Retention and return to the audience using Email and Push notifications
" We are hard to find, easy to lose, and impossible to return ... " - Members
The owners of sites and mobile applications are primarily concerned with production, traffic purchase and monetization. Many people think about retaining the audience, but almost no one thinks about how to get the user back when he left the site or deleted the application.
')
In the article we will discuss how to use the Email and Push notifications to hold and return users.
The interview is given by Andrey Sas - chief specialist on Email and Push marketing at Badoo.com, a speaker at many industry conferences (Highload, RIT, CodeFest). Andrei advised Mail.ru mail service on the assessment of senders' reputation.
Andrew, there are at least 2 tools that allow you to return users - this is Email and Push notifications. How do you have everything in Badoo in terms of technology? How technologically built Email newsletter? How many letters do you send per month? What kind of letters are these?
Badoo currently has 214 million users. It is clear that not all of them are active, so Email and Push notifications are very important to us. In the month we send more than a billion letters and the same Push-notifications.
From the point of view of the technical device, we do everything ourselves, because we want to achieve the highest quality. What should be the email list? The main thing - the server that send letters. It's good that we could already have a ready-made tool here.
But everything else: the scripts that generate the letters, the statistics on the letters sent, the analytical developments - we had to do everything ourselves.
Letters can be divided into two groups:
1. Operating - letters, highlighting the workflow registration, change passwords.
2. Reactionary - directly return the user.
Does the mobile app need email distribution? Many say that this is the last century and irrelevant for the mobile sphere.
It all depends on the project and application. Email is one of the channels through which you can reach the user. Often, the user quickly removes the application, and Push no longer sends him a notification. This is where Email Email has an advantage.
For different areas of their own rules of operating and reactionary letters?
No, the Email and Push Notifications scheme works approximately equally in all areas. There are fundamental rules. For example, the first letter, or Push notification, should inform the user what notifications he will receive and how often.
For example, you registered somewhere, received a Push-notification, confirmed Email. Then he stopped using, and you start receiving letters. Of course, you mark the letter as spam. Therefore, it is important to form people’s expectations right away.
How to force the user to give Email if he does not want to report it?
If you need content, then you will give Email. To ask Email at the registration point is ok. You can ask to log in via social networks. Some give Email (Facebook, Twitter), some don’t ( VK )
If immediately after registration you want to receive the user's Email, then you need to offer something for it. For example, in games you can offer in-system currency.
How to return one-day users?
If the person has already deleted the application, you can at least get a feedback, why he did it. In order for the user to honestly name the reason, you need to correctly ask him about it.
You can try to return the person. But you need to offer him something for which he will be able to return. For example, to make some paid service free for several weeks or to offer him a new service. But it works if a person has just left, and in months it will be ineffective to do this.
If the user deleted the application, it will be difficult to get it installed again. You can count on to bring it to another service, if there is one.
What email services should the multi-regional service focus on?
As for Russia, this is Mail, Yandex, Gmail. Rambler has already faded a little. In numbers, Mail.ru has 60%, Yandex and Gmail each have 15% each.
Specific projects have their own characteristics. They need to focus not on the postal service, but on anti-spam filters and Google AdSense. If we look abroad, there is a big three of them: this is Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo.
In most countries, they provide from 50 to 80% of users. The most popular is Hotmail. Gmail is slowly overtaking Yahoo. But it all depends on the region. In the US, there are providers that provide email services; in Asia, the old local services are strong. In China - QQ, Hanmail, Sinocom. In Japan, most addresses are issued by providers.
What should be the letter to get to the addressee?
The technical side of the question is minimal:
1. Make it possible to specify the IP addresses that belong to you, so that postal services understand that a letter from your project.
2. Sign the newsletter electronically and confirm that you are the one sending it.
By completing these two points, the technical side of the delivery issue is resolved. Any system administrator will do this in a couple of hours.
The most important part of getting your emails to the addressee is how the users respond to your newsletter. It is necessary that they open it often enough, clicked in letters and did not complain by pressing the “This is spam” button. It is impossible to outsmart postal services in this regard. Spammers count on a very small number of people who easily trust. The rest of the people quickly understand where spam is, and presses the corresponding button.
