Earlier today, the pop-up you see in the image above appeared while I was watching the latest Kanye West video on the popular music blog Hip Hop N More. At first, I thought the message was a mistake. I thought I had possible clicked a link to a mobile version of the site, or that the site had an app it wanted me to download, but I soon realized both ideas were wrong. In fact, I had made no mistake at all. The above pop-up was promoting a new platform that creates push notifications whenever new content is posted to a site. It’s 100% optional, and it only works for users of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, but it could very well be the next great user retention tool for online stores and blogs alike.
Created by PushCrew, a new startup still establishing their presence online, these blog based push notifications are being marketed as a way to engage your subscribers with your communication even when they are not present on your website. The tool is easy to install, requiring just moments of time, and once live requires very little upkeep. I’ll let this explainer video show you what I mean:
Sounds pretty simple, right? Certainly seems that way.
I never saw myself as someone who would consider push notifications of any kind to be a good idea, but in an age where traffic often still determines whether or not writers get paid anything at all for their work I’m coming around to the idea at an alarming rate. After all, whether or not users actually engage with this tool is entirely up to them, so content creators should not think twice about making such tools available to their audience. These notifications will make a bigger impression than Twitter or Facebook on users, and every single notification will automatically link back to your site, thus furthering your visits per post with each click.
It’s worth noting that Hip Hop N More is not the only site using this technology in the music world. So far, we’ve found more than a dozen sites covering half a dozen genres that all allow users to opt-in for notification through PushCrew technology. One site in particular, I Care If You Listen, even appeared in a case study that ran on the company’s blog. Here’s an excerpt:
Thomas is on a PushCrew free account. (PushCrew free account lets you send unlimited notifications to upto 500 subscribers forever.) So far, he’s sent more than 20 notifications with click-rate hovering in the range of 4% to 18%
I Care If You Listen is a music blog that Thomas has been running for more than 5 years now. On Twitter, he has a strong following of more than 60k subscribers. And an active email list to whom he regularly pushes out updates.
Since both Twitter and email have their own limitations — According to data from Meetedgar blog, only 46% users login Twitter once per day, and half of a tweet’s engagement happens within 24 minutes of being published. For email, according to data from MailChimp, the average click-rate hovers in the range of 2% to 5% — Thomas started looking for another platform using which he could communicate with his audience in an efficient manner.
He found PushCrew and decided to give the free account a shot. He has a little over 150 subscribers in his PushCrew account. The best click-rate that he got was 18.18% and the average click rate stands at 11.29%. In each of his notifications, he uses UTM parameters in the landing page URL so he can trace all metrics about his subscribers in Google Analytics. I asked if the metrics were any better or if they’re following the same pattern as other communication platforms to which he replied, “I’ve been able to see better engagement from the notifications, in terms of bounce rate (lower), pages per sessions and session durations (both higher). People engage slightly more with our content coming from a push notification.”
Time will tell whether or not website push notifications catch on, but for the time being you might want to consider implementing PushCrew technology on your music blog. After all, who does it hurt? People who don’t want it never have to use it, and those that do can have it for free. Everyone wins!
