The Power of Push and How to Use It

There’s a little goodie with a big impact inside every iPhone app made with AppMakr. One that lets you connect with your users, increase app sessions and promote your app (or brand, blog, website, product, anything!) even further.

We’re talking push notifications. And if you know how to use them, they’re a great way to pump up your app experience and increase user engagement.

If you’re not familiar with push notifications, they’re kind of like a text message from you to your users. Except, without the SMS charges to your users or having to get all of your user’s individual phone numbers (yikes). At any time, you can send a customized message that will go to each one of your users, even if they don’t have your app open.

Which means there are no barriers between you and your audience. If your app is closed, push notifications bust that door open and invite users back to your app. Your message pops up on their device in a big blue pop-up window that’s tough to miss. Each message is sent with AppMakr push credits, the first 100 of which are totally free. After that, you can purchase up to 5,000,000 at a time.

But even with millions of credits, you don’t want to squander them—or your pop-up window real estate. Every time you send a message, you should do so with the end goal of having users reopen your app. Here are a few tricks to make the most of your message:

1. Give just enough information. Hook your users with enough details to pique their interest, but have to go to your app to get the full scoop. Say your app is dedicated to a band that has a tour coming up. Let users know in the push message that tickets are going on sale soon, and to check out your latest post for concert dates and exclusive ticket access.

2. Don’t include links in your message. You want to draw users into your app, not redirect them to an external site. Besides that, users can’t copy and paste your link to share with others—an immediate obstacle to spreading your app to their friends (and more downloads for you).

3. Show your users some love—just not too much. Don’t hold back on sending messages for fear of “pestering” people. As long as you’re sharing information that’s relevant to the content in your app (you know, the app they downloaded in the first place), you’re good. Of course, you can get too much of a good thing. If you’re sending push after push, you might want to chill out a little.

Push notifications are a direct line between you and your entire user base, and a powerful tool to keep them coming back to your app. Each iPhone app is enabled for push notifications automatically—all you have to do is craft a great message with the pointers listed above, and send it straight from your AppMakr dashboard. The power of push is yours for the taking!