The system administrator configures the service and technology authorization of letters. If you do not need statistics, you can do without it. Problems arise when it is discovered that part of the letters gets into spam, some comes with a delay of three hours. Then you have to spend resources on creating internal statistics. We need programmers here.
For mailings of 100 thousand letters a day, it makes sense to think about renting your own server. There are box solutions, but they are not always convenient. Traditionally, the choice is made in the direction of their own decisions.
And what is cheaper in financial terms? Own mailing system, or box solution?
Own system is cheaper. Server rental costs about 50 euros per month. Such equipment can send 3-5 million letters a day without problems. The price of a ready service from Amazon for sending 100 thousand letters a day during a month is 300 dollars. That is, its in any case more profitable.
If we talk about monitoring deliverability. For example, there is a postmaster service in Mail and Yandex. What is it and why is it needed? And do western postal services have similar functionality?
Postmaster is a component that is made, primarily, in the interests of the postal service. You are given a single address where mailing rules are located. You can read and understand why your newsletter does not reach. Similar tools also provide complaint statistics. They simply allow you to understand for yourself what the problems are, and save yourself from frequent calls to the support service.
For the email marketer, this is a very useful feature, in order to evaluate in time why the letters went to spam, to find the current collection of rules. The tool gives analytics on letter discoveries. It allows you to understand how many seconds the letter was read, how many users deleted it or sent it to spam.
In Russia, such a service appeared for the first time at Mail.ru. Yandex recently launched a copy of it. As for foreign companies, only Hotmail has this, as far as I know.
How do I know if my letters get spammed?
Need to look at mail delivery monitoring services. The principle of operation is as follows:
There is a set of test addresses. You periodically send your letters to these addresses. Services just send you a notification if the letters get in spam.
With the help of the monitoring service, you can look at the conversions that you have in the project and are tied to mail. For example, confirmation of the mail address, registration, click from the letter.
Examples of such services: emailstream.ru and its foreign counterpart - returnpath.com.
There is such a thing as “White” and “Black” sheets. What is it? What do they apply?
White / Black-lists are used, often by corporate mail services that do not have access to statistics. For the most part, these are small businesses, or small mail providers.
Black lists allow you to enter the IP addresses of spammers in special databases based on interaction with the DNS system. When receiving mail, the address of the server from which it is sent is checked against such a database. If there is an IP address of the server in the database, a letter from it is not accepted.
The most popular Blacklist is SpamHaus (a non-profit organization that deals with anti-spam). The rules for getting there are chaotic and incomprehensible. Volunteers who consider spam a big problem work there. Decisions they make themselves.
White lists are often personal mail services: there are added projects that will never end up in spam. If you have a good newsletter and a reasonable product, then getting into this sheet is not necessary.
There are white-lists more global. Returnpath is the only company that allows you to buy a place in the White sheet on Hotmail and Yahoo, but they ask for a lot of money. After payment, you will receive a guarantee that your emails will be in your “inbox” Hotmail and Yahoo. Returnpath will soon start working in Russia. He will cooperate with Mail.ru and Yandex.
Tell us how the statistics on the letters?
There are three directions in any marketing:
Technical implementation - the speed with which letters are delivered. You need to know the size of the queue on the mail server.
Deliverability - conversions for mail confirmation. It makes sense to use monitoring services.
Product statistics - you need to know how many letters were sent, by which letter you clicked, from which specific letter you clicked the unsubscribe button. And all this is broken down by letter type. Ideally, all this is loaded into the biosystem. So you can see how women and men click, residents of different regions.
Tell us about push notifications. How are they arranged? How should they work? How to build infrastructure around them?
There are local Push notifications, and there are those that can be sent from the development server without a running mobile application. And it can notify a person about anything. For example, if this is an android device, show a picture.
From your server, you, when you see fit, send some kind of notification. Your server connects to an Apple, Google or Microsoft server and tells it what to send and when.
