appears” to be weekly, with a 3.03% open rate, while daily or monthly deliveries are opened much less, says the report. However, though daily notifications have the lowest open rate, over the 7 days of a week, you’ll get more opens from your daily notifications than weekly, even with a lower percentage rate.

Getting the wording just right will lead to higher open rates for notifications, says the report, showing some that users respond strongly, to equally well, in a sale.

These words offer something specific in exchange for opening. But subtle differences lead to low open rates. “Come back” and “collect” both perform poorly: these words don’t create a sense of urgency. Meanwhile, “win” is among the worst words, with a 0.61% open rate for notifications using it, perhaps indicating that users are skeptical of chance-based rewards, declares the report.

Discussing the benefits of a “push” strategy, the study found that automation takes away the manual setup from push notifications, but it’s more than just a convenience: automated notification open rates run about 5.62% across the Tapjoy network, versus 2.13% for manual pushes.

The report goes on to say that push notification triggers on user behavior to eliminate having to manually type a message every time a segment completes an action, saving time.

Some genres get better open rates from push notifications, says the report. The best performing genres when it comes to open rate is adventure games (69.57%), followed by trivia games (33.33%), and puzzle/strategy games (29.43%).

Concluding, the report says that push notifications that do well tend to follow all the same basic rules that govern good social interactions in real life. A well designed push notification offers motivation to be opened, respects the user’s environment, and chooses the right time to interrupt.

For additional information please visit here: https://home.tapjoy.com/blog/7-surprising-facts-open-rates-push-notifications/