Push campaigns updates

Keeping your audience engaged and returning to your app can be a real challenge. The number of apps out there is constantly growing, and so is the amount of time we spend using them. However, 60% of all apps downloaded are used less than 10 times.

That's why we built free, customizable push campaigns.We introduced this tool as a closed beta at F8 earlier this year to help businesses like yours engage your audience. We saw huge interest in the product with over 10K businesses requesting access. As we continued developing push campaigns, we gave more people access to them with an open beta.

Better push campaigns for everyone

Since then, we've continued to build momentum around push campaigns by improving functionality—making them faster, scalable and even more reliable.

Today, we're happy to announce that push campaigns have come out of beta, and are now available to all businesses. With a redesigned audience targeting section, it's now easier than ever before to send push notifications to specific audience segments for a smoother and quicker workflow.

Redesigned audience targeting selector

Push campaigns keep people coming back

When your users opt into push campaigns, it's much easier for you to remind them of the things they love about your app. In fact, apps can see up to 180% higher retention when the people using them opt into receiving push notifications.

For example, you can use them to target reminders and offers, using deep links to send people to a specific place within your app. This helps you increase your engagement and retention.

Over the past few months, we partnered with the Cartwheel team at Target with tremendous success. “Push campaigns make it easy to notify our customers about our best deals and deep link into the relevant offers section in our app,” says Sarah Peterson Post, Senior Director at Target. “This capability can make a huge difference to our team as we approach the important holiday season.”

Build rich, engaging experiences with in-app notifications

We also wanted to develop a way for all businesses to create rich, engaging experiences as part of push campaigns without the need for code each time. In-app notifications can help achieve those goals—and they're available for free as part of push campaigns.

With in-app notifications, you can send rich media cards that appear to people directly inside your app. It's easy to stay true to your brand by customizing the look and feel of in-app notifications to match your app by adding photos, emoji, animated GIFs, buttons and more.

Here are some examples of how you can get the most out of in-app notifications:

• New features: in-app notifications are an eye-catching way to let people know about a new feature in your app. For example, if a ride sharing app can promote new transportation option.
• Limited-time offers: you can use in-app notifications to increase awareness and participation in a seasonal sale or limited-time offer. For example, a shopping app could promote their “50% Off Sale”.
• Cart reminder: in-app notifications can remind people that they have something left in their cart that they haven't purchased yet.

Enable engagement with iOS and Android updates

Push campaigns are becoming even more prominent for people using the latest iOS and Android devices. iOS 10 requires two taps on the home screen to unlock, which means that push notifications stay on the screen longer. This gives you more time to engage your audience and ensures that your notifications are reaching them.

On Android Nougat, your users can now directly interact with and reply from push notifications. This helps support engagement by keeping things simple and fast without the need to switch to another app.

Get started with push campaigns now

We're excited to offer the power of push campaigns to everyone. Remember that push campaigns are free, so there's no extra cost for sending push notifications or in-app notifications to the people using your apps. We've even created a whitepaper to provide the best practices for creating push campaigns.

Getting setup is easy—simply download and implement our iOS or Android SDK and you're on your way. For more detailed instructions on creating push campaigns, use our quickstart guide.