7 Mobile Engagement Statistics That Show Push Notification ROI

See the stats on how push notifications can help you meet your mobile engagement goals.

by Melissa Manser, Marketing Specialist, Urban Airship

Like it or not, around 70% of app users will churn within 30 days of downloading your app. To help you increase the odds of nudging app retention and app engagement rates higher, we’ve pulled together 7 mobile engagement statistics from our benchmark reports and studies.

Use these stats to guide adjustments to your mobile marketing strategy — and watch as your app engagement KPIs — and your ROI — improve!

1. Send push notifications to new app users within 90 days — or risk wasting 95 cents of every dollar you spent acquiring them.

Sending zero push notifications to new users — especially if they’ve opted in to receive them — means your app engagement strategy could use another look. And yet in our recent study of more than 200 apps, 30% of Android users didn’t receive any push notifications in the 90 days after their first open, and 15% of iOS users didn’t receive any notifications. Of those users, 5% continued to use the app in the 90 days after first app open. See more app retention benchmarks from our recent study here.

2. If you’re not sending any push notifications right now, starting to send weekly notifications could increase 90-day app retention by 2x on iOS and 6X on Android.

While the impact on app retention rates of sending push notifications differs between iOS and Android, sending notifications is better than sending none at all, according to our app retention study.

3. Work to get the opt-in: users opted in to push notifications are retained at nearly 2x the rate of those who aren’t.

Getting iOS app users to opt-in to receive push notifications gives you a leg up on retention, with app retention rates that are nearly double those of users who have opted out. Get more ideas on how to get the opt-in in this blog post — see more opt-in stats in our benchmark report.

4. Sending even more (high value) push notifications can increase app retention rates by 3–10x.

Sending some push notifications is better than nothing at all, according to our recent app retention data analysis. Figure out what kinds of mobile messaging will resonate with your app users, and create a plan for building push notifications that will move the needle on app engagement. Grab our mobile content planning spreadsheet to help you map out high-value push notifications that will drive app engagement, conversions and results.

5. Try out a rich push notification — your direct open rates could increase by up to 56%.

Rich push notifications help you use the power of pictures, GIFs, videos and audio to engage app users. Our data study showed that push notifications with pictures can increase direct open rates by up to 56%. Check out our Rich Notifications Inspiration Guide to brainstorm ways to leverage rich media in your next push notification. If you’re ready to try out your first rich push notification, see our step-by-step guide here.

Android rich push notification (left) and an iOS rich push notification with interactive buttons (right).

6. Targeting your push notifications can improve response rates by 4–7x.

Targeting your push notifications ensures your messages are relevant for your users, making them much more more likely to engage. See more stats on targeted versus untargeted (sometimes called broadcast) push notifications in our study.

7. Combine push notifications with an in app message center message to increase the read rate up to 2x.

When you combine a push notification with a message in your in app message center, you’re improving the chances that your users will read it by 2x. If you’re not already using an in app message center, learn more about it here, and get our In App Message Center Inspiration Guide to brainstorm ways your brand could use it to improve app engagement. For more message center stats, see our Message Center Read Rates benchmark report.

Want to get started with mobile messaging for your app? Or see what types of messaging we offer to increase mobile engagement outside your app? Contact us anytime — we’d love to talk through your goals, and share use use cases, strategies and how-tos that can help you grow your business with mobile.

Originally published at www.urbanairship.com.