The royal wedding is dividing opinions across the world – people either looking forward to the celebrations or sick of hearing about it altogether. In amongst the frenzy, Nigel Arthur, Managing Director, EMEA, Urban Airship explains why brands and businesses should ensure their push notifications around the event are as targeted as possible to avoid adding to the noise.
There hasn’t been a major world event in the last several years that wasn’t first published as a push notification, and it’s not just limited to news organisations. The Royal Wedding has seen a range of companies jumping on the occasion from a marketing perspective, from airlines to pharmacies, and some consumers are developing ‘Royal Wedding Weariness’ as a result.
Whether it’s the Royal Wedding or the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, it’s important that brands cater to individuals’ preferences and treat push notifications as a privilege lest their app be jettisoned in a fit of frustration.
While apps can count on hearing complaints, they can’t count on customers actually telling them what they want or don’t want. App preference centres, where users can select categories for alerts, only see a small percentage of the audience using them. So, where does that leave brands?
There is a wealth of data that can be used to infer customer preferences. Every story they read, link they click, or button they tap says something about their interests and affinities. If someone has read 2 or more articles about the Royal Family, chances are pretty high they’ll appreciate or at least won’t mind hearing about the upcoming nuptials.
Even better, brands can take advantage of interactive notifications with simple buttons like “Yes,” “No” or “Ask Me Later” to simply ask users if they’d like to be kept up to date on a particular topic, whether that’s developing news or special Black Friday sales.
By Nigel Arthur
Managing Director, EMEA
Urban Airship