There are more than one ways to reach your subscribers and website visitors. For instance, you could reach them via email campaigns or social media platforms. But there is no better way to boost engagement and welcome new users than through drip notifications.
If you’re not sure what drip notifications are or how to configure them, you’ve come to the right place because this is exactly what we plan on explaining.
Before we start explaining how to set up and configure drip notifications in WordPress, we should go make a quick overview of drip notifications.
Drip notifications are a series of automated messages that users receive when they undertake a certain action. They’re called drip notifications because the messages are slowly „dripping“ instead of being sent out all at once without previous targeting.
A simple and very popular example of drip notifications is a welcome message that a user receives when they enter the website for the first time. Of course, they’re not meant to be used just for welcoming – it’s a series of targeted messages that should help you build a relationship with your users.
Many people think that regular popup alerts and drip notifications are the same because they look similar on the outside. This is not true, and it’s important to recognize these two differences when you’re a marketer.
First things first, they don’t have the same concept.
Popup alerts will appear according to pre-set timings, and their purpose is to gather information about the leads. They can cover the entire screen when they’re displayed, but they can also be smaller.
For instance, a popup notification displays all over the user’s screen, asking them to subscribe to the newsletter or sign in to the website.
On the other hand, drip notifications start after a lead has been obtained. Their purpose is not to gather information from the user because you already have that. They don’t interrupt the user like popups do because they’re much smaller.
Furthermore, a user doesn’t even have to be browsing the website for the drip push notification to appear.
So, both popup alerts and drip notifications are used to establish a connection with your leads and customers, but you won’t be using both for users in different stages of the marketing funnel.
Now that we’ve explained what drip notifications are, we can get into detail about how you can benefit from them.
Drip notifications are very popular among marketers because they have a great click rate. Compared to emails, they’re very easy to respond to – you don’t need to enter your inbox, open the email, and then click on a link inside the email. All you need to do is click the button on the push notification.
This is especially the case with welcome drip notifications that are sent to new subscribers at predefined intervals.
You can also use drip notifications to increase your revenue. All you need to do is combine a call-to-action (CTA) button with the right banner image.
For example, imagine that someone books their stay in Greece through your travel company. You can use this information to provide them with drip notifications that will display the top 5 destinations to visit in Greece. This way, they will book a tour to some of those destinations with you, instead of someone else.
Drip notifications also help you build a stronger relationship with your leads. Not all leads will purchase your products or services right away. Because of that, they may forget about you if you don’t put more effort into nurturing your relationship.
As proven by the effectiveness of drip notifications, creativity plays an important role in technical processes that must be followed. When considering the big picture, the benefits of this strategy are sometimes ignored. However, no branding agency in California ignores these crucial elements, which are recognized as the driving force behind many successful organizations.
Until your leads are ready to purchase, you can provide them with educative content, help them make use of a few features, or even incentivize them, all through drip notifications.
At last, drip notifications, especially welcome drip notifications, can do a brilliant job of creating an onboarding user experience.
Once you get a new subscriber, you can send them drip notifications on your business and your portal. This is your chance to educate them about your business, what they can expect, the products and services you offer, and how to opt-out.
This is also the time to send the content promised in the opt-in request or the first notification.
Drip notifications can be used and scheduled in many different cases.
As we’ve already mentioned, you can send welcome drip notifications to your new subscribers. This is a great chance to bond with them as soon as they subscribe.
If you’re running an eCommerce store, drip notifications can help with upselling and cross-selling products that are similar or compatible with what they initially planned on buying.
For example, if your customer buys a kettle, you can send drip notifications with various tea flavors, discounts, or even popular blog posts on tea. This will encourage them to buy more products from you.
Furthermore, drip notifications are great for promoting new products, services, features, or upcoming events.
For instance, if you had an upcoming webinar, you could send drip push notifications containing basic information about the event, like who the speakers are and the benefits of participating, along with a registration link.
At last, you can segment your audience based on their location and show targeted messages to users from different regions. This is important for businesses whose revenue and overall success depend on the customer’s location.
There are a couple of methods for setting up automated drip notifications in WordPress.
The good news is that, unlike with more complex features, you don’t need to know much about web design to make drip notifications work – you can simply use PushEngage.
PushEngage is a platform created to help websites by sending web push notifications. It’s pretty simple to use and offers both free and paid plans, depending on the size of your business and your needs.
A free plan can handle up to 200 subscribers and 30 campaigns on one website, while paid plans can cover up to 250k subscribers and unlimited campaigns on up to three websites. Of course, paid plans also have some additional features and offer more personalization.
Here’s how you can set it up.
The first step would be to create your PushEngage account or register using a Google account. Once you set up your account, the PushEngage dashboard will appear.
On the left side of your screen, you will see the Site Settings option that you should choose and then proceed to Site Details. You’ll need to fill out some basic information about your website such as its name and URL.
When you scroll down on the Site Details page, you’ll be able to create the API key that you’ll later use to integrate your WordPress website with PushEngage.
So, copy the API key and paste it into a Notepad document so that you don’t lose or forget it.
Go to your WordPress website and activate the PushEngage plugin. Once that’s done, go to your Dashboard, locate the plugin, and select the Setup option. You’ll be asked to paste your API key and submit it and that’s it – you’ve successfully integrated your WordPress website with PushEngage.
In this example, we’re going to create a welcome campaign for new subscribers but you can create whichever campaign you want.
The first thing you should do is close your WordPress admin panel and go to your PushEngage dashboard. When you open it, locate Campaigns and select Drip Autoresponders. In the top right corner, click the Create New Drip Autoresponder button.
You can now change the notification title, icon image, message, URL, and more by expanding each notification by clicking the arrow at the bottom of every notification. There’s also a preview so that you can see what your new notification will look like in the user’s browser.
Since the point of drip notifications is to have a series of notifications at different times, PushEngage allows you to choose when to send each notification. In our example, the new subscriber should receive the first notification immediately after they subscribe.
When you’re done creating the notifications, click on the Drip Settings button located in the bottom right corner. You can send drip notifications to all subscribers or a specific audience group that you can customize on your own.
At last, all you need to do is click Activate Autoresponder, and go to the Campaigns » Drip Autoresponders to check if it’s active. If it is, you’ve successfully enabled automated push notifications for your WordPress website.
The best thing about this plugin is that you will also have access to the Analytics Overview, where you can see how your campaigns are performing.
We hope that this article helped you understand drip notifications better and taught you how to set up and configure drip notifications in WordPress.
As you can see, setting up drip notifications using PushEngage is pretty simple. Now all you need to do is create an account and create your first drip notifications campaign.