Push notifications might be cool but emails still work best

Personalisation is no doubt important in today's day and age where brands are constantly vying for consumers' attention. With mobile becoming the go-to device for consumers and brands nowadays, push notifications are another area that needs to be personalised. MoEngage's 2021 Southeast Asia Consumer Engagement Benchmark Report said push notifications by eCommerce, retail and D2C brands have higher success when sent to mobile app users based on their behaviour on the app. According to MoEngage's 2021 Southeast Asia Consumer Engagement Benchmark Report, push notifications sent moments after users have left the mobile app see delivery rates as high as 82.59%. Click-through rates (CTRs) for behavioural-based push notifications hit up to 6.58% on Android phones and campaign conversions jump to 27.13%.

Adding a layer of user personalisation based on attributes such as name or geography on behavioural-based push notifications also saw the delivery rate increasing to 85.67% and CTRs hitting up to 7.03%. The report also found that when customer segments are created based on behavioural attributes, deliverability increases to up to 68.47% and conversions from push notifications leap to 25.05%.

In addition to the retail sector, MoEngage's report also analysed consumer behaviour across the banking and finance and digital entertainment scene. Likewise, behaviour-based push-notifications for the banking and finance sector had a high delivery rate of 70.91% and CTRs of 8.71%. According to the report, CTRs were as high as 9.72% on Android devices and 9.66% on iOS devices. As a result of relevant messaging, a higher number of digital consumers also proceeded to complete the intended goal, increasing conversions to up to 24.84%.

Meanwhile, the report found that by taking into consideration the customer lifecycle and sending relevant push notifications based on customers' actions taken during their journey, CTRs of push notifications jumped to 11.09%, while the deliverability reached up to 78.52%. By adding personalised fields in push notifications, CTRs on Android devices increased up to 11.34% and up to 32.62% on iOS devices. At the same time, MoEngage also found that the conversion rates increased to up to 29.48% with personalisation.

Meanwhile, on the digital entertainment front, the delivery rate for behavioural-based push notifications saw a success rate of as high as 70.19%. The number jumps to as high as 94.02% when personalisation is added. According to MoEngage, brands in the digital entertainment vertical have witnessed an improvement in campaign performance by implementing advanced segmentation strategies and customising communication for each customer segment.

Segmented push notifications see delivery rates as high as 63.38% and CTRs as high as 5.40%. When communication is customised as per the customer lifecycle and the buyer journey, conversion rates increase to up to 23.90% on Android devices, and CTRs reach as high as 7.88% on iOS devices.

That said, marketers should still not give up on email marketing. In fact, MoEngage's report found that behaviour-based emails saw better click-through rates and conversion across all industries as compared to the generic ones. Open rates of emails from shopping brands went up to 28.17% and CTRs went up as high as 6.45%. The conversion rate for shopping brands also increased up to 8.97%. In banking, behaviour-based emails boosted conversions by 2.72x compared to generic broadcasts. Total click-to-open rates for behaviour-based communications were 8.90% in this sector while unique click-to-open rates were 14.79%. Meanwhile, CTRs in the banking sector for behaviour-based communication were 3.10%.

The report also found that 0.5% of emails that were behaviour-based in the digital entertainment sector saw a 2.4x better click rate. The open rates for behaviour-based communication went as high as 73.20% while total click-to-open rates increased from 2.89% to 5.71%. CTRs for digital entertainment also jumped from 0.54% to 2.83% when behaviour-based communication was employed. The report comprises data from 6.6 million users across Southeast Asia, primarily from Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

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