The death of email has long been predicted. It is clear that it remains the king of channels, the most used by far. Later, push notifications have managed to forcefully insinuate themselves into the daily lives of consumers and marketers.
Email and push are very different. They each have specific australia whatsapp number data 5 million advantages. In this, they are complementary. The combination of email and push allows you to create highly effective cross-channel customer journeys, as we will see.
So, no battle, but rather a complementarity to seek, to test, to find.
In this article, we will present in detail email and push, their respective advantages and best practices for effectively integrating these channels into your customer activation strategy.
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Summary
1. Email, an essential part of customer relations
2. Push, a booming channel
3. Email and push: a winning complementarity
1. Email, an essential part of customer relations
More than 360 billion emails will be sent in 2024 (source: Statista ) and this volume increases year after year. Email is far from being dead, as has sometimes been announced, and on the contrary remains the main customer activation channel, the most obvious. This is due to a number of advantages.
The benefits of email marketing
A large audience
Email marketing continues to play a predominant role in digital communication strategies thanks to its ability to reach a large audience .
With over 4 billion email users worldwide (source: Statista ), this channel offers immense reach and allows businesses of all sizes to reach their customers directly and at scale.
A customizable channel
One of the major strengths of email is its great capacity for personalization.
Emails can be personalized based on contact demographics, purchasing behaviors, preferences.
Personalization can range from simply inserting the recipient's name in the subject/body of the email to recommending specific products based on purchase history.
There are actually few limits when it comes to customization , provided you have these three ingredients:
Rich, up-to-date and well-organized customer data.
Customer segmentation (we will come back to this ).
A scripting logic ( marketing automation ) that allows you to send personalized emails based on customer behavior or their life cycle. Marketing automation allows you to push the personalization logic to its maximum.
Accurate metrics
Email marketing also offers the advantage of providing simple, effective, standardized and accurate metrics.
These metrics (or KPIs - Key Performance Indicators) are well known to marketers:
Deliverability rate,
Opening rate,
Click-through rate,
Reactivity rate,
Conversion rate,
Etc.
The ease of access to this performance data (in marketing platforms) simplifies the process of continuous improvement. The performance of an email marketing is easy to measure, therefore easier to improve.
Best practices for email marketing
The ROI of email marketing is on average 3,600% . €1 invested generates €36 in turnover. The figure can be discussed, but email is clearly one of the most efficient channels on the market. Inexpensive to use, it can contribute very significantly to a company's turnover.
Provided that you use good email marketing practices. If we had to remember only 3 good practices, they would be these:
Database segmentation
The point was quickly made above: the performance of email marketing is based on the personalization of campaigns and the personalization of campaigns is in turn based on the segmentation of customer data.
Segmenting data (or segmenting customers) consists of creating homogeneous groups of customers (segments) sharing common characteristics. These characteristics can be behavioral (purchase frequencies, page views, etc.), socio-demographic (age, gender, etc.) or psychographic (declared interests).
Segmentation makes email targeting possible and allows your business to send messages that truly resonate with your customers, their needs, their interests, their current challenges.
Customer segmentation has become part of marketing habits. Mass email marketing is giving way to personalized email marketing based on relevant segmentation of data and customers. This is the condition for the success of email campaigns.
Content and design optimization
The content and design of emails must be carefully crafted to capture the attention of recipients and develop their engagement .
It is particularly important to take care of the subject and pre-header of emails to encourage the recipients of your campaigns to click and optimize the opening rate.
The content, more generally, must be personalized, which brings us back to the previous point. The tone must be in accordance with your target. We do not address ourselves in the same way depending on whether we are addressing retirees or 18-25 year olds (to take a slightly caricatured but telling example).
The design, on the other hand, must be both aesthetic and functional. It is also important to ensure that emails display correctly on all devices, especially mobile devices. This has become a prerequisite.
There is a lot to say about good practices for designing and creating marketing emails. What you need to keep in mind is that the way an email is written, copywritten and formatted has a significant impact on the performance of emails .
Deliverability Management
Deliverability, for logical reasons, directly impacts the performance of an email campaign. An email is “delivered” when it lands in your recipient’s inbox. Deliverability is a real challenge in email marketing.
The deliverability rate of your emails refers to the percentage of emails that arrive in your contacts' inboxes. It is estimated that you should aim for a rate of 95% , or even 97% if you want to be a very good student.
To optimize this KPI and therefore the performance of your emails, you must take care of your sender reputation, ensure that your contacts have agreed to receive your emails (optin) and regularly clean your email lists to remove those who are no longer receptive to your messages.
To go further, discover our article dedicated to email deliverability .
2. Push, a booming channel
Push notifications have carved out a place of choice in the range of channels available to marketing teams. Several advantages explain the success of push notifications (web or mobile).
The advantages of push notifications
Instantaneity and responsiveness
Push notifications have the ability to reach users instantly and elicit an immediate response. Unlike emails that can sit unchecked for hours or days in an inbox, push notifications appear directly on the user’s lock screen (mobile) or computer screen (website notifications).
This immediate visibility is one of the major strengths of this channel.
This feature makes push notifications particularly effective for conveying urgent information or time-limited offers. Push notifications encourage users to act quickly .
A high engagement rate
Push notifications have an intrusive nature that is balanced by the fact that they are accepted. Indeed, it is not possible to send a web or mobile push notification to a customer without the latter having given their consent to receive them (optin).
Push notifications thus enjoy maximum visibility and explicit acceptance from consumers. This explains why the engagement rates of push notifications are significantly higher than those of other communication channels. The opening rate of push notifications exceeds 16% .
