This Report Reveals The Words You Should Be Using In Your Push Notifications

A recent study by mobile marketing platform Leanplum has revealed the type of words that make push notifications more effective.

Leanplum’s report, called Push Notification Content, offers a breakdown of the words and themes that good push notifications should and should not include.

The study looked at over 2.6bn notifications and analysed how effective different words were across numerous messages, to create a “word engagement score”.

Leanplum then deciphered which, out of all of the words studied, resulted in greater engagement, and this data was used to create a list of “power words”.

Categorised, these power words tend to be those that imply a sense of urgency, exclusivity, value or emotion.

This could be anything from “breaking” and “deadline” to “reminder”, “immediately” or “reveal”.

This means that messages offering things like alerts, warnings, previews, deals and those that give a sense of fear or delight are likely to boost customer engagement most, Leanplum reveals.

Momchil Kyurkchiev, Leanplum co-founder and CEO, said: “We are making it easier for marketers to move past the generic blast approach and to treat each user as an individual.”

One company to test Leanplum’s power words is marketing firm Publisher’s Clearing House (PCH), which launched a selection of A/B tests to see what type of content was most effective at boosting its mobile growth and revenue.

PCH found that if someone is close to churning, then the tone of the notification needs to be more urgent, in order to keep them on the platform.

By changing its tone, PCH saw a 5% increase in users, and a 30% increase in retention.

Brooke O’Keefe, Associate Director of Integrated Marketing at PCH, said: “We’ve found that power words have a big impact on user engagement.

“They help us capture user attention and stand apart from other apps’ messaging. Leanplum makes it super easy to A/B test elements such as tone, copy length, and personalisation, which substantially boosts engagement.”

Leanplum also offers a breakdown of the kind of words that marketers within the music, retail and travel industries should be using in push notifications.

The report also warns that push notifications should not just be simple reminders and should not offer false promises.

Leanplum suggests that personalising content, sending push notifications at optimal times of day, including emojis and coordinating messages across multiple platforms are also effective ways of boosting engagement.

To read the full report please click here.