Ting! You’ve got one new notification!

How many times in a day do you see such notifications on your mobile phone or your desktop browser?

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Those who use apps like Facebook and WhatsApp are already accustomed to these kinds of messages. Most mobile phone apps have some kind of messaging system like this.

Most mobile phone apps

These are called push notifications.

This technology has been used by large enterprises and Fortune 500 companies for many years now, and this simple, little thing has contributed a lot to the growth of these businesses.

Thanks to a growing number of startups, this technology is now available for bloggers and small business owners to use for their blogs and websites.

If you are not using push notifications on your website/blog, then you are missing out on a lot.

How do web push notifications work?

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Web push notifications enable you to send clickable messages to your subscribers’ browsers (they support both desktop and mobile). They work on an opt-in/opt-out basis so users can click to subscribe, and they can adjust their browser’s settings to unsubscribe.

How do web push notifications work

There are many online services that offer this marketing technology as both free and paid services. (I have recommended a few good services at the end of this article.) Most of them also offer WordPress plugins that make it easy for bloggers and entrepreneurs using the WordPress platform to make the most out of web push notifications.

After the initial configuration (refer to this tutorial), push notifications are sent automatically when you publish your post.

In the coming days, I will share many tips and advanced usage guides. But for now, let’s learn about the benefits that one will get when using push notifications.

Why should bloggers use web push notifications?

If you are using email marketing (free or paid), then it’s easy for you to understand the direct and indirect benefits of push notifications. Just like how email marketing helps you convert first-time visitors into subscribers for repeat traffic, web push notifications do the same thing.

Here are some of the most important things you need to know about push notifications…

1. They’re perfect for converting visitors into subscribers.

via GIPHY

Most bloggers make the mistake of not trying to convert their traffic into regular subscribers.

When you give an option to first-time visitors to subscribe to your blog via push notifications, email, or any other method (like RSS), you now have the opportunity to let them know about any new post you publish.

This helps you to constantly increase your traffic with repeat visits.

This is actually how most of the top blogs manage to maintain such a high level of repeat traffic.

2. They drive real-time traffic.

You can’t really ignore this.

The ability to reach out to your readers in real-time is powerful, and the higher your real-time reach is, the more powerful your brand will become in terms of the viral effect it can have.

Imagine you publish a time-sensitive blog post and you need people to see that post ASAP. Only push notifications allow you to get the word out quickly and efficiently.

Drive real-time traffic

Here are a few practical implementations of real-time push notifications:

Promote your live video broadcast.

Promote a time-sensitive discount/offer/deal.

Give exposure to your latest social media updates.

Apart from driving traffic to my newly published posts, I have also tested push notifications for sending traffic to last minute deals, and the conversions for such promotions were great. This is indeed an effective conversion technique.

3. They let readers know about your brand uniqueness.

Brand uniqueness

Pillar posts are the foundation of your blog, and if your new subscribers are not seeing the pillar content (or content that makes your brand outstanding), it will be hard for them to understand the impact of your brand.

Some push notifications services offer drip feed campaigns, and this is an effective way for you to let your subscribers see your most important content.

Pro tip: Most bloggers let users subscribe to their blog updates and then send them only new blog posts. Instead of doing this, you should nurture your newly subscribed users with your most important content, your brand ideology, your achievements, and other important content that helps your newly subscribed users learn more about your brand.

Here is what I do:

I use a service called Push Engage which offers segmentation and drip feed options. I segment users based on the category of blog posts they are reading, and then I send them pre-selected content based on their interest areas. This all requires a one-time setup (30-35 minutes), and after that, everything is automated.

Push Engage

Warning:  You need to be cautious that you aren’t sending out too many notifications. If you are using the segmentation and auto responder feature, then you should set up your system in a way that gives subscribers a limited number of notifications in a week.

Enabling Push Notifications For Your Website

There is no doubt that this is an effective piece of technology for driving traffic to a blog or website. The sooner you start using it, the sooner you will reap the benefits of this powerful marketing technology.

What about pricing and top service providers?

The best thing about this technology is that, in addition to paid packages, it also comes in free packages.

Many push notification service providers offer free services for the initial few thousand subscribers, and then charge you when you reach a certain number.

There are a few completely free services as well (for unlimited subscribers), but the only thing about them is they sell visitors’ data to ad agencies. This might be OK for personal sites and blogs, but for serious blogs and businesses, this could be catastrophic.