Geolocation and precise targeting
Web and mobile push notifications offer advanced targeting capabilities, including geolocation. It is possible to send push notifications based on the user’s current location. This allows, for example, businesses with physical retail locations to push specific offers when a user is near a store.
Ultra-targeting push notifications increases their relevance and ensures that messages are sent when they are most likely to result in a conversion.
To learn more about this topic, read our article on the different types of push notifications in which we review the main advantages of this channel for businesses (and consumers).
The keys to an effective push strategy
The performance of a channel depends on how you use it. Here are some tips for building an effective push notification strategy.
The relevance and added value of the messages
For web and mobile push notifications to be effective, they must provide value to recipients. That’s the foundation.
This means not only personalizing content based on user data, purchasing behaviors, preferences, but also ensuring that each notification offers clear added value , whether it is:
Important information (news, scoop, software update)
An important reminder (a transaction to be finalized, an offer expiring, etc.)
A major offer (a gift, a discount, a reduction code, etc.).
The frequency and timing of sending
The frequency and timing of sending push notifications should be chosen carefully to avoid consumer fatigue.
Sending too many notifications can irritate users and cause them to turn off notifications or even uninstall the app. So it’s important to test and analyze user responsiveness to find a balance that maximizes engagement without overwhelming them.
The timing of notifications , on the other hand, must be adapted to user habits. The best time to send depends on the content of the message, the nature of your service, and your users' habits. It is determined by carrying out A/B tests .
Complementarity with other channels
Push notifications should not work in silos. They must be integrated into a broader multichannel marketing strategy , integrated into customer journeys, marketing automation scenarios that use email, SMS, social networks, etc.
For example, if a user receives an email announcing a new product collection, a push notification can be sent a few days later to remind the user to check out this collection if they haven't opened the email yet.
This cross-channel approach not only ensures consistency in the messaging across the different channels, but also mutually reinforces the channels.
3. Email and push: a winning complementarity
Email and push, as you will have understood, do not have to be opposed. They are complementary.
Use cases combining email and push
Push notifications (web or mobile) and emails are distinct in form and function, but complement each other very well when integrated into the same customer journey . Here are three examples of customer journeys combining email and push.
Recovery and reactivation scenarios
A user is showing signs of disengagement, no longer using the application, no longer opening their emails? A follow-up and reactivation scenario is required. Here, the email and push combo can be very effective.
For example, you can send an email to remind the user about the benefits of the app or offer valuable content. If this email is not opened after a few days, a push notification can be sent to attract the user's attention in an even more direct and immediate way.
Onboarding and loyalty paths
The onboarding journey is a sequence of messages sent to new users who download an application or sign up for a service. The goal is to welcome new users properly and guide them through the adoption of your application or service. A good onboarding leads to customer loyalty .
Here is an example of a journey (or scenario) involving email and push. A user signs up. After signing up, they receive a welcome email that provides detailed information on how to start using the service or application. Some time later, push notifications are sent to guide the user through their first actions. The notifications thus take over from the traditional welcome email.
Event campaigns
Email and push notifications are also very effective in event campaigns. The combination of the two allows you to increase the visibility of your events and boost the registration rate.
For example, you can send an email to announce the event well in advance, providing all the necessary details and possibly a link for more information or registration.
As the event approaches, push notifications can be sent in sequence to remind the user of the upcoming event, encourage registration if they haven't already, or offer last-minute information.
The benefits of an integrated multi-channel approach
The combined use of emails and push notifications in an integrated multichannel marketing strategy offers several significant benefits that contribute to both enriching the customer experience and improving business performance.
A 360° view of the customer
Integrating push notifications and emails into a multichannel marketing strategy makes it easier to consolidate data and insights collected about your customers, their behavior, and preferences.
In other words, centralizing marketing actions in multichannel scenarios simplifies data centralization .
This offers a 360° view of the customer which allows for continuous improvement in the targeting of content, offers, moments of interaction, etc.
The integration of channels (and in particular email and push) is therefore a tool for the unification of data and customer knowledge.
A seamless and consistent customer experience
When push notifications and emails are carefully coordinated, they help create a seamless, frictionless customer experience.
The company can thus exploit the strengths of each channel:
Emails can be used to provide detailed information.
Push notifications can be used for reminders or urgent actions.
The harmonization of channels made possible by their integration into scripted customer journeys ensures that the customer receives the right message, at the right time and in the most appropriate way. This results in an increase in customer satisfaction.
Optimization of results and ROI
Well-designed multichannel marketing scenarios can optimize conversion rates and reduce message costs.
As we have seen, push notifications can be used to re-engage users who have not opened an email and thus increase the chances of conversion without significant additional costs.
By improving the relevance of requests, you increase the ROI and performance of your marketing actions.
What you need to remember
Emails and push notifications each have their respective advantages. We have explored their differences. The best practice is to interweave these two communication channels judiciously in coherent marketing automation scenarios.
Email and push should therefore not be opposed. They complement each other.
Let's add to conclude that their joint use in tailor-made marketing scenarios requires the use of a multichannel activation platform like Actito . With Actito, you can create abandoned cart recovery, onboarding, reactivation or sponsorship scenarios that integrate email and push (and other channels too!) in a smooth and logical way.
Implementing a cross-channel activation strategy requires the use of a cross-channel platform.
If you are considering expanding your use of push notifications and creating multichannel customer journeys that integrate email and push, we invite you to get in touch with us. Together, we will discuss the best ways to achieve your goals.