Technically, everything is not difficult. It is even easier than sending emails, since there is no need to create a separate server for this. In order to arrange all this competently from the point of view of business, I would recommend only one thing: send something that will not cause the user to unsubscribe.
The main thing - do not go too far. Push notifications should not be sent at night, if you send, then extremely silent. Try to send them when a person uses your application. In general, simply reduce the noise level for a person, so as not to force him to delete the application or disable Push notifications.
If the user disables Push Notifications, he needs to be reminded that he is losing important information and to offer to turn them on again.
If I installed the application, and when I first start it, it warns me that they will send Push-notifications ... - this is not a very good solution. It is worth reporting this later, when a person can adequately assess whether his application is of interest.
Can I add advertisements in push notifications?
Not sure. This area is not adequately regulated. But I have not seen to do so. In fact, the Push notification only forces you to open an application that must learn to open a special landing page for this. Without this, you donate a large part of the audience.
What are your consulting services?
Most consulting clients already appear with a problem. Got into spam, want more response from mailing lists, need to build a good technical infrastructure, or they are not satisfied with the current mailing list server.
Immediately I do not undertake, first I study the question. It often turns out that there are more problems than the one with which they came. The price is different and depends on the project.
Do you see something new today? Can SMS bloom? Will there be an alternative to pushing?
It depends on social networks. I’ve been waiting for a couple of years for a new mechanism like Push Notifications, which will allow you to contact a specific person on Facebook and, for example, write personal messages to him. But while this does not happen.
This thing could have killed email marketing. The pushes will be all the more important. They will be ahead of Email.
SMS is expensive. Although they have a high reading and mobile users are increasing. You should bet on them. This is one of the main trends that I recorded.
What advise our readers?
A couple of years ago, I thought Email would die. But now I do not think so. Email is one of the best tools for holding and returning an audience. They can and should be used.
The basic rule - do not engage in spam, send only what will be useful and interesting to your users.
Technical details of working with email and push notifications and more about working with mobile users in the podcast: iTunes or Podster
Special thanks for helping KeepCalm and dlinyj
The owners of sites and mobile applications are primarily concerned with production, traffic purchase and monetization. Many people think about retaining the audience, but almost no one thinks about how to get the user back when he left the site or deleted the application.
')
In the article we will discuss how to use the Email and Push notifications to hold and return users.
The interview is given by Andrey Sas - chief specialist on Email and Push marketing at Badoo.com, a speaker at many industry conferences (Highload, RIT, CodeFest). Andrei advised Mail.ru mail service on the assessment of senders' reputation.
Andrew, there are at least 2 tools that allow you to return users - this is Email and Push notifications. How do you have everything in Badoo in terms of technology? How technologically built Email newsletter? How many letters do you send per month? What kind of letters are these?
Badoo currently has 214 million users. It is clear that not all of them are active, so Email and Push notifications are very important to us. In the month we send more than a billion letters and the same Push-notifications.
From the point of view of the technical device, we do everything ourselves, because we want to achieve the highest quality. What should be the email list? The main thing - the server that send letters. It's good that we could already have a ready-made tool here.
But everything else: the scripts that generate the letters, the statistics on the letters sent, the analytical developments - we had to do everything ourselves.
Letters can be divided into two groups:
1. Operating - letters, highlighting the workflow registration, change passwords.
2. Reactionary - directly return the user.
Does the mobile app need email distribution? Many say that this is the last century and irrelevant for the mobile sphere.
It all depends on the project and application. Email is one of the channels through which you can reach the user. Often, the user quickly removes the application, and Push no longer sends him a notification. This is where Email Email has an advantage.
For different areas of their own rules of operating and reactionary letters?
No, the Email and Push Notifications scheme works approximately equally in all areas. There are fundamental rules. For example, the first letter, or Push notification, should inform the user what notifications he will receive and how often.
For example, you registered somewhere, received a Push-notification, confirmed Email. Then he stopped using, and you start receiving letters. Of course, you mark the letter as spam. Therefore, it is important to form people’s expectations right away.
How to force the user to give Email if he does not want to report it?
