Push notifications

Push notifications are small messages that can reach audiences anywhere and anytime. While pop-ups appear only when audiences are on the site they belong to, push messages are independent of sites. They are associated with web browsers and apps.

Enabling push notifications

Adding push notifications is rather simple. To enable push notifications, you need to specify public and private authentication keys. If you have never set up push notifications before, these keys can be quickly generated for you by choosing generate keys under get started for the push notification item in the footprint section.

You can also enter or generate your keys manually under settings > presence > push notifications > website and settings > presence > push notifications > mobile app.

Subscriptions

For push notifications to be delivered, your audience needs to subscribe first. As opposed to most other websites, your website will not pester your audience with an "allow notifications" pop-up straight away. This is because it is bad practice to demand your audience sign up for something, even before they have digested what your footprint is about or what you are asking of them.

Instead, your footprint will encourage your audience to sign up for notifications as they peruse your content. To do this, the footprint will drive your audience to a special page on your website. This page takes the form of www.mywebsite.com/Notifications (note the capital 'N'). You can also access this page by going into the footprint section and selecting show subscription page under get started for the push notifications item.

On this subscription page, your audience can choose to receive notifications from one or more of your push-enabled buzz categories, or they can choose to just receive 'general' notifications. All members of your audience who subscribe will receive 'general' push notifications. Buzz category-specific notifications will only be sent to those who subscribed to those categories as well.

Before your audience can subscribe to a buzz category, you must check the push notifications checkbox in the enrich tab for the category you wish to enable. If you no longer wish to make a buzz category available for subscription, uncheck the checkbox.

The subscription page re-uses the content and text as specified in a buzz category's description tab.

Sending notifications

Notifications can be sent in two ways that server different purposes.

Sending general notifications

A general notification can be sent quickly by going into the footprint section and selecting broadcast general notification under get started for the push notifications item. Anyone who subscribed to notifications will receive the notification.

You must specify a caption and short body text for your notification. You may optionally specify the URL to open when your audience clicks on your notification. You may also optionally specify the URL of an image you wish to show with your notification.

Keep your notification as short and punchy as possible. Send generic notifications sparingly. Only use generic notifications for very important messages. Your audience is likely to unsubscribe if you abuse this feature.

Good examples of suitable notifications would be;

• Important events (venue or address changes, partnerships, store openings)
• Major product launches
  
• Product recalls

Sending buzz post notifications

The preferred way to reach your audience with targeted notifications, is to send these through the buzz section. Because your audience can subscribe for only the notifications they are interested in, you can much better service their needs and interests.

You can send notifications, derived from your buzz posts, with ease. To send a notification about an existing buzz post, go into the buzz section, select the post and go into the broadcast tab. Click on the broadcast upon publish button. Using the wizard, set and modify any other social media you wish to broadcast to.

Alternatively, when you create a new buzz posts, you can adapt and send your buzz post as a notification using the wizard, just like any other social medium.

Good examples of buzz post notifications would be;

• New articles or blog posts
  
• New software version releases
  
• Special offers or promotions
  

Push notification etiquette

Make sure you do not overwhelm your audience with push notifications. If you send notifications too often your audience will unsubscribe and you will no longer be able to reach them. Be careful to make every notification useful, rather than a nuisance.