Browser-based push notifications can be a powerful tool for news and content websites that are looking to re-target their visitors and drive viewership to their articles. Media organizations that rely on social media channels to promote their content can feel frustrated when their posts are deprioritized in the algorithm for “spamming” peoples’ timelines, and what if your subscribers are only interested in a particular topic or subject? Browser-based push notifications can help. Here are three reasons why content sites need web push notifications:
1) Own Your Traffic
Pushnami’s advanced subscriber capture tools enable you to build a subscriber list based off of your own website’s traffic. Encouraging your loyal visitors to sign up to receive push notifications or an email newsletter will allow you to own your traffic via a marketing channel that you have total control and ownership over. We typically see content sites receive opt-in rates of about 15%. Say your website receives 100,000 unique visitors each month. This would average to about 15,000 subscribers in the 1st month (and more as your list continues to grow over time) that you could push content to.
2) Control Your Narrative
Once you’ve built your subscriber list, you have free reign to send them notifications about breaking news stories. You can also integrate your RSS feed with push to ensure that any new article receives the maximum amount of traffic possible. Providing this alert to your subscribers allows your content to live in the here-and-now, rather than needing to wait for them to visit your website or social media accounts.
If you are looking to drive interest in a particular topic, make sure you are prompting your subscribers with the right opt-in strategy. Recently the Seattle Times was prompting their subscribers into Coronavirus updates. They used a custom opt-in prompt with rich buttons, however the opt-in button was cut off and read “Yes, I want coronavirus.” These accidents can be prevented with a solid strategy.
3) Retargeting to Drive Subscriptions
For many news outlets, digital subscriptions are crucial to the business, and push notifications can help support this revenue stream. For example, the Dallas Morning News used push to help drive digital subscriptions for their website, and saw hundreds of new subscribers, with 4% of their overall page views and 11% of their returning page views driven by push.
These three tips can help accelerate your content strategy and drive revenue for your business, but your site is unique and so are your marketing challenges. If you are looking for ways to maximize your revenue for your content site, contact us today to learn how Pushnami can help.