If you need content, then you will give Email. To ask Email at the registration point is ok. You can ask to log in via social networks. Some give Email (Facebook, Twitter), some don’t ( VK )
If immediately after registration you want to receive the user's Email, then you need to offer something for it. For example, in games you can offer in-system currency.
How to return one-day users?
If the person has already deleted the application, you can at least get a feedback, why he did it. In order for the user to honestly name the reason, you need to correctly ask him about it.
You can try to return the person. But you need to offer him something for which he will be able to return. For example, to make some paid service free for several weeks or to offer him a new service. But it works if a person has just left, and in months it will be ineffective to do this.
If the user deleted the application, it will be difficult to get it installed again. You can count on to bring it to another service, if there is one.
What email services should the multi-regional service focus on?
As for Russia, this is Mail, Yandex, Gmail. Rambler has already faded a little. In numbers, Mail.ru has 60%, Yandex and Gmail each have 15% each.
Specific projects have their own characteristics. They need to focus not on the postal service, but on anti-spam filters and Google AdSense. If we look abroad, there is a big three of them: this is Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo.
In most countries, they provide from 50 to 80% of users. The most popular is Hotmail. Gmail is slowly overtaking Yahoo. But it all depends on the region. In the US, there are providers that provide email services; in Asia, the old local services are strong. In China - QQ, Hanmail, Sinocom. In Japan, most addresses are issued by providers.
What should be the letter to get to the addressee?
The technical side of the question is minimal:
1. Make it possible to specify the IP addresses that belong to you, so that postal services understand that a letter from your project.
2. Sign the newsletter electronically and confirm that you are the one sending it.
By completing these two points, the technical side of the delivery issue is resolved. Any system administrator will do this in a couple of hours.
The most important part of getting your emails to the addressee is how the users respond to your newsletter. It is necessary that they open it often enough, clicked in letters and did not complain by pressing the “This is spam” button. It is impossible to outsmart postal services in this regard. Spammers count on a very small number of people who easily trust. The rest of the people quickly understand where spam is, and presses the corresponding button.
The system administrator configures the service and technology authorization of letters. If you do not need statistics, you can do without it. Problems arise when it is discovered that part of the letters gets into spam, some comes with a delay of three hours. Then you have to spend resources on creating internal statistics. We need programmers here.
For mailings of 100 thousand letters a day, it makes sense to think about renting your own server. There are box solutions, but they are not always convenient. Traditionally, the choice is made in the direction of their own decisions.
And what is cheaper in financial terms? Own mailing system, or box solution?
Own system is cheaper. Server rental costs about 50 euros per month. Such equipment can send 3-5 million letters a day without problems. The price of a ready service from Amazon for sending 100 thousand letters a day during a month is 300 dollars. That is, its in any case more profitable.
If we talk about monitoring deliverability. For example, there is a postmaster service in Mail and Yandex. What is it and why is it needed? And do western postal services have similar functionality?
Postmaster is a component that is made, primarily, in the interests of the postal service. You are given a single address where mailing rules are located. You can read and understand why your newsletter does not reach. Similar tools also provide complaint statistics. They simply allow you to understand for yourself what the problems are, and save yourself from frequent calls to the support service.
For the email marketer, this is a very useful feature, in order to evaluate in time why the letters went to spam, to find the current collection of rules. The tool gives analytics on letter discoveries. It allows you to understand how many seconds the letter was read, how many users deleted it or sent it to spam.
In Russia, such a service appeared for the first time at Mail.ru. Yandex recently launched a copy of it. As for foreign companies, only Hotmail has this, as far as I know.
How do I know if my letters get spammed?
Need to look at mail delivery monitoring services. The principle of operation is as follows:
There is a set of test addresses. You periodically send your letters to these addresses. Services just send you a notification if the letters get in spam.
With the help of the monitoring service, you can look at the conversions that you have in the project and are tied to mail. For example, confirmation of the mail address, registration, click from the letter.
Examples of such services: emailstream.ru and its foreign counterpart - returnpath.com.
