The release of Apple’s iOS 12 has opened new doors for mobile app builders. Now, app users can control how they receive and interact with push notifications.
Around 75% of iOS users are already using iOS 12. Therefore, you should be aware of the updates and aim to provide a more relevant push notification experience for iOS 12 users.
In today’s post, we are discussing four fundamental changes that have been made to push notifications in iOS 12 that may affect how you send these notifications from your iOS app.
Understand what these updates mean, and how you can adapt to get benefit from them.
Push notification grouping
In the new update of iOS 12, push notifications are grouped from the same app together on the lock screen of a device.
As the lock screen should be a more personalized and relevant space for the user, it reduces unnecessary clutter on the screen.
The iPhone lock screen looks similar to the Facebook news feed. It is because the goal is only to show the most relevant notifications to users at the right time. Previously, in iOS 11, notifications were seen in chronological order, which has now changed.
How you should act in response:
As you know, with the new update, only the most recent notification will be instantly visible to the user. You should send push notifications that have excellent copy, relevant media, and cater to the recipient’s interests. Else, the user will swipe it off the screen and all of your notifications will be ignored.
Even though there is less space on a user’s lock screen, you can still generate good engagement by sending relevant notifications that encourage users to click through to receive your content.
Suggested Read: Create push notification campaigns that every app need
New notification centre
With the ‘new notification centre’ and ‘manage notifications system’ in iOS 12, users can control how they receive push notifications from the lock and home screen.
Furthermore, users can easily access the notification centre from the iOS 12 home screen. This means that users can quickly change the permissions your app has on their device, and can adjust how they receive these notifications.
How you should act in response:
Ensure that all of the notifications you are sending to the user are of rich content, engaging, and relevant. If your app notifications are not competent enough, you can expect that your users will mute them or simply turn it off.
Eventually, it’s all about building a relationship with your audience. You only need to respect your users’ time and attention. There is no need for spamming or communicating with your users aggressively.
If you are thinking of using such a strategy on your app that has been built with an online app creator, you will fail very quickly. To ensure the app’s success, you need to win people’s trust and continually deliver things accordingly.
Keep an eye on your push notification analytics to test what type of notifications your audience responds to and engages with most.
Intelligent suggestions from Siri
Sending notifications in iOS 12 and expecting your users to open them, is not a smart strategy. It is because Apple now focuses on the quality of the notifications a user receives. With the new update, Apple has made Siri an inclusive part of the push notification experience.
Now, Siri will make suggestions such as to quietly deliver or turn alerts on, based on the way in which alerts are acted upon by the user.
Simply put, if you send inappropriate push notifications that are not engaging your users, Siri might recommend users to mute them.
How you should act in response:
Design your push notifications in an engaging way to earn attention. Make sure you do A/B testing to find the most significant types of notifications that you can send to your audience at the right time of the day.
The key is to add personalization and use segmentation in your push notifications.
According to a study, personalized messages get 4x higher engagement rates than generic ones. If these many people see your message, it will have a significant positive effect on your business.
You can also create a push notification segmentation system that allows users to subscribe to different categories of it. This means you’ll be able to send more tailored notifications to your app users as per their interests.
Provisional authorization for push notifications
Unquestionably, this is the most significant update of push notifications in iOS 12.
iOS Push Notifications presently have a low opt-in rate because users have to manually opt-in when they open a new app.
As per Accengage, 43% of iOS users had to accept receiving push notifications manually in the previous versions of iOS. It means you may have been missing out on sending notifications to approximately half of your users. That was a critical barrier to engagement with push notifications because earlier users didn’t know what type of notifications you would be sending to them. It was the norm to be cautious about opting-in.
Now, in iOS 12, there is a feature of enabling ‘Provisional Authorization.’ The process of push notifications opting-in will work as it does on Android. iOS 12 app users will be automatically opted-in when they install your app. Also, they can then Keep or Turn Off your app notifications.
However, there is a downside of provisional authorization – your app notifications will be delivered quietly, without any notification sound, until a user opts to ‘Keep’ your notifications.
Quiet notifications are not ideal, but the feature offers you a great opportunity to engage with your audience twice.
How you should act in response:
If you are building an app via WooCommerce and WordPress mobile app builder like AppMySite, you should keep this feature in your app.
Also, you need to prove to your users that your push notifications are worth keeping turned on.
It is being recommended that you start your push notifications for new users slowly and then build up when they are open to engaging with your notifications more.
The ending notes
The entrance of iOS 12 raises the quality bar for push notifications. And, you should be looking forward to harnessing it.
With the above-listed push notification updates in iOS 12, you will have a bigger picture to conquer. By sending relevant push notifications, you’ll get loyal and engaged app users.
These updates emphasize you to use push notifications as part of your app marketing and retention strategy. You need to ensure that every push notification you send is highly relevant to your users, though.
Once you have created an app from a website, and got an added feature of push notifications to it, you need to discover what’s relevant by communicating with your users. A/B testing, and giving your users control over their notification settings can be highly beneficial.
Moreover, personalization and segmentation are the keys if you want to see success with iOS 12. Move ahead with the right strategy and taste success.