Traffic Mansion Blog

To Push or Not to Push? – The Truth About Push Notifications

Push notification traffic is still a relatively new concept in the affiliate marketing world, but statistics have shown that marketers are slowly embracing this new format of online advertising. Especially in these early stages while the traffic is still cheap.  

Even though this is still a new idea, companies like PropellerAds, RTX Platform, and MegaPush have already managed to position themselves as the top push notification traffic sources.

For all those who are still unfamiliar with this concept and unaware of its benefits, in this article we will try to explain what push notifications are and why you should pay close attention to this format.

The Basics

In case you’re not familiar with the term, a push notification is that little notification that pops up on your screen when you’re doing something. 

To receive such a notification, as a user, you need to allow it. Once you land on a specific website that uses this technology, a message will appear in front of you and ask to either allow or block the notifications. 

If you accept the request, you will be automatically added to the website’s list and the people who run it will begin to send you notifications. 

Pretty simple, right?

In a nutshell, this is basically the same as building an email list, except you don’t have to create opt-in forms. The software does it for you. It creates the popup automatically.

Push notifications are made out of  three basic components:

  • The text – usually a simple message that serves as a CTA
  • The image – a graphic that supports the messages
  • The link – the heart and soul of the push notification. The whole point behind this way of promotion is to get specific groups of users to land on specific pages.

Do Push Notifications Work?

They sure do. According to a study published by Localytics, the average opt-in rate is 53.2% and the open rates on notification themselves are somewhere between 3-8%. When you compare this to the average email opt-in rate which goes between 1-5%, it becomes clear as daylight that push notifications should remain on your radar.

Sure, the notification open rates aren’t that high, but when you combine that with the opt-in rates  – the story immediately gets a lot sweeter.

Let’s do the math: imagine that you send your notification to a list where you have close to 10,000 people who have opted-in to receive notifications from you. If we think about the open rate average and assume that 8% of them will actually click on the link you send them via a push notification – you will receive precisely 800 leads on your landing page. 

Not bad, right?

Benefits of Using Push Notifications

In addition to the high-open rates, push notifications are also:

  • Easy to personalize because you can schedule the notifications to fit the users’ activities
  • Great for A/B testing
  • Based on real traffic that’s delivered to real people, not bots.

The good thing about most of these push notifications providers is that they’re cheap and that you can grow your operation with them. The payment plans are okay, you can use the tech for free in the beginning while your list is still small. But once you go over 2000 contacts, then you’ll need to pay. 

Even though this is not ideal, it’s still a pretty decent business model. As a marketer, you are given the opportunity to test the potential of this service for free. If you start to make a lot of cash through push notifications, it’s only fair to share a slice of the profit with the service provider that helps you make use of that traffic.

The Link Between Push Notifications and Affiliate Marketing

Now that you understand why push notifications are worth your attention, it’s time to explain how you can use them for affiliate marketing purposes. 

If you, let’s say, plan to promote a dating service, all you have to do is install the push tech on your landing page and grow your contact list. Once you build a decent enough list, you can use push notifications to try to sell to your targets. You can provoke their interest with special offers and unique content.

In case you’re planning to promote multiple products from different industries, you can reuse the same contact list and just send them different push notifications to different landing pages. Of course, proper segmentation, quality CTAs, and contextual offers play a key role here. If you have people on your list who opted-in for specific content, try to remain at least in the same ballpark with their interests. You don’t want to spam people who are interested in dating services with house appliances. 

The goal here is to provide value, to vary your messaging, and to paste yourself. Don’t go crazy and send people 10 notifications a day. One message a day is more than enough. 

Also, try to actually work on your copy and create good landing pages. Don’t just copy what your competitors do and aggressively chase people around the web.

Platforms that Sell Push Notification Traffic 

Of course, since this is affiliate marketing, there are already platforms who have big lists and sell this type of traffic to other affiliates.

As mentioned above, the biggest names in the business are:

  • PropellerAds 
  • RTX Platform
  • MegaPush

Every single one of these platforms is different and they offer different plans. The platform you choose will probably be influenced by how much money you have to spend, what you want to accomplish, how much traffic you’re driving, etc.

All the platforms offer similar features, so you will need to make the decision based on your feel and research.  

So, to Push or Not to Push?

We think you’ve already figured out that we are “pro push” oriented. 

Even though it’s been here forever, the affiliate marketing industry is one of the fastest changing industries in the world. Since everything we do is performance-based, affiliates are used to experimenting with new things. The changes in this industry occur rapidly and those who are smart enough to pick-up on the trend while it’s still young, tend to benefit the most.

Since all the statistics underline the fact that push notifications traffic is here to stay and that it is becoming more and more popular with affiliates – we advise you to get in this game as soon as possible, while the traffic is still cheap. 

There is a lot of revenue to be made if you’re smart enough. So, visit the websites of some of the sources we listed in this post and start experimenting with push notification traffic today.

Add comment