There is such a thing as “White” and “Black” sheets. What is it? What do they apply?
White / Black-lists are used, often by corporate mail services that do not have access to statistics. For the most part, these are small businesses, or small mail providers.
Black lists allow you to enter the IP addresses of spammers in special databases based on interaction with the DNS system. When receiving mail, the address of the server from which it is sent is checked against such a database. If there is an IP address of the server in the database, a letter from it is not accepted.
The most popular Blacklist is SpamHaus (a non-profit organization that deals with anti-spam). The rules for getting there are chaotic and incomprehensible. Volunteers who consider spam a big problem work there. Decisions they make themselves.
White lists are often personal mail services: there are added projects that will never end up in spam. If you have a good newsletter and a reasonable product, then getting into this sheet is not necessary.
There are white-lists more global. Returnpath is the only company that allows you to buy a place in the White sheet on Hotmail and Yahoo, but they ask for a lot of money. After payment, you will receive a guarantee that your emails will be in your “inbox” Hotmail and Yahoo. Returnpath will soon start working in Russia. He will cooperate with Mail.ru and Yandex.
Tell us how the statistics on the letters?
There are three directions in any marketing:
- technical implementation
- letter deliverability
- product statistics
Technical implementation - the speed with which letters are delivered. You need to know the size of the queue on the mail server.
Deliverability - conversions for mail confirmation. It makes sense to use monitoring services.
Product statistics - you need to know how many letters were sent, by which letter you clicked, from which specific letter you clicked the unsubscribe button. And all this is broken down by letter type. Ideally, all this is loaded into the biosystem. So you can see how women and men click, residents of different regions.
Tell us about push notifications. How are they arranged? How should they work? How to build infrastructure around them?
There are local Push notifications, and there are those that can be sent from the development server without a running mobile application. And it can notify a person about anything. For example, if this is an android device, show a picture.
From your server, you, when you see fit, send some kind of notification. Your server connects to an Apple, Google or Microsoft server and tells it what to send and when.
Technically, everything is not difficult. It is even easier than sending emails, since there is no need to create a separate server for this. In order to arrange all this competently from the point of view of business, I would recommend only one thing: send something that will not cause the user to unsubscribe.
The main thing - do not go too far. Push notifications should not be sent at night, if you send, then extremely silent. Try to send them when a person uses your application. In general, simply reduce the noise level for a person, so as not to force him to delete the application or disable Push notifications.
If the user disables Push Notifications, he needs to be reminded that he is losing important information and to offer to turn them on again.
If I installed the application, and when I first start it, it warns me that they will send Push-notifications ... - this is not a very good solution. It is worth reporting this later, when a person can adequately assess whether his application is of interest.
Can I add advertisements in push notifications?
Not sure. This area is not adequately regulated. But I have not seen to do so. In fact, the Push notification only forces you to open an application that must learn to open a special landing page for this. Without this, you donate a large part of the audience.
What are your consulting services?
Most consulting clients already appear with a problem. Got into spam, want more response from mailing lists, need to build a good technical infrastructure, or they are not satisfied with the current mailing list server.
Immediately I do not undertake, first I study the question. It often turns out that there are more problems than the one with which they came. The price is different and depends on the project.
Do you see something new today? Can SMS bloom? Will there be an alternative to pushing?
It depends on social networks. I’ve been waiting for a couple of years for a new mechanism like Push Notifications, which will allow you to contact a specific person on Facebook and, for example, write personal messages to him. But while this does not happen.
This thing could have killed email marketing. The pushes will be all the more important. They will be ahead of Email.
SMS is expensive. Although they have a high reading and mobile users are increasing. You should bet on them. This is one of the main trends that I recorded.
What advise our readers?
A couple of years ago, I thought Email would die. But now I do not think so. Email is one of the best tools for holding and returning an audience. They can and should be used.
The basic rule - do not engage in spam, send only what will be useful and interesting to your users.
Technical details of working with email and push notifications and more about working with mobile users in the podcast: iTunes or Podster
Special thanks for helping KeepCalm and dlinyj
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/226871